I suspect that some of them are people that took rejection by YC a bit harder than they should have, and that some others are simply here because they can't see a good thing without being tempted to try to destroy it.
It's almost entirely the latter. Only a small percentage of HN users actually apply to YC, and I can only think of one who became abusive on HN after being rejected (and he sent me an email recently apologizing).
Most of the nastiness we get here is from new users who show up and think they can behave like they do on other sites. This has been happening for years. But I wouldn't attribute to them such complex motives as not being able to see a good thing without being tempted to destroy it. I think they're just 13, or nuts.
Only a small percentage of HN users actually apply to YC
Slightly off-topic, but what about the inverse of that: how many YC applicants are active HN users [1]? Just curious as to how much of the applicant pool comes from HN.
1. Since you have to create a HN account to apply, I'm assuming 100% of YC applicants are HN users, so maybe how many actively participate?
Cheers pg. The reason I asked was because when my cofounder and I submitted our application for w2011, we decided to use his account as the lead even though I had way more karma, which was due to him having a much cooler answer to the non-computer hack question specifically addressed at only the lead.
Anyway, not that it matters since a good application is still a good one (and vice versa), but it's possible to find a higher YC/HN participation rate if you include the cofounders.
That would be hard to reconstruct, because we don't keep track of people's karma at the point when we accept them, but we usually have 1 or 2 startups per batch with founders whose usernames I recognize as being top contributors. 6 of the 100 users on the leaderboard are YC founders.
Yeah, I think YC applicants or founders is statically insignificant, but I think your total user base is just as insignificant as this since it doesn't tell us much about what stories are showing up on the front-page and who is saying what about it. Instead, considering you're still only interested in comments, what if you filtered your user base for anyone that has posted a comment in the last 30 days then extrapolated the proportion of comments posted given a threshold of karma or "days alive" on HN against everyone else in your user base.
I think it's more revealing this way if you are interested in how increased traffic and site participation is effecting this 6% you mentioned above or that "days alive" value; IOW, how is increased traffic and new user participation effecting the rate at which this sample is posting comments?
In the end, I don't think increased traffic is effecting the discussion to the extent that it really matters; I think what really keeps everyone else in check is the frequency at which older members are posting comments.
I know my HN participation dropped offer during my summer in YC...understandably so given how busy I was. It's picked up more now and is probably about at the same level as before I started YC.
I was amazed that PG recognized my username at the acceptance brunch...I guess his statistics might explain why (I had ~1,000 karma but it was built up from small posts/comments, nothing too controversial).
That's just the topic that people are most likely to be defensive about here. It's probably a natural instinct for groups to test and provoke each other by the things which are most distinctive to them.
Economic interdependence is what drives the niceness here. Anyone who seriously cares about startups or hacking and wants to benefit from this crowd is likely to follow the guidelines as best they can.
But people lacking the same incentives will probably unknowingly slide into some form of bad behavior even if they've been active on the site for years - it will just happen naturally, because their economic equation is "amuse myself" with no mitigating factors. But most of the time it probably doesn't cause overt vandalism, just poor commenting hygiene.
>But people lacking the same incentives will probably unknowingly slide into some form of bad behavior even if they've been active on the site for years - it will just happen naturally, because their economic equation is "amuse myself" with no mitigating factors. But most of the time it probably doesn't cause overt vandalism, just poor commenting hygiene.
I am not so sure about that - I come here and post comments in the hope that people will like them (doesn't work that well) because I derive my sense of worth from how much karma I have
I personally feel a tiny amount of satisfaction in contributing something meaningful to a conversation, and I like to try and keep overall contributions to a community posative because if everyone did that it would make the community a better place for me.
Arguably selfish motivations, but they work out well for everyone.
Moreover I think that since these people can't express their nastiness directly, they go and "retaliate" on target websites.
I never read comments under the articles linked here because I know they are polluted by a lot of useless noise, so I just read comments here on HN. But it could be interesting to see if nasty comments related to HN, like the ones mentioned by the OP, appear in other places as well (not that we can do anything about it, anyway).
It's almost entirely the latter. Only a small percentage of HN users actually apply to YC, and I can only think of one who became abusive on HN after being rejected (and he sent me an email recently apologizing).
Most of the nastiness we get here is from new users who show up and think they can behave like they do on other sites. This has been happening for years. But I wouldn't attribute to them such complex motives as not being able to see a good thing without being tempted to destroy it. I think they're just 13, or nuts.