* You have to use a "real" name.
* Their members are predominantly white upper middle class tech/finance/marketing professionals - occasionally some Asians, but mainly from California or NY.
* There's no good way to browse the site - if there is, it's not easy to find.
* Groupthink and being penalized for speaking your mind, both common problems for high-IQ communities.
> Groupthink and being penalized for speaking your mind, both common problems for high-IQ communities.
That's what I like about HN. Groupthink is indeed present (especially when it comes to technical topics such as programming languages or OSes - we all have a strong incentive to promote what we use), but not nearly as much as any other online community I'm aware of. There's a recurring pattern that I like here: usually, when a submission argues X, the top comment in the comment thread criticizes/refutes X. By hearing the two sides of an argument, one can better form an opinion.
On the contrary, HN groupthink is quite severe (although it has decreased somewhat since the time that comment scores were no longer displayed). I guess it depends on perspective: if you're in the middle of a box, the box looks like the entire universe.
I disagree on comment scores. Not having them makes bandwagoning more likely because I tended to not upvote comments that already have high scores. It does likely make the data more useful to pg though. On technical questions it is painful not having comment scores.
That is exactly what I mean. Before the change you would see a thread of two groups of people with alternating low and high comment scores having a discussion with each other, and it would be clear what HN's groupthink opinion is. Now you have to actually read the comments and make up your own mind. That is true even for technical discussions: the hivemind is not always right.
Why is the metadata so important to so many people on HN? I don't understand it.
Is it a mechanism to find the best comments in a thread? Is it a visualization issue? Is it ego? Is it a voting mechanism to know what others think is important? I honestly do not know.
How about if there was a glyph or color that denoted the amount of votes,views,etc? I think one of the issues was putting a numeric score on an item encouraged upvoting already popular comments.
May be some intelligent coloring would be a good replacement. I just need something that would tell me what comments are likely to be more informative.
For me, it is visualization issue. I used to be able to skim through the comments much faster. Sometimes there was a comment with tons of votes deeply nested in a thread and I would pay attention to it.
I think it's actually better now than it was. There are a number of contrarian voices in each contentious thread arguing firmly that there's more to an issue than perhaps simple analysis would give credit for. There used to be more of an Ayn Randian/"supermen" feel, more people patting each other on the backs for being superior creatures cos entrepreneurs are the end point of evolution. The site seems a fair deal saner, from my point of view.
The nature of systematic conversation ensures there will always be groupthink. Systems are designed to function in certain ways and deny other approaches to get their desired result. The result is that people who want this system flock to it, and people who want to somehow act counter to this system are going to be a minority that's possibly chased away by the system itself. Options like downvoting and "ranking" comments" and flagging inappropriate topics basically say that there is a right way to behave or talk, there are topics that are better than others. Then either people are attracted to the sites that reinforce their worldview or they're conditioned by these rules to decide there're right and wrong ways to think or to be – I'm not sure which it is. Probably a little of both.
That's why I don't think down votes should be used to express disagreement (although pg doesn't share this opinion). I personally frequently up vote comments I disagree with if I feel they are thoughtful and bring an interesting perspective. The variety of ideas is important and should be encouraged.
Up/down is the wrong direction for the arrows I think. Left <--> right, meaning on-topic/off-topic ? One of the problems I think is that there are so many dimensions represented by two simple little arrows that it is difficult for the system (the web software itself) to discern the intent, so it turns into a popularity (I agree,I disagree) button.
But if you had a button for each piece of information it would look like
[] well written
[] well thought out
[] agree
[] disagree
[] poorly written
[] funny
[] off topic
For bonus points they would be in a random order in the UI so people wouldn't develop muscle memory voting on comments.
I have thought about the On/Off-Topic button as well for some time now. I think it's a good concept to try out, mainly because it is not judgmental - Sometimes I like following an Off-Topic discussion and I've had a couple of good ones on HN. But most of the time, it can be very distracting - separating it from the main discussion is worth a shot.
As for more detailed buttons - I think that would make it too complex. Slashdot has established the same concept, probably based on the same reasoning (mostly to distinguish between "just" funny and actually insightful comments). Can't speak that much about how successful it is, maybe somebody else has more insight here.
Yeah, the buttons get out of hand, but the information they would represent is greatly needed. And how do you encourage people to rate what they read and interacted with? Based on the stats people post about the amount of traffic driven by an HN or Reddit submission ... the vast majority of users don't interact via any sort of voting mechanism at all.
I am working on a site now that is heavily based on passive activity voting, users have no idea how their actions are being used by the site to rank itself. Their inputs have much less weight than purposeful actions where both parties are aware of the event.
It is almost like you need an agent that votes in certain public ways (sentiment analysis,summarization,etc) to decide if comments snarky, funny, off topic, etc.
I guess that would fall down once you get to mixed comments - something can be snarky, funny, off- and on-topic at the same time. Human conversational interaction is just bloody hard to quantify. The first few steps are always simple and then it gets hard fast.
Passive voting sounds interesting, though - would that work via Javascript? How would you determine what the user is focused on?
Finally - I think it's important not to get ahead of ourselves - because I think that's what happened at Slashdot. Talking about new classifications is all nice and well, but it's useless when you don't have a clear plan what it should result in and how it would engage people. You need a clear use case.
For instance - my proposal about an off-topic discussion button is pretty straight forward. People would see the immediate benefit: Hey, this can help us make conversation less wasteful and save me scanning time as it separates the cream from the crop. I think it wouldn't have a problem enticing engagement, too - nothing drives engagement in nerds like being annoyed, so they'd click that button.
On Slashdot, I can theoretically reduce a conversation to exclude all the funny-only comments so I'm left with just the cream. But seriously - how often does anybody use that? Once you give people elaborate personal filters, you actually end up having them worry whether they're missing something. Which is why they can only be consistent and transparent. If I reduce a comment thread on Slashdot to exclude the funny business and see that one of the nodes has a HUGE conversation, I wonder whether I should check it out and maybe end up annoyed because it's just a chain of memes after all. If there was a way in HN to mark things as off-topic and have that a clear process that is always applied, I think I would be more confident in skipping. Mainly because if it was broken, the community would complain until it is fixed.
It's a social problem unlikely to be solved by a technical solution. When it's an open flat democracy and votes from hordes of new users have the same weight as elder ones it is pointless. They'd just start flagging for spam or offtopic to hide dissenting comments (like it's done in youtube).
On the converse, if the older people can amass power and karma new people can't move it.
I don't have a solution. I am not sure there is one or that it could be "fixed"
Maybe semi-intelligent Eliza like agents that constantly clean the place up.
Stackoverflow has done a pretty decent job I think. Wikipedia could use some work.
----
I think the base set of rules need to be codified by the system. The users can guide each other and the system, but the system itself should be stable.
This is a tricky one. Of course every human community has some measure groupthink. However, when people complain about groupthink here and you investigate their comment history you often find a confrontational or rude tone paired with unconvincing arguments. Much like "Fanboy", "Groupthink" is a sort unassailable conversation-ending ad-hominem that people trot out when they are frustrated, with or without reason...
I think there is groupthink in HN even on non-technical topics, but it's much more subtle. It's about that every problem should be resolved using a rational argument. I think arguments appealing to intuition, emotion or authority are likely to get down voted. I am not saying it is a bad thing, that bias is part of why I read HN and not some tabloid. However, I don't think rational thought is perse the best answer to every question, because it's inviting to make incorrect assumptions.
I do get downvoted less for voicing angry opinions around here, which is refreshing and polite. Don't underestimate the value of politeness... especially when you want to voice angry opinions.
Why does it matter that they are predominantly white? I agree that the other things you mention like class might be important. But race, seriously? How do you even know they are white anyway?
The first one was the dealbreaker for me. I signed up using part of my real name instead of my full name. Within hours I was blocked from adding anything to Quora. As a result, I haven't been back since signing up.
Groupthink and being penalized for speaking your mind
Is it groupthink that I pointed out your blatant racism? Message boards the world over are full of people saying wrong, obnoxious, ignorant things and then foolishly thinking that a negative response is just because everyone else is prey to groupthink, etc. It is a short-circuit of self-analysis.
The poster didn't complain about a bias. They complained about a perceived demographic composition.
Detroit is too black. Vancouver has too many Indians.
How do those sound? There is no difference between what the poster said and those statements, beyond the common acceptance that you can be racist against whites, even if just attacking the imaginary demographic of a group.
I believe that, technically, the term would be "discriminatory" in this case, white people being in a position of relative power and privilege in the West (and most of the world, really. White people are esteemed all over, even if just in relation to other foreigners).
But it just isn't the same as you said. The difference here is that this is a question-and-answers forum, and the lack of diversity, as in the homogeneity of values and experiences, might be indeed undesirable.
Though I wasn't able to quickly find an study that showed that homogeneity begets groupthink...
I get it: You're a racist. "Diversity" indeed. I honestly have no idea what the racial make-up of Quora is because it neither seemed relevant, nor have I sought it out. I don't even know how you'd even know in many cases.
But it's too white? Give me a break. The only reason that bullshit, obnoxious, offensive statement gets a pass is white-guilt, a bunch of people afraid they offend someone looking for, ha ha, "diversity".
