Solving The Hacker News Problem February 27, 2011 6:13 PM Subscribe
"Beyond the increasingly poor submissions, [Hacker News] now has a reputation for Usenet-grade pedantry. It’s become the sort of place where provocative ideas go to die at the hands of raging nerds."
Alex Payne has a solution: Copy MetaFilter.
From the post:
From the post:
I had lunch with MetaFilter’s creator, Matt Haughey, and got further insight from him on what’s helped keep MetaFilter so good after all these years. In a nutshell: dedication on the part of the people who run it. A great community isn’t something that you just set up and periodically patch. Running a great community is a full-time job, not a weekend hack project.HN previously.
…
As you’ve probably figured out, I think HN does a crappy job with general tech news and a so-so job with content that’s specifically relevant to startup founders and employees. These days, HN does a downright terrible job with deeply technical topics; that’s the area I hear the most complaining about on Twitter and in private. Since deep tech is HN’s weakest point, let’s go after it.
I’d like to see someone borrow the best of MetaFilter’s community dynamics, find a strong set of moderators and seed users, and build a competitor to HN with a focus on deeply technical news and discussion. That would leave room for HN to focus on non-technical startup issues like hiring, marketing, customer service, fundraising, tools and services, etc. Yes, in a perfect world, HN would have both the technical and business topics under one roof, because they’re two sides of the same coin. That time has passed. It’s just too wide and deep a set of topics for one community.
Yeah, Alex invited me to lunch a few months ago. I thought he wanted to talk about community dynamics at his new banksimple job, but he told me about HN and how he wanted to carve out a niche community that strived to be a better place for him and others like him to hang out. I told him it was a pretty intense amount of effort and time doing moderation and would take a lot of energy to get off the ground and keep it going.
Given that he's the tech lead behind a huge startup, I was surprised he wanted to take on so much extra-circular work so I can't say I'm surprised he's sort of "giving" the idea away. I rarely wade into Hacker News threads but I see a lot of the pedantry he is describing (to be honest it happens here too sometimes).
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:27 PM on February 27, 2011 [2 favorites]
Given that he's the tech lead behind a huge startup, I was surprised he wanted to take on so much extra-circular work so I can't say I'm surprised he's sort of "giving" the idea away. I rarely wade into Hacker News threads but I see a lot of the pedantry he is describing (to be honest it happens here too sometimes).
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:27 PM on February 27, 2011 [2 favorites]
I see a lot of the pedantry he is describing (to be honest it happens here too sometimes)
Oh thank God I didn't have to be the one to say it!
I like Metafilter very much and was both taken aback and slightly hurt at the mischaracterization of us as the antithesis of "raging nerds".
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 6:35 PM on February 27, 2011
Oh thank God I didn't have to be the one to say it!
I like Metafilter very much and was both taken aback and slightly hurt at the mischaracterization of us as the antithesis of "raging nerds".
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 6:35 PM on February 27, 2011
Metafilter: Usenet-grade pedantry
posted by Confess, Fletch at 6:58 PM on February 27, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by Confess, Fletch at 6:58 PM on February 27, 2011 [2 favorites]
Interesting idea, and I don't have the time or interest to help make it work, but I have to say that bloomfilter.org is an excellently chosen name.
posted by A dead Quaker at 7:00 PM on February 27, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by A dead Quaker at 7:00 PM on February 27, 2011 [1 favorite]
Usenet-grade pedantryIt's "extra-curricular".
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 7:02 PM on February 27, 2011 [12 favorites]
I use HN as a source for stories that haven't reached all the "incestuous" sites (Slashdot, Boing Boing, MeFi) yet. It's noisier but has a deeper pool of source material. I rarely if ever bother reading the comments though; partly because they tend to the pedestrian & partly because the format discourages it.
posted by scalefree at 7:05 PM on February 27, 2011
posted by scalefree at 7:05 PM on February 27, 2011
What did you have for lunch, Matt? Whenever I hear somebody say "Oh I had lunch with so-and-so and we talked about such-and-such" I am always curious about what it is you had to eat. Was it a very formal affair, at an expensive upper-class restaurant, with big plates with little drizzles of stuff on them? Or was it at a diner, eating chowder and grilled cheese (is that what Americans eat?). Or just kicking back with some sushi and juice at a sushi and juice bar?
posted by tumid dahlia at 7:06 PM on February 27, 2011 [4 favorites]
posted by tumid dahlia at 7:06 PM on February 27, 2011 [4 favorites]
Try the unicorn pizzles, tumid dahlia, they're scrummy.
posted by rodgerd at 7:19 PM on February 27, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by rodgerd at 7:19 PM on February 27, 2011 [1 favorite]
Oh it was probably just a few bytes of this and that.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:30 PM on February 27, 2011 [5 favorites]
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:30 PM on February 27, 2011 [5 favorites]
I ate a meal with Matt (and about 12 other MeFites). He had a burger, fries and a few beers, IIRC.
posted by jonmc at 7:32 PM on February 27, 2011
posted by jonmc at 7:32 PM on February 27, 2011
tumid dahlia in the US a juice bar generally isn't serving sushi.
posted by cjorgensen at 7:40 PM on February 27, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by cjorgensen at 7:40 PM on February 27, 2011 [1 favorite]
tumid dahila, I can't remember what I ate, but I remember we ate at Deschutes Brewery downtown because it was easy to find and I'd been there at a meetup before (for upscale bar and grill type food).
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:51 PM on February 27, 2011
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:51 PM on February 27, 2011
Usenet-grade pedantry
It's "extra-curricular".
And it has electrolytes!
posted by flabdablet at 7:52 PM on February 27, 2011
It's "extra-curricular".
And it has electrolytes!
posted by flabdablet at 7:52 PM on February 27, 2011
I am always curious about what it is you had to eat,
Yes, this. Was the food good? How was the waitstaff? Were they attentive? Was the decor cool or obnoxious? What color were the walls? Did they have any special drinks? Was anyone famous there? What did you order?
posted by octobersurprise at 8:00 PM on February 27, 2011 [1 favorite]
Yes, this. Was the food good? How was the waitstaff? Were they attentive? Was the decor cool or obnoxious? What color were the walls? Did they have any special drinks? Was anyone famous there? What did you order?
posted by octobersurprise at 8:00 PM on February 27, 2011 [1 favorite]
Interesting stuff!
in the US a juice bar generally isn't serving sushi
It's the next big thing, I'm telling you. Nothing like a celery and watermelon yoghurt smoothie to help the smoked eel down your neck.
posted by tumid dahlia at 8:03 PM on February 27, 2011 [3 favorites]
in the US a juice bar generally isn't serving sushi
It's the next big thing, I'm telling you. Nothing like a celery and watermelon yoghurt smoothie to help the smoked eel down your neck.
posted by tumid dahlia at 8:03 PM on February 27, 2011 [3 favorites]
I'm having delusions of Metafilter as a restaurant now. Over here in the blue room, you can bring your own meal and anyone is free to eat off your table. There in the green room you can ask people how to make this dish or that dish. And here in the gray room you can talk to the chefs, discuss the prices and cavort with Chef Haughey.
posted by cashman at 8:03 PM on February 27, 2011 [3 favorites]
posted by cashman at 8:03 PM on February 27, 2011 [3 favorites]
We're not raging nerds, we're engaging nerds. And so pretty. So so pretty.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:04 PM on February 27, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:04 PM on February 27, 2011 [2 favorites]
You're pretty, too, jon!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:20 PM on February 27, 2011
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:20 PM on February 27, 2011
Where's the greasy spoon that serves beer, cashman?
Metachat cafe is that way.
posted by cashman at 8:21 PM on February 27, 2011
Metachat cafe is that way.
posted by cashman at 8:21 PM on February 27, 2011
MetaFilter: It's got what plants crave!!!!
posted by not_on_display at 9:03 PM on February 27, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by not_on_display at 9:03 PM on February 27, 2011 [1 favorite]
Sunlight? Water? Co2?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:05 PM on February 27, 2011
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:05 PM on February 27, 2011
It's entirely because we don't have threaded comments.
posted by shakespeherian at 9:15 PM on February 27, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by shakespeherian at 9:15 PM on February 27, 2011 [1 favorite]
It's entirely because we don't have threaded comments.posted by Rory Marinich at 9:53 PM on February 27, 2011 [28 favorites]
I mostly agree, but I like the lack of downvotes, also. Crowd censorship is trickier to implement than just letting anybody shut anybody else up.
posted by Rory Marinich at 12:43 AM on February 28 [4 favorites +] [!]
I wish I could shut anybody else up.
posted by shakespeherian at 12:47 AM on February 28 [5 favorites +] [!]
Pish-posh. Nobody here would downvote anybody else based on opinions. It would only be used for spammers, I'm certain.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 12:29 PM on February 28 [-93 favorites +] [!]
It's entirely because of our lack of an edit buton.
posted by The Whelk at 12:29 PM on February 28 [2 favorites +] [!]
there nees to find an outlet for that sort of thing, a balloon ride, maybe some court time, I don't know.
posted by clavdivs at 10:06 PM on February 27, 2011
posted by clavdivs at 10:06 PM on February 27, 2011
Not sure we're such a great model to follow -- 15 posts in, and we're having an in-depth conversation about restaurants (albeit a very productive and respectful one)
Dragging this back ontopic, my big gripe is that HN were never able to separate the business and tech sides of the startup focus. I'd love to see a site dedicated to emerging technologies that are appropriate for small businesses, startups, and the open-source community in general. There's a ton of exciting stuff going on, and it'd be fantastic to see a noise-free developer-oriented site. Almost all of them are obnoxiously SEO-like and spammy.
They could also build all the VC "business" stuff into a separate forum so that I can ignore it. The "Gimme venturecapital" posts need to be banned completely. The most obvious distinction I see between HN and MeFi is that Metafilter expressly forbids you from talking about your own work (apart from Projects and Music). HackerNews seems to actively encourage exactly that.
Oh jeez. And somebody mentioned Slashdot. Talk about a site that went off the rails....I almost feel bad, because there's a lot of great history there. These days, though, the comments aren't merely bad -- they actively creep me out, which is especially concerning given that their moderation system is quite good. The comments on BoingBoing are also of unusually low quality -- maybe that's why Kottke disables them on his blog...
posted by schmod at 10:27 PM on February 27, 2011 [2 favorites]
Dragging this back ontopic, my big gripe is that HN were never able to separate the business and tech sides of the startup focus. I'd love to see a site dedicated to emerging technologies that are appropriate for small businesses, startups, and the open-source community in general. There's a ton of exciting stuff going on, and it'd be fantastic to see a noise-free developer-oriented site. Almost all of them are obnoxiously SEO-like and spammy.
They could also build all the VC "business" stuff into a separate forum so that I can ignore it. The "Gimme venturecapital" posts need to be banned completely. The most obvious distinction I see between HN and MeFi is that Metafilter expressly forbids you from talking about your own work (apart from Projects and Music). HackerNews seems to actively encourage exactly that.
Oh jeez. And somebody mentioned Slashdot. Talk about a site that went off the rails....I almost feel bad, because there's a lot of great history there. These days, though, the comments aren't merely bad -- they actively creep me out, which is especially concerning given that their moderation system is quite good. The comments on BoingBoing are also of unusually low quality -- maybe that's why Kottke disables them on his blog...
posted by schmod at 10:27 PM on February 27, 2011 [2 favorites]
Not sure we're such a great model to follow -- 15 posts in, and we're having an in-depth conversation about restaurants (albeit a very productive and respectful one)
But that's part of what makes us a community. We've got quirks, and playfulnesses, and one of the things we actually don't talk well about is how we function as a community (we don't take the Online Community as serious as, say, Hacker News does) but that's a part of the fun. If the alternative is a community where everybody isn't perpetually speaking with everybody else, then I think it's more valuable for the community to have the possibility of digression, especially if that in turn leads to greater things.
But if we're going to talk about Hacker News and its flaws at its community, we can't talk about the site without mentioning the elephant in the room, which is YCombinator, the company that "sponsors" Hacker News, in a way. For those of you that don't know, YCombinator is a kind of seed investor for technology companies. You apply there, and they give you something like $15,000, they get I think 6% of your company, and you move to California for a few months and get to work seriously on developing your product. It's a lighter-weight model than the traditional VC one, it supports smaller businesses than the old VC model, and it's behind things like Reddit, Dropbox, Scribd, Justin.TV, and another bunch of very successful sites launched by a handful of bright people.
I've got nothing against YCombinator as a company. They turn out great products by great people. But Hacker News works in some aspects as an arm of YCombinator. When you apply to YC, you do so with your Hacker News username; the idea is that people at YC know you through your posts. (There are other YCombinator tie-ins; Hacker News displays job hunts by YC companies mixed in with their tech stories, for instance.) Because of this, Hacker News attracts a crowd of 16-through-25-year-olds who are looking to eventually get financed by YCombinator; that was absolutely the reason I joined.
So you have a crowd of fairly inexperienced young men who are actively given a reason to try and show off and sound impressive. This heavily biases what sorts of stories the users submit. It also means there's a spot for karma whoring: People submit stories from big companies, like Apple, and from YCombinator companies (usually identified on HN by the year YC funded them, eg "YC summer 09"), because they get upvoted and earn you karma. Also there's no downvote for stories, so there's no way for the community to discourage this kind of story populism.
(You also have a bunch of people submitting their own writing to Hacker News, because there's a low bar to the front page but an unusually influential audience reading. I got started as a tech blogger by submitting to Hacker News, most of my submitted stories hit the front page, and I'd get anything ranging from a thousand to a hundred thousand hits in a single day.)
There is a crowd of terrific bright tech people, and their voices are still pretty loud on the site. I still read the site for the commentary because of them. But because of HN's piss-poor moderation system, there's no good way to identify them over anybody else, and they're slowly but surely being replaced by the louder hotheads. Whereas on MetaFilter, the moderators are an active and vocal presence, on Hacker News most of the moderators don't post, they just kill comments, users, and stories. The one guy at YCombinator who does post a lot is Paul Graham, a smart, well-meaning guy who doesn't have much experience with community management, and who's allowed a certain cult of personality build up. PG's said many times that Hacker News is his ideal community, and he's loathe to change anything because he's convinced it's not declining at all. When he comments there's always an air of finality to his opinion; he states what he has chosen to do, and lets the other users jump up to defend him. As long as HN's the spawning ground for an investment company, after all, the userbase isn't going to leave him for an alternative site. Some of the userbase won't, anyway.
(Disclaimer: I was a very active member in the community, until one day Paul banned me without warning for getting in an argument with another user. I didn't get a warning and lost a year and a half of comments and posts, which still smarts a little bit.)
What's interesting about Hacker News is that it shows how devising a technical system to promote good conversation simply doesn't work. Not that simply, anyway. Maybe when you've got a small group of users, upvotes and downvotes seem to work, but if you have a crowd you either need a brilliant bunch of moderators working to maintain the tone, or else you need a system that somehow gets users teaching other users how to behave, and encourages a more complex kind of self-regulation. We haven't seen that on the Internet before. We don't even know if it's possible. (I'm betting it is, but that we're still going to need moderators working at least part-time to maintain quality.)
posted by Rory Marinich at 10:55 PM on February 27, 2011 [6 favorites]
But that's part of what makes us a community. We've got quirks, and playfulnesses, and one of the things we actually don't talk well about is how we function as a community (we don't take the Online Community as serious as, say, Hacker News does) but that's a part of the fun. If the alternative is a community where everybody isn't perpetually speaking with everybody else, then I think it's more valuable for the community to have the possibility of digression, especially if that in turn leads to greater things.
But if we're going to talk about Hacker News and its flaws at its community, we can't talk about the site without mentioning the elephant in the room, which is YCombinator, the company that "sponsors" Hacker News, in a way. For those of you that don't know, YCombinator is a kind of seed investor for technology companies. You apply there, and they give you something like $15,000, they get I think 6% of your company, and you move to California for a few months and get to work seriously on developing your product. It's a lighter-weight model than the traditional VC one, it supports smaller businesses than the old VC model, and it's behind things like Reddit, Dropbox, Scribd, Justin.TV, and another bunch of very successful sites launched by a handful of bright people.
