Every internet message board has its own culture with its own take on what's "right" and what's "wrong", and on HN (and reddit) the institutionally accepted way of being mean is misusing the downvoting / flagkilling system to attempt to bleep out someone else's opinion because you disagree with it and labeled it as "toxic" from your perspective.

I mean, it's one thing to downvote someone because of spam or noise (e.g. one line posts of "lolwtf" or "this is dumb"), but every time I scroll through the comments and see discussion chains of folks arguing some valid points (about say referrals and paywalls or the ever controversial issue of sexism) under a flagkilled or completely invisible down-voted-to-hell post, I think to myself "this shouldn't be how our community operates."

It's not much, but if I'm having a crap day and something I say it getting downvoted, I feel a little better when it ticks up a notch, knowing at least one person isn't trying to just bomb my post. It's basically the tiniest little gift I like to give to people, heh.

I also think that, if enough people put that upvote in, the community could shift how it reacts to things.

Just my two cents

haha I get it. And that's also very kind of you.

I do it too sometimes, trying not to lose perspective of the true purpose of the conversation taking place of course; a single upvote in a bombarded comment won't cause detriment to the conversation but it will provide some motivation for the participant to keep trying to participate (assuming good faith on the poster, as well).

For example in StackOverflow, if I notice a -1 post but the post has some value, I'll upvote it even if it wasn't particularly useful for my issue, in order to give it a chance to be reevaluated without a negative bias of that -1

I find it a bit funny/curios on why we do such things. I've always known I'm not the only one doing that, it's one of those unsaid things that happen on the net, part of its culture.

I think you're too concerned about what strangers think and do around the internet. Most people will "bomb" your subjective side of the argument (the snarky, mean, remarks), and not the underlying idea. I've found out that conveying your arguments while avoiding personal, subjective, attacks is a much better way of getting your point across, since people are more receptive if they don't get the impression they need to be defensive.

Basically, if you're being an asshole, I don't feel a need to save you from yourself.

There aren't many (if any) formal guidelines for comment voting on HN, so this is me driving at what I want out of the community. I don't speak for everyone. For my part, I want civility, and to encourage people to contribute their opinions, popular or not.

The polite responses to misinformed ideas are often some of the most educational, at least for me, and so I'd like an environment where anxiety about the chance of being wrong is low for everyone.

I also don't want any of this to sound like an indictment of hacker news. I keep coming back here because I think the community is really top notch, and the signal to noise ratio is high. Commenting systems and forums have had these problems for ages, and they're hard problems. I just wanted to add my voice to the crowd.

I've also encountered many cases that confused me a bit and at the time didn't quite understand why those people/commenters were being downvoted.

So I've spent a long time just reading HN without commenting, trying to first understand the culture, the news are just as important as the people curating them IMHO. After sometime I've begun to understand the different mindsets and dynamics; there are many discernible reasons to be downvoted by the community, there's for example, being perceived as a shill or a strawman, and etc. And correct me if I'm wrong but there's also the secret/magic algorithms making the mod's jobs easier, I don't think those algorithms are perfect and may make mistakes sometimes, that's understandable.

But there are still enough cases that I suspect ended up being downvoted just because disagreement motive or maybe even for irrational emotion (very rarely do strong emotions come with reason) motive. And there's also the case of Trigger-happy-downvoting individuals, all these latter cases generate such damage that I have * sometimes * even found myself a bit suspicious of the worth of the HN community as a whole.

But I stressed "sometimes" for a reason...

...One has to understand that communities change, that's a fact, and as YC has had success and obtained more and more media attention (and therefore HN as well), different kind of audiences have joined the flock (me included, since a few years ago).

My guess is that HN's community is still adapting to the new audience, must be tough since there must be thousands of real people along with hundreds of fake accounts (some with nefarious purposes) and bots.

In the end, you'll find it more useful to acquire a thick skin and a "deal with it" attitude towards gratuitous negativity (down-voters included), but not an impermeable shell because sometimes there's some useful criticism behind rude negativity, just don't take it personal and master the art of spinning the conversation towards a constructive direction.

Side note: >> anonymously down-voting / reporting someone's opinion just because it's not yours is just as mean-spirited as calling someone names.

Amazingly well phrased, I had to point that one out :)

This is the most important lesson I was never formally taught about discourse. If you can mange to be Kind & Thick-skinned you will be capable of communicating with a far wider group of people than those who are missing one component of that pair.

One could argue for another voting just for agreement/disagreement that wouldn't impact the positioning and colour of the comments, because seeing HN's opinions is also interesting. It would however add another layer of complexity.

As long as people upvote "I learnt something I agree with," and not "I learnt something I disagree with," the effect is the same, the amplification is just tuned a bit. Having a different standard for upvotes and downvotes doesn't do much. If you get less upvotes, it is effectively as if you got more downvotes.

So yeah, I generally agree with PG in that

    > it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement

So my current take on this whole vote up/down to convey agreement/dissagreement discussion would be not voting at all unless you find it pertinent.

Also IMHO, in other types of reasoning one should be a bit faster to downvote, for example 'rudeness', or worse, 'hate messages', for those ones I downvote immediately, or flag and sometimes even educate (if the person seems to be just confused, and I make one attempt only, if the person is not interested in changing their mind, I skip).

Other types of reasoning deserve a different approach, for example; Interesting comments I upvote even if I don't agree. Well redacted but uninteresting comments I leave untouched (I don't vote up nor down).

And there are many other considerations for different scenarios and different types of reasoning, I mostly prefer not to waste time, but I liked this post about kindness and find the topic of community very engaging and relevant to me. Maybe because I'm starting to build a community myself.

I admit that I'm a bit faster to upvote, for anything that deserves positive feedback; attention, approval, agreement, endorsement, celebration, applause, kudos, kindness, etc. And I'm OK with that.

I've stopped up/down voting all together for similar reasons.

For example, upvoting when a subject matter expert gives some context, or the person offers a comment that you found interesting. Conversely downvoting when there is a "me too"/contentless comment.

Personally I most commonly find myself downvoting what I would describe as either rhetoric or offensive.

It is. I've decided to just leave the comments (reactions) as they are and signal upvote by commenting. If the post/comment is of no interest, no comment. Voting in some ways has distorted the real intent of the site: "talking about things hackers like".

Imagine of the rating system did away with votes and instead measured the quality of the discourse on something interesting.

I suspect HN's up/down system follows the pattern of simplicity by design and for good reason; the reason being the flexibility to welcome a cognitive diverse audience.

Apparently HN's decline in audience quality over time was expected from the start¹; quality and popularity seem to be inversely correlated, but the voting privilege threshold is a good way to maintain culture values to some degree.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but given the fact this community was conceived as "an experiment"¹ to explore and empower the hacker community, I suspect one of the points has always been that the "best" ideas float to the top. In this case, the "best" ideas are always relative to the values of the community as a whole; the sum of criteria of the engaged participants, a very diverse audience.

That diverse audience can have multiple motives to vote up or down, according to each individual mindset; it can be agree/disagree, constructive/non-constructive, as you proposed, yes, but it also can be interesting/uninteresting, like/dislike, kind/unkind. Or many other criteria that are not necessarily antonyms; amazing/disgusting, enlightening/TLDR, etc.

So this singular up/down "un-opinionated" system's simplicity allows a cognition diversity one-size-fits-all dynamic, any change in UX would have to be planned for a justifiable purpose and very carefully executed.

¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

The difference is often very small and just adds not really necessary options which makes making a choice harder.

How about checking if a user downvoted more than e.g. average number of comments on some post, resulting in his downvotes carrying very little weight if it is true. Unless it's being done already.

I basically stopped commenting (well, except now -- doh) here on HN because of how frequently I saw toxic responses and punishment down-voting. There are a noisy subset of users here who either (a) can't understand or respect generalizations, especially based on older/real-life experience, or (b) demand "proof" for any claim, or (c) will punish any kind of not-narrowly-PC statement. And then the blatantly rude. Folks who say something in a comment they'd never dare to say to your face.

Therefore I've given up on caring and now much prefer Reddit's community. Less pinheads there, greater topic variety, greater sense of fun, can collapse threads, can delete comments much later (if you discover one that attracts a hate mob). I still enjoy reading HN, mostly the off-site articles linked to. But not so much the comment threads here. Not anymore.

Nit-picking and pedantry is toxic in real life and on message boards, however it seems to be ever-present in communication with fellow software engineers. In software engineering, if you miss an = sign or misplace a { or use a single wrong keyword in a 100K line program, the program can fail spectacularly. Debugging a broken program often involves nit-picking syntax--it's an essential tool in a software engineer's arsenal.

This is not universally true for written argument or rhetoric. Being clear is good. Using correct grammar is good. The details count. But attacking a clear, articulate argument by nit-picking grammar or word usage is pointless and does not substantially add to the conversation. Despite this, this behavior seems to exist as a cancer everywhere on the Internet where you encounter written argument or persuasion, including here.

The kindly part is so important; their attitude shows that they don't have an open mind at the moment; dismissing kindly leaves a moral door open so that in the infrequent (but not rare) event that they'll have an open mind later in the day (or later in a lifetime), they may remember your reasoning and revisit the logic in their minds and agree with you, sometimes they acknowledge you merit for it and sometimes they don't, but when they do, bingo, you just made an intellectual ally, but that works only if you were kind and treated them with respect.

Pick your battles; If you insist on proving yourself right and antagonize people (remember even trolls are people) you make gratuitous enemies and waste resources in general; time, energy, focus, etc.

Trust me, I've turned foes into allies several times in my short lifetime. And more importantly, I've saved myself from wasting time and headaches. Kindness works miracles and saves time.

Be kind, rewind (your mind?).

And don't forget to read the welcomming page and the guidelines:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That's cool but I'd like to have better control, so I'm designing a custom HN curator myself. And I've noticed some other people have done the very same thing themselves.

When I'm wearing the Software Engineer hat, yes, the entire world can fail if a single nit is imperfect. But when we wear the Human Conversing or Persuading hat I expect and indeed enjoy seeing and using a more fuzzy logic. I expect more buffer and assume-I'm-not-an-idiot-kid-please-get-off-my-lawn-been-there-done-that-have-the-tee-shirt-thanks.

Compilers and CPUs are the world's most productive utter idiots. The best engineers adjust their thoughts to see them and emulate them, but sometimes this backfires when they forget to exit that mode.

In fact, those people are very useful and most of them have helped me from time to time, so I'm grateful for them.

Side note: >> assume-I'm-not-an-idiot-kid-please-get-off-my-lawn-been-there-done-that-have-the-tee-shirt-thanks

Thank you for that, I'll use it sometime, not sure why or when, but it's so funny I must! :D

maybe turn it into a C poem and wear as a T-shirt?

I once had the following printed on a T-shirt and wore to a Meetup.com event here in Colorado, and out of the crowd an early Bell Labs alumnus (C/UNIX era) emerged and tried to recruit me:

    while (!(success = try()));

    void whatever(params) {
        assert assume_im_not_an_idiot_kid_please_get_off_my_lawn_been_there_done_that_have_the_shirt_thanks(params);
        ...
    }

And I should warn you! I WILL make a T-shirt and give you credit.

and/or from the earnings on my book series The Dread Space Pirate Richard. (srsly)

or... savings from my day job. a good strategy has several fallbacks. :-P

I've just promoted your book up in the long to-read list.

So I would not complain because HN needs criticism. I'd rather suggest a technical solution through UX design, for the false alarm flagging mostly.

I'd be less annoyed by a downvote from pg, because I probably deserved it, than a downvote from someone completely random, who I might not care about.

In some ways, I also wish downvoting cost you a point like it does on stackoverflow.

For the longest time I was confused at seeing down-voted comments because I mentally assumed that downvotes mean "this is a troll comment / this is some kind of abusive comment". Not so.

Also (and I've said this before so apologies for repeating myself!), if downvotes do mean 'disagreement', could we get rid of the graying out of down-voted comments, or maybe just make it an account preference? I'm interested in reading viewpoints that I might not agree with and graying out the comment makes it really hard to do so. It also seems to fit better with the model of "downvote = this comment shouldn't be in the conversation".

If a comment is disagreeable but worthwhile, my preference is to give a substantive response. If a comment is value-subtracting, even if I agree with the sentiment, I'll downvote it (and may take the time to explain the downvote if I think my explanation will be helpful.)

The main attributes I consider to make a comment value-subtracting are:

- substantial factual errors (not just a nitpick, but core to the point)

- gratuitous negativity or unnecessary incivility

- waste of space ("me too", memes or jokes except if they're edw519 caliber, excessive references to irrelevant topics such as mentioning someone else's religion several times in a thread that has nothing to do with that)

- extremely poor reasoning or communication, to the degree that trying to engage substantively becomes difficult

It should be common sense but I suspect not everyone with the ability to downvote has such considerations and the HN guidelines¹ offer very little comment on that.

I'm guessing that mods think that once you've risen above the downvote reputation threshold you must be qualified and should have a good criteria on how to use this newly given privilege.

I'm not trying to tell anyone how to do their job, but maybe it would be useful to add some guidelines for that too (Voting, specifically), I think I like your guidelines.

¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Eg when I don't know how you perceive the comments in the vicinity of the discussion, it is harder for me to understand your comment's intentions and finer points.

Of course this doesn't apply to peripherical features such as the colour of the header bar.

I admire PGs work too, but don't you think this criteria would introduce to the community a herd-like mindset of following perceived moral leaders instead of evaluating ideas for their own standing?

If someone important likes what I said, I'm going to think that I made a good comment. If they dislike it, then I'm going to reconsider what I said a bit more deeply. Neither of these would change my mindset from a simple up/down vote. I'd want a comment or discussion to take place first.

In the case of your example, if someone important likes what you said and you feel rewarded for that, you're more likely to say that (or something similar) again, regardless of the objective merit of the statement.

Say your comment was "Java is stupid". it only gets 3 upvotes, but XYZ likes it. You feel validated, so next time the subject comes up you say it again. Commentary was then shaped by a personality rather than the merit of the commentary.

1st of all. This is not facebook. Upvotes and downvotes are not likes/dislikes.

That said, here's another way to explain what I meant: Commenting is not about pleasing readers (is also not about displeasing, so be kind, like the post recommends). If "someone important" likes or dislikes what you said, should not have such an impact that would make you consider changing your mind, your mind should be changed by feedback in the form of comprehensive information, that kind of feedback is much more meaningful than someone else's emotion (or even disagreement by itself without feedback provided).

There can be many reason/motives to upvote/downvote, but emotion is not reason, acting on emotion alone is just compulsive.

I don't think PG would ever downvote you if he dislikes what you said, I'd like to think he's more sophisticated than that; he would either have an interest (motive) on muting the info you introduce to the conversation (but that's sketchy), or even better he would provide feedback (reason) on why he disagrees with you. (But I have absolutely no idea on how would PG make decisions, I'm just being rhetorical here and using PG as an example of "someone important")

So my point is:

You should not make comments expecting PGs approval (or any other figure you consider "someone important", which is what I stated as a "perceived moral leader"), because that's the very definition of a "herd-like mindset of following perceived moral leaders", if HN introduces tools that allow that mindset, the community's value will suffer. Being inspired by leaders is cool, but allowing them to make your mind just by liking or disliking what you said is very dangerous (and immature).

You should participate in a conversation with confidence, and to obtain confidence you need to be well informed and prepared to test your ideas.

EDIT: Rephrased a few things, but didn't change substance I hope.

I don't agree with your "argument from authority" though - even pg can be wrong sometimes...

The problem I've found is I literally get ignored and end up repeatedly dealing with the same mess until I stop being "kind" about it.

I generally have to do literally 10x as much work to be "kind" than when I'm less generous about it. The problem with kindness is its frequently taken [in IT, in places I've worked] as it not being a serious problem that actually needs to be addressed except as a favor to you. It eventually, frequently, gets to the point where serious problems are repeatedly introduced and you end up having to clean it up.

Because from their point of view, if it really was a problem, you would have stopped being nice after the first or second time.

What's unkind is saying, "You're an idiot, and that's a ridiculous idea." Attacking people is not kind, but directness _can_ be kind.

On the other hand, you deserve to be shown some kindness too. If your coworkers don't listen to you, maybe it's time to start looking for a new job.

I don't call people idiots at work but I can behave in a way some people view as "adversarial".

> On the other hand, you deserve to be shown some kindness too. If your coworkers don't listen to you, maybe it's time to start looking for a new job.

Oh, they listen they just don't agree. That is the problem with the general "kindness" bit. People simply assume if you are being kind about it that it isn't a big deal.

Many, many people operate on the "If you are not upset, this is not a serious issue". After all, if it only impacts them rarely...it isn't important to them personally.

I am currently in a situation like that, and have been in similar situations over the years. There seems to be this gift that many people have where they can lie on a near compulsive basis, and no one will do anything about it. Disagreeing with them in a reasoned and polite manner is beyond ineffective, somehow "you're wrong" on their part wins every argument, regardless of the evidence. Only when you eventually get so fed up and cause a scene pointing out blatant problems, errors, and incompetence, only then does something finally happen, but of course then the response is "hey man, why didn't you just say something?" And despite there being a long paper trail of doing exactly that with no success, this tactic once again wins the day, and the reputation of the one who freaks out is the one that is tarnished in the eyes of management. And then of course, the cycle begins all over again.

I don't ask why you have to put a gun to some people's heads to get them to do the job they are paid (handsomely) for, that I can understand, but why is it so common that no one is willing to stand up for what is right, and for management to allow this behavior? I have seen it on different projects in different cities, and across various industries. It really makes me wonder if somehow the problem is with me and I try to reason through that, but as hard as I try I just can't make that case.

The first is Red Riding Hood's quip, "Nice is is different than good", which is then fleshed out later by the witch: "You're so nice. You're not good, you're not bad, you're just nice. I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right."

I think "kind" and "good" are reasonable synonyms here, and Boz and Sondheim express very similar sentiments.

Maybe we can read comments more kindly, and give terse words the benefit of the doubt?

Being kind can be more concise. Here is an example that my fiance recently pointed out...

I think the single biggest mistake people make in communication is reminding the other person they are incorrect when that does not change the content.

"As I told you Monday, the reason is X."

"I have not heard from you when I asked for feedback, so I am following up."

"We could have done it the other way, but since you already set it up, let's use this."

It is amazingly tempting, almost everyone does it, and your communication becomes an order of magnitude more benevolent when you edit those clauses out.

For more ideas on how to be concise and kind, I highly recommend the parenting book, _How to Talk so Kids Will Listen, and Listen so Kids Will Talk_. It is not just for parents. What works with 13 year old kids also works with 30 year old kids.

In general, when I want to correct someone's understanding I frame it as a failure of my own understanding. Like, hey, I'm the asshole here, would you do me a favor by going over this one more time for me? This is great because it allows the other person to graciously concede your point, and to feel like they're the one helping you. It's also great because when it turns out you're wrong, you don't have to backtrack.

Additionally I find it useful as an exercise in suspending belief. Sure, I think I'm right, but let's set that belief aside for a moment and explore our understanding. Nothing misleads people more than the conviction that they're right.

It is not economically or socially beneficial for me to be as blunt as I am - but my personal morality triumphs over both of those. If someone is wrong, they are wrong and I will let them know they are wrong.

It won't win me any friends and it isn't beneficial for me to be as blunt as I am - but I don't treat life like an economist, trying to maximize use out of people and my relationships with them.

So, your personal morality requires you to not only offend people, but to reduce the odds of them hearing what you're saying because you choose to deliver it in an unkind manner. This is absurdly self-serving of you, and really only goes to show that you're not actually interested in "[letting] them know they are wrong", but rather in demonstrating that you are right to the detriment of personal relationships.

In that case, they will probably not understand that they are wrong. There's a saying that people will not remember what you said, but will remember how you made them feel. There is a lot of truth in that. Once you tell someone they're wrong, they feel bad and are much less likely to accept truth from you - even if it's obvious. A mountain of evidence will be seen as a personal attack and your message won't get through.

I went back and rewrote that paragraph after realizing that I basically said "you're approach is wrong". So instead I tried to frame it as a problem with the listener and their emotional response. There is truth in both way to present it, but isn't one more likely to get you to change your approach?

I see telling people they're wrong as selfish. It's almost never necessary, and in a probabilistic sense is not the most efficient way to make them correct, because instead of just changing their mind, they have to tamp down their ego, avoid getting ticked at you, and then change their mind. Bam: you've just made their lives harder, for the satisfaction of being explicit that you're more correct than they are.

But if they do take that time and say something, then it's not unreasonable to consider the goal. Is it to demonstrate superiority and massage ego? Unkindness works well. If it's to help someone correct a mistake, do better next time or bring their conversational partners thinking closer to theirs on a subject, then kindness is likely to work better.

Personally, I prefer to work with someone who's right and delivers the message in a way they think I and my other colleagues will respond well to, than someone who's right and delivers the message thoughtlessly, or in a way designed to maximise their own pleasure.

I especially like that you validate their question and then convincingly explore the nuance to the situation, framing your response around their question. Then you make your ultimate position subjective ("Personally, I prefer...") instead of trying to make it some objective truth ("it's better to be kind."), which allows that the others person's position is also subjective - merely a personal preference - and thus changeable.

A+, effective communication.

I personally prefer (there it is!) to work in an environment where being incorrect isn't such a big deal everyone thinks you have to walk around eggshells in order to point it out.

I responded to another poster in this thread and told them they may just be in the wrong place. Or to put it another way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4hqFvXm57M&t=01m23s

What you read as effective communication I read as the guy whose mindset is so far off of what's effective it isn't even worth engaging him.

I also think there are degrees to how much one can avoid contradicting others. I also want to be able to take contrary positions in meetings without hedging and without people getting upset or other nonsense. I don't think that has to be avoided by "walking around on eggshells". If it had that effect in my life I would never have adopted it.

Additionally none of my comments are really about cultural proclivities: I am opposed to trying to rigidly enforce communication standards within a group. "Sorry MReiland, you didn't state your position about why we shouldn't be using the braid data structure with enough sensitivity." The thing you're taking a position against sounds terrible but isn't really the thing we're talking about.

> I see telling people they're wrong as selfish. It's almost never necessary, and in a probabilistic sense is not the most efficient way to make them correct, because instead of just changing their mind, they have to tamp down their ego, avoid getting ticked at you, and then change their mind. Bam: you've just made their lives harder, for the satisfaction of being explicit that you're more correct than they are.

That's the context of this conversation (a statement made by YOU).

If I can't approach someone about improving/fixing/changing something being worked on then I have no interest in working with them, and I have enough control over my own life that I don't have to.

If someone is really going to insist that I need to spend my time trying to work with them, they're going to get dismissed and I'm going to go on with my life.

I have enough control over my own life that I don't have to deal with those sorts of issues. Perhaps if you're working in a job where you feel forced to have to deal with other people's bullshit than you suddenly feel as if it's important to start worrying about this sort of thing, but I'm not there.

And no amount of communication is going to put me there.

I think maybe we're misunderstanding each other. I'm not saying don't approach someone to improve/fix/change something. I'm making a statement about manner of approach. Being unable to approach people when they're wrong is intolerable. Being an asshole about it will make you intolerable. The statement I made is about finding a middle way.

I've lived much of my life like that - but what's my goal here - to be right? Or to be happy? To me being happy means working towards harmonious relationships. I'm not going to pretend someone is right when they're not, but I might be a bit more diplomatic in my communication.

I'm not sure I get the morality angle. Is it immoral to chose not to contradict someone? Not in my moral code.

I find misinformation and ignorance to be a detriment to humankind in its entirety. It drags us down and hides the truth behind the world and how it works.

People believe things that are wrong - myself included. When I am wrong, I hope for others to correct me.

Spreading wrong and misinformed beliefs, to me, is morally wrong. What good comes from spreading wrong information?

Now at 41 I'm probably indistinguishable in action from the group you've categorized as having a "deep seated need to win friends" not because I do actually have such a need, but because I realized my need to be vocally, publicly "right" was mostly a manifestation of a core lack of confidence, something which has since been mostly alleviated. Also, in retrospect, I was actually wrong about a lot of things I was sure I was right about because I was intelligent but not wise and the two are often divergent.

All that said, there's a difference between being honest and blunt, and being needlessly honest and cruel.

As mentioned in this thread, in text, tone is most certainly an issue. The photographer Howard Schatz did an interesting series, where he takes photographs of actors "In Character", among others Ricky Gervais[1], and he says at one point: "The other thing about it is: Comedy comes from a good or a bad place. And I think that the funniest people always comes from a good place. Two people can say the same thing, and one person can be so nasty and vitriolic -- and therefore not funny. And the other can be, you know, a celebration. You know, you can be in on the joke." --Ricky Gervais

[1] http://www.howardschatz.com/film.php?ID=3814

I think the best way to get into the habit of doing this is to actually believe it. Respect the people around you enough that you consider your own misunderstanding as likely a reason for disagreement as theirs. Constructive communication then comes completely naturally, instead of feeling forced.

The pattern in the examples you mentioned is the desire, conscious or not, to twist the knife a little and squeeze out a "sorry" from the other person. The desire for someone else to realize an error they've made turns into a desire for guilt, a general "think better next time" that is just specific enough to hurt but vague enough to not actually be helpful. It's like training an animal with a blunt instrument and expecting that to get results anytime fast.

And in the case where your only relationship with these people is online in the first place? (As in this community, but also in quite a few FOSS projects or remote-only companies.)

It never hurts to be aware of the issue. Beyond that, try to stay within community norms. Every approach will have failure modes. Know and accept which ones are likely with what you are doing, and deal with them when they come.

In some communities this will mean that you are very straightforward and technical. Don't say anything emotional. Always work from facts. If you are misunderstood, note it, apologize for the misunderstanding, and move on.

In other communities it might mean that you actively solicit input from decision makers, and carefully avoid controversial topics.

A variety of approaches will work. But following strategy X in a community that is set up for strategy Y is a recipe for disaster.

PG's a great example of this. In almost every interview I've seen with him, he comes across as warm and sincere. In almost every online comment I've read of his, he comes across as cold and terse to the point of dismissiveness. Clearly these aren't different people, but the medium shapes the message in more ways than many of us grok. Something that sounds matter-of-fact in my head when I write it will often sound dickish to those who read it.

Oh, and it blows to copy-and-paste code into one of those blasted chat programs... hateful things.

It's a generational thing tho. 😁 Try and find a college aged girl that doesn't use emojis. Only ones that don't are "conscientious objectors", and to most people in that age group and younger emoji are as ambient as air.

It's really weird, but in Hipchat, it always throws me off a little bit when I include an emoticon, but the resulting graphic conveys a slightly different connotation than I was expecting.

That may be due to the fact that the little smile at the end of a sentence can look really self-satisfied or fake.

Especially if you were to dismiss any complainers by calling them elitists, and afterward tack a smile on the end of the sentence. Here, I'm being nice too! :) :) :)

It makes me look stupid, so it can only be a sincere smile. Or maybe I'm just stupid... Well to be fair, we're discussing the psychology of smileys.

I have a theory about ":)", that people use it when there's a discrepancy between what they say and what they think, through the same mechanism of humor (which is also about discrepancies). And so in general, I don't trust people who use it strangely. But now, they're all going to use :3... We're doomed.

:?|

Wait, I mean :D

:P

:-)

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URHPD6AJ5Fg&t=2m (Bill ends up calling his guest a fascist)

[1] http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-09-23/don-t-ever-...

The piece you link to seems to be more about the field pieces which are not what was being discussed, and not what the parent was comparing O'Reilly's interviews to.

I don't watch O'Riley, but that's my perception from reading about things he's done/said.

I visit HN not to argue about the right or wrong, but to get more informed and educated. The more you know, the more you'll be humble and kind to those who you disagree with.

The notion that there is not absolute correctness even for a most trivial problem may be hard for engineers to understand, but I've learned it the hard way. I've learned a lot and working better with others since I started reading more on non-technical books and articles. It's a lot easier to being kind socially than to being kind on technical discussion and decision times. I think every engineering major should take courses in philosophy and psychology or read some related books.

If you find yourself in a situation where somehow you DID address them (maybe because you care about the world, and you DO sound like someone reasonable that cares about important matters), that means you already decided to use some time on them climate change deniers, so make the most of it, remember they're human beings and treat them with respect and you might end up inspiring them to actually listen to you to understand instead of listening to retort (like most people do when they're on defensive mode), be kind and you might even end up incepting some sense into their minds.

Trust me, kindness works miracles.

What if you had taken the time to be more fair to my post than that?

And you'll know more and save more time for better things.

mreiland is just being rude, he probably had a bad day or was recently frustrated with some discussion gone eerie with a climate change denier and he's taking it out on you. And he's worried about climate change, that's understandable, cut him some slack.

This is why people like you get dismissed in the first place. I can choose to spend time worrying about why you would think that, or I can go on with my life.

I choose to go on with my life. It is not true that all opinions are created equal.

Sorry, that's just the way it is.

Being right and being kind aren't mutually exclusive.

Capitalism seems to cater to selfish individuals? A lot of selfish individuals get far financially in life. Think about some of the "successful" people, some of us, idolize here on HN. Think about that person before they became rich and famous. I can usually bring up a list of retched things they did to become financially successful.

That's the rub. They become comfortable in life and are in complete denial over how they carved their way to the top of their version of success.

That's all I have--I have a headache, but kind people know they are kind. They don't need to advertise it. They don't need an audience in order to give to the suffering (human, animals, environment). They are just kind!

Now, the Fakers--well that's what makes me unkind. Oh there are so many Fakers.

(I have a sister who stepped on family members in order to become financially successful, and her journey was ugly. I might be a little over sensitive when it comes to people and kindness.)

This post reads like someone discovering the line between aggressive and assertive. Aggressive is most definitely unkind. Assertive is often confused with unkind, but it isn't really that: it's about demonstrating respect both for yourself and for those around you.

It doesn't cost nothing, it's costs a lot of time and attention to find out what they're comfortable with and much attention to filter yourself to to fit that, so no you shouldn't just do it without a good reason.

http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Kind

I think being selectively kind makes a lot more sense. I'm kind to children and animals and my loved ones. People at work, retail staff, etc should be prepared to not have their emotions constantly validated and deal with disagreement and other things that are unpleasant.

I'm not one of those "grow a thick skin, jerk" types, but there's this cheap sentiment I see about how everyone needs to be more kind and compassionate, and when its not phoned in, it usually ends up as a way to take advantage of others. Its easy for celebrity millionaire Kurt Vonnegut to write about compassion and be quoted by tumblerinas and its totally another thing for some kid no one gives a shit about trying to make his way in the world try to live it.

I find high-concept philosophies are often the playthings of the well-off and comfortable. If you're fighting for your living, its not a luxury most of us can have. Sadly, this often justifies hostility, but I think there's a sane middle-ground here, but curt statements like "be kind" just seems so classist and off-putting to me. Like a soccer mom telling me how wonderful the Maharishi is or how relaxing doing 4 hours of Yoga is (no, she doesnt work, her husband does) and after I got off a long shift and dealt with a lot of shit and a crappy commute.

Cheap sentiment just doesn't resolve the fundamental issue facing humanity today and probably until our final extinction event: we are all competing for the very same resources and competition can sometimes be ugly. It doesn't need to be truly awful and we shouldn't be encouraged to be overly negative and vindictive, but conflict and disagreement happens on a certain level and pretending we can kindly make it go away is just being unrealistic about our fundamental economic beings. Kindness is often taken advantage of as one party feels obligated to engage in it moreso than the other. This is a fairly large problem in gender politics where we raise women to be kind and then they find themselves at a disadvantage to men in the workplace who don't have these values.

Considering everyone here is visiting a hard-nosed libertarian-leaning entrepreneur forum about becoming wealthy quickly, but the second something pseudo-spiritual gets posted suddenly we're all Siddhartha under the Bodhi tree. We're not. If anything, the personality types here are very, very far from any sort of selfless ideal. Patting ourselves on the back because our six-figure salaries let us rise above the struggle doesn't mean the struggle doesn't exist and that struggle means acting in a rational, usually unkind way. High class pseudo-spirituality is such a hilariously hypocritical thing its a running gag on HBO's Silicon Valley, yet here we are Gavin Belson'ing it up. At least I'm honest with myself to say that, no, I'm not "kind" by these standards and that I will argue and fight with you when I feel its appropriate and more importantly -- I will not feel bad about it afterwards.

Sadly, most of the replies to my comment are fairly unkind responses telling me how much of a horrible person I am, especially to retail staff even though I gave no concrete examples of how I act. How ironic. If anyone is truly interested, I meditate daily and follow Buddhist ideals. I just refuse to go to the yogi-like extremes of insincere self-love in an attempt to con my way out of the struggle of Samsara. Accepting the reality of who I am is real mindfulness and liberating, and that person is not this uber-kind enlightened being who is 'above it all' and I doubt anyone here reading this is either. If anything, if we're buying into cheap manufactured sentiment that just happens to be self-complimentary, I'd say we're fairly far from that ideal. The same way we point at the nasty evangelicals will hearts full of hate who pat each other on the back for being so pious. Lets not go that route, as tempting as it is. All the technology is showing you this message was made by sweatshop-style labor. We're just not kind.

The addition of "retail staff" here surprised me.

I'm a techie who took a break from tech and startups the past few months to help out my S.O., who owns a retail store. I worked the front counter, ran inventory, etc. for the past 3 months.

I had never worked retail before. I got into tech at an early age and skipped most of the "menial" jobs that typical American teenagers have. So working retail was eye-opening for me.

Retail workers get paid shit wages to deal with your crap. Yes, you. Whatever crap you've been dealing with, we have to take it with a smile and help you out. I've stood behind a counter and listened to a homeless guy ramble about anything and everything for 12 minutes (I had a small clock within view.)

Your attitude in this post indicates to me that you could probably use a bit of this type of work yourself. If you think it's beneath you, doubly so.

If you're curious what it's like for a techie/introvert/successful entrepreneur to work retail, I've been blogging about it. (Blog link in my profile) To be honest, the 3 months I spent there made me a far better person than any given 3 months I spent in the tech industry (I've run tech companies for 14 years now.) It humbled me, and gave me far more respect for my fellow human beings. And I learned there's nothing like the priceless joy in someone's eyes when you do something for them and can see pure joy radiate from them. I hope you, too, can experience this.

You're chastising him for his "attitude"; what attitude? He's correct and he didn't display any attitude other than simple honesty.

The reason people say it's exhausting to "be nice" constantly is specifically because of people like you. You've made up your mind on something that's completely outlandish and unfair, but you're going to attack him for being "unkind" because he doesn't agree with you.

Stop acting like that and maybe more of these "blunt" people would stop being so damned blunt to you.

There is so much projection here I'm not even sure where to start.

Lets say I'm working with retail worker who has been trained to be as difficult as possible to stop my RMA attempt for something I bought that was broken. I can see things from her point of view and understand her paycheck comes from her financial masters who want her to deny my RMA, but that infringes on my return rights. Now I express this as clearly as I can. Guess what, now I'm an "asshole" because $big_co wants to be able to casually rip people off.

I pretty much got into a yelling match about a serious engine fault on my wife's warrantied car a few years ago. Its only after I was particularly nasty did they relent and do the work. Why does the guy making $12 an hour behind the counter want to deny me my entitled service? Because Jeep told him to limit this kind of very expensive work.

This is so much more complex than you make it. Niceness and kindness do not resolve the fundamental conflict we are having. If anything, it allows the kind person to be taken advantage of. If I wasn't at the dealer with my wife they would have steamrolled her the same way other mechanics have steamrolled her.

The world is a nasty place and how we handle it is situation dependent. Want me to be nice to you? Treat me with some goddamn respect and don't try to rip me off. Because if you don't, you'll deal with a lot of "assholes." "Assholes" who are just working schmucks trying to get through the day without being ripped off.

I think the "kind" people of HN need to stop calling everyone who disagrees with them or have different motivators "assholes." Disagreement, argument, and negotiation are fundamentals in life. Retail staff need to learn to handle that. Its a huge entitlement to be this snotty retail person who hates all his customers. The lady who wants to return the broken food processor isn't a "bitch" because she got you off your freemium game for a minute and she's not a "mindless breeder" because she fed her crying baby on your counter. Or "stuck up" because she had to answer the pediatricians call on her iphone while you were processing the return.

Think of communication as having two layers, an emotional one and a factual one. In your car example, the factual layer remains the same, "You are going to fix my car." But you can either combine that with an emotional layer of "And I am fucking pissed off with you right now because you fucking don't do your job, you useless twit", or you could layer it with "I understand that your job is difficult and you're doing the best you can, I don't want to make things difficult for you, but the contract clearly says that the car is under warranty, the car is clearly broken, and I'm not leaving until it's fixed."

However, when you open with, "this is also incredibly exhausting", it indicates to me that either a) you find yourself surrounded with an unhealthy amount of hyper-sensitive people, or b) there might be more to the "be kind" methodology that you have yet to internalize. I carried around this attitude for most of my life, and just recently am I coming to understand that truly internalizing kindness, the way the OP describes, is not "exhausting" in any way, shape, or form (unless you have kids. Children break this rule in half).

Another thing that sticks out is "if you're fighting for your living". I agree that, if you're truly fighting for your living, kindness and compassion should take a backseat to climbing Maslow's hierarchy to the point of comfortable reflection. Given that your english seems to be good and you're posting highly articulate opinions on an Internet forum, I'd be very surprised if your line of work forced you to reject kindness as part of your job, and I urge you to consider a new line of work if at all possible.

I agree that it's not worth constantly worrying about what other people think of you, but it turns out that's not usually what other people are expecting anyways. Rather, it's just that when you make a mistake, apologize, try not to make it again, and move on. Everybody makes mistakes - I've seen some folks I consider very socially adept make pretty embarrassing gaffes. But usually the folks who're viewed as socially skilled just brush it off and update their mental model of how not to offend people, while the ones that people get mad at are those who are either completely oblivious or react with defensiveness.

What's with the potshots at younger people that I keep seeing on HN? Things like undermining their experiences, their abilities, or their viewpoints. "Pff, I used to think like you, but now I know better"; "I did the same thing, but then I realized that I was being a moron"; "Let me guess, you haven't <experienced/got X> yet? Then your opinion is useless"; "Young people without kids will stupidly work themselves to death for their employee because they have nothing better to do with their time".

I can't say that I've experienced that older people (talking only adults here) are more socially apt, or compassionate, than younger people. And that sentence was completely optional to the rest of the paragraph.

Just because you're good at office politics doesn't mean you're a kind person. It just means you're good at working people over emotionally and catering to them for your own personal gain.

I've consistently found that (in particular when treated with kindness and respect) poorer people respond with kindness in much greater measure than wealthy people. Like the author said, kindness isn't the same as niceness.

"Reaction I do not understand" is not the same thing as "reaction that is arbitrary."

Frequently a decision that appears to make no sense starts to do so when you put yourself in the shoes of the person who made it. Their experiences in life have been different than yours (guaranteed!), so there will be no shortage of cases where you look at something and think "A" while that other person looks at the same thing and thinks "B." But that doesn't make either of you arbitrary; you both have reasons for your interpretation, they're just different.

> People at work, retail staff, etc should be prepared to not have their emotions constantly validated and deal with disagreement and other things that are unpleasant

But that was the whole point of the article: it's possible to disagree with others in a way that is still respectful. Keeping that bit of respect in what you say is really all it takes. You don't have to agree with everything they say or spend all day pumping sunshine up their skirts; you just have to have enough respect for them to hold back from turning objection into insult. It's stopping at "I disagree with you" and not taking the extra step to "and therefore you are a bad person."

> Its easy for celebrity millionaire Kurt Vonnegut to write about compassion and be quoted by tumblerinas

Let's say I read your comment and, instead of taking the time to try and address your points directly and individually, I just fired back something along the lines of "you're quite a sperglord."

Would you be comfortable with that response? Would it feel pleasant, or even neutral? Or would it feel like a personal attack -- something that would make you feel an impulse to lash out back at me?

It would feel like an attack, of course. Why? Because I'm not dealing with you as an individual. I'm just picking you up and stuffing you into a bucket with a label on it. It would be dismissive, and people don't like being dismissed.

Now ask yourself: having said all that, can you imagine someone else feeling the same way -- and reacting the same way, as if you had attacked them -- when you dismiss them as a "tumblerina"?

Just as I don't care about your feelings, I also don't care that you thing I am a sperglord. It's your opinion and you're entitled to it.

I agree that we must be nice (smiling, saying "thank you", being polite, etc). I see it as a social convention, a sort of rule like driving in the right side of the road and following the traffic signs. It makes society work smoothly and we, as social beings, are hardwired to react positively to it. Now being kind... That just assumes an emotial investement in the other person, which I simply don't have with 90% of the people I interact daily.

To conclude, I'll respond to the OP's article. It's not the author's fault. His co-workers don't want to work with him because he wasn't nice, besides him being more than capable for the job. IMO it shows how unprofessional they are.

This a million times. For lack of a better term, I find a lot of managers refuse to work with anyone but a "Uncle Tom" geek who will just say yes to everything and smile politely and never, ever correct bad ideas or wrongful assumptions. This leads to bad implementations, impossible requirements, unrealistic deadlines, bullshitting, and other issues people have to deal with.

If you can't work with the guy who occasionally says, "Whoa this is a bad practice for reasons x, y, and z," then that says a lot about how broken that culture is and not a lot about that person.

What part is exhausting? Emotional fallout can be expensive in terms of time and mental energy.

I don't know you, so this isn't a critique of you directly, but if being kind takes special effort you're doing something wrong. It shouldn't take much work at all. You don't need to be a mind reader and try to predict peoples reactions to things, most of the time it's just being mindful of how you act in certain situations and if that behavior really makes sense (for instance: if someone comes to you with a novice question, do you make them feel welcome, or do you make them feel stupid? Either way takes the same amount of effort, but one has a much better long term payoff.)

I think if this comes naturally to you then you're perhaps more gifted in that area than you may want to give yourself credit for. In my experience most people have a hard time being mindful and it's definitely exhausting at first. I certainly have trouble with it and it takes work to remember.

I reference the perennially over-quoted Kenyon commencement speech by David Foster Wallace only because he put it - where "it" is the trouble most people have with mindfulness - much better than I ever could:

> If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn't have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It's the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the centre of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities.

> The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it's not impossible that some of these people in SUV's have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he's in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.

> Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.

> Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it's hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat out won't want to.

But dealing with an unkind person is also exhausting. And many people will, at some point, choose to not interact with that person unless absolutely necessary. That might be worth considering as well.

Does that mean you have to constantly agree with others? Not at all. But there are different ways of disagreement. One choice is "Well, you're wrong, and stupid, and here's my way". Another one is saying "I hear what you said, and I acknowledge you feel that way. But I'd like to point out there are things you might have missed". Sometimes, pointing out those missed items is the kindness.

Fake kindness - "I love everybody so much, and we all should just relax more" - is something you rightfully abhor. And I think you are right that it is a plaything of the privileged.

But concern for another person's wellbeing? I've experienced it from a wide gamut of people of all ages and classes. From a 3-year old sharing their cake, to a middle-aged manager taking hours to help me understand my career, to a 80-year old woman living on a meagre income, concerned people living next to her would feel welcome in the neighborhood.

If I could ask a favor of you, consider that kindness. Not the reshared Vonnegut quotes, but simply living with an awareness of others emotions. Not in deference to those emotions, but with respect for them.

And it's definitely possible to disagree, even sharply, in a considerate manner - eg focus on the point of disagreement, not on the person disagreeing; avoid name-calling; point out that the issue you disagree with may be valid in other cases; etc.

I'm a lot better at this today than I used to be, mostly because I don't take work so personally today. I still want to do well, but if I screw up, I don't take it as an indictment of myself as a person. This makes it a lot easier to, say, admit something is my fault QUICKLY -- if it is -- which allows us to focus on the solution instead of whose fault it is.

There are (IMO very rare) occasions where a soft word won't do the trick, and that is what the big stick is for. But almost everyone, even very obnoxious people, usually respond very well to a little bit of niceness, and it costs basically nothing to give it a try.

A soccer mom is a very valuable person who also does work, work that kids appreciate a lot, don't be so belittling. If you are jealous of her, try to find a partner with a good career that allows you to be a soccer dad.

But you still don't seem to have a point beyond that it isn't good to ignore real conflict while faking nice and it's annoying when affluent people assume all people can adopt their lifestyle.

I'd suggest you go back to basics and figure out what it could mean to be kind to others while still getting what you need and not being a doormat. Because at this rate you'll soon start accidentally quoting Mean Girls and treating it as a coherent life philosophy.

Totally agree, especially in regard to when people share their projects on HN. The HN community moderation always seemed to be based on a very superficial rules - don't swear, don't mention banned keywords X Y or Z. Never have they seemed to seriously consider the impact that words have on other people, instead of just the words themselves.

Of course there's no rule against swearing.

This whole description is so remote from everything we try to do that I'm at a loss to know what else to say.

Previously, I said to try an experiment using multiple accounts where you post comments with a swear word and slightly censored swearing, versus just posting uncensored swearing and nothing else different. You'll quickly see the relative difference in the community's reaction.

You'll only get voted down for it when the swearing makes it harder to read your comment, or conveys an emotional urgency unwarranted by the thread. For instance: "Fuck you" is unlikely to be well-received in any thread.

We all know the last 20% (polish) takes 80% of the work, and isn't the fun stuff. Yet that's generally what gets criticized when someone shares a link.

For any of my hobby projects, it's about making a POC or rickety MVP. I want to build things and learn quickly, not doing the last 20% schlub work that eats at my time to learn something else. Because of that, and what I've seen of the reception to other hobby projects, I have determined that HN is not an appropriate forum for me to share projects with.

I'm 100% guilty of criticizing the lack of polish on some things that get posted. Often times because I am not familiar enough to criticize more important details that may not be apparent to the average observer.

For example - I might have to comb through an entire project in a programming language I'm not familiar with to perhaps give feedback on a better algorithm they could have used for X to improve performance... Or I could criticize that their search feature is entirely broken and always results in an empty results page.

The latter is easier to find and a casual user might run into it, although it might be a pain for the programmer to fix on the front end. The former will likely have less notice for the casual user, but is more beneficial for the programmer.

This is my take on why you see a lot of criticism about the lack of polish compared to other aspects or details.