Jesse Frazelle's article was a whole new level of disturbing with which I had not previously become acquainted. I'm glad I saw it (via Twitter, with appropriate warning labels attached). I knew that people (and I use the term loosely) in the tech industry were sick, but I didn't know just how sick. It amazes and impresses me that she was willing to talk about it and call attention to it, in an effort to help others.
Regarding HN: As much as people talk about "filter bubbles" (which is not that much, really, but DuckDuckGo made it a thing with a convenient name), people like Google for giving them what they want and hiding from them what they don't want. Is it broken that HN hides things that an apparently significant subset of its members aren't interested in, or is the brokenness that there are people in HN that aren't interested in it? I'd tend to believe the latter (and in particular that the subset of people is the same as the subset who leave awful comments); the former is the result of showing people what they want to see and hiding what they don't.
At least when articles like this hit HN, it seems like there's a substantial number of people downvoting and flagging the awful comments they attract. The fact that such comments don't tend to get upvoted gives me some hope that, while HN contains many awful people, the good ones outnumber the bad.
(To clarify: HN clearly has a serious issue they need to eliminate. I'm not questioning that they have a problem; the evidence doesn't lie. I'm asking what the right way to eliminate it is, and I'm wondering if the right solution involves changing people rather than algorithms. Because in the end, it's always about people, the communities they construct, and the other people they put up with in those communities. I've seen enough good things come out of HN that I'd like to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater^Wraw sewage.)
Power management, mobile and firmware developer on Linux. Security developer at Aurora. Ex-biologist. mjg59 on Twitter. Content here should not be interpreted as the opinion of my employer. Also on Mastodon.
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Date: 2015-07-06 06:12 pm (UTC)Regarding HN: As much as people talk about "filter bubbles" (which is not that much, really, but DuckDuckGo made it a thing with a convenient name), people like Google for giving them what they want and hiding from them what they don't want. Is it broken that HN hides things that an apparently significant subset of its members aren't interested in, or is the brokenness that there are people in HN that aren't interested in it? I'd tend to believe the latter (and in particular that the subset of people is the same as the subset who leave awful comments); the former is the result of showing people what they want to see and hiding what they don't.
At least when articles like this hit HN, it seems like there's a substantial number of people downvoting and flagging the awful comments they attract. The fact that such comments don't tend to get upvoted gives me some hope that, while HN contains many awful people, the good ones outnumber the bad.
(To clarify: HN clearly has a serious issue they need to eliminate. I'm not questioning that they have a problem; the evidence doesn't lie. I'm asking what the right way to eliminate it is, and I'm wondering if the right solution involves changing people rather than algorithms. Because in the end, it's always about people, the communities they construct, and the other people they put up with in those communities. I've seen enough good things come out of HN that I'd like to avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater^Wraw sewage.)