I've got nothing against YCombinator as a company. They turn out great products by great people. But Hacker News works in some aspects as an arm of YCombinator. When you apply to YC, you do so with your Hacker News username; the idea is that people at YC know you through your posts. (There are other YCombinator tie-ins; Hacker News displays job hunts by YC companies mixed in with their tech stories, for instance.) Because of this, Hacker News attracts a crowd of 16-through-25-year-olds who are looking to eventually get financed by YCombinator; that was absolutely the reason I joined.
So you have a crowd of fairly inexperienced young men who are actively given a reason to try and show off and sound impressive. This heavily biases what sorts of stories the users submit. It also means there's a spot for karma whoring: People submit stories from big companies, like Apple, and from YCombinator companies (usually identified on HN by the year YC funded them, eg "YC summer 09"), because they get upvoted and earn you karma. Also there's no downvote for stories, so there's no way for the community to discourage this kind of story populism.
(You also have a bunch of people submitting their own writing to Hacker News, because there's a low bar to the front page but an unusually influential audience reading. I got started as a tech blogger by submitting to Hacker News, most of my submitted stories hit the front page, and I'd get anything ranging from a thousand to a hundred thousand hits in a single day.)
There is a crowd of terrific bright tech people, and their voices are still pretty loud on the site. I still read the site for the commentary because of them. But because of HN's piss-poor moderation system, there's no good way to identify them over anybody else, and they're slowly but surely being replaced by the louder hotheads. Whereas on MetaFilter, the moderators are an active and vocal presence, on Hacker News most of the moderators don't post, they just kill comments, users, and stories. The one guy at YCombinator who does post a lot is Paul Graham, a smart, well-meaning guy who doesn't have much experience with community management, and who's allowed a certain cult of personality build up. PG's said many times that Hacker News is his ideal community, and he's loathe to change anything because he's convinced it's not declining at all. When he comments there's always an air of finality to his opinion; he states what he has chosen to do, and lets the other users jump up to defend him. As long as HN's the spawning ground for an investment company, after all, the userbase isn't going to leave him for an alternative site. Some of the userbase won't, anyway.
(Disclaimer: I was a very active member in the community, until one day Paul banned me without warning for getting in an argument with another user. I didn't get a warning and lost a year and a half of comments and posts, which still smarts a little bit.)
What's interesting about Hacker News is that it shows how devising a technical system to promote good conversation simply doesn't work. Not that simply, anyway. Maybe when you've got a small group of users, upvotes and downvotes seem to work, but if you have a crowd you either need a brilliant bunch of moderators working to maintain the tone, or else you need a system that somehow gets users teaching other users how to behave, and encourages a more complex kind of self-regulation. We haven't seen that on the Internet before. We don't even know if it's possible. (I'm betting it is, but that we're still going to need moderators working at least part-time to maintain quality.)
posted by Rory Marinich at 10:55 PM on February 27, 2011 [6 favorites]
and one of the things we actually don't talk well about is how we function as a community
That was not always the case, if indeed it is now.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:33 PM on February 27, 2011 [1 favorite]
That was not always the case, if indeed it is now.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:33 PM on February 27, 2011 [1 favorite]
I'm having delusions of Metafilter as a restaurant now.
It was great until I said I didn't like Apple pie and would rather have something else for desert and a bunch of guys showed up and started shitting all over my table every time I tried to talk about cheesecake as an alternative.
posted by rodgerd at 12:05 AM on February 28, 2011
It was great until I said I didn't like Apple pie and would rather have something else for desert and a bunch of guys showed up and started shitting all over my table every time I tried to talk about cheesecake as an alternative.
posted by rodgerd at 12:05 AM on February 28, 2011
Metafilter: Usenet-grade pedantry
The weird thing is some people seem to think that would be a bad thing? Huh.
posted by Justinian at 1:40 AM on February 28, 2011
The weird thing is some people seem to think that would be a bad thing? Huh.
posted by Justinian at 1:40 AM on February 28, 2011
The MetaFilter restaurant would have a few customers like the people in my bike club. When we stopped at a restaurant on a ride one guy pulled out a PB&J sandwich and asked for water, and one woman puled out a teabag and some