Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

you're right and wrong. :-) (which is the best kind of right/wrong? haha)

what I mean is... I tried to make a subtle point, but it didn't come across. what I was trying to say was this is one of the most toxic sites I've seen for a certain mix of toxic behaviors: mostly passive-aggressive, hyper-nerdy/autism-spectrum types of comments, humblebragging, etc. I agree with you wholeheartedly, from my own experience that yes there are other sites where there is more direct abuse, more direct trolling and harassment, which doesn't happen (or nearly as much) here on HN. what I'm saying is, on the flip side, I see a lot more of a certain kind of... there needs to be a word for it... the slang terms I learned for it were douchebags, pinheads, compulsives, booksmart-yet-streetdumb, etc. I just have never encountered that as much over on Reddit (itself a broad category because so much variance between subreddits there, and front page vs not) as I have here on HN.

again, I wasn't saying there's no signal here, and no politeness. I see lots of politeness and maturity here. also lots of muck. thus my slang term "shit salad" -- mix of good and bad. my point was that there's a different assortment of bad behavior I see here than on Reddit, CNN etc.

it does appear to me to have improved a lot, especially over the last several months. we'll see. YMMV.



I mean, when you say:

>>a weird mix of passive aggressiveness, disagree-based-downvoting, "cite paper!"-ness, minutial edge case-oriented pedantry

You are basically describing software developers.

They are passive aggressive because they don't like direct confrontation.

They downvote when they disagree because if they disagree that means you are wrong.

They nitpick on edge cases because edge cases are what they deal with everyday in their code, so they can't help it.

So really, it's not HN you have an issue with, but the developer crowd. ;)




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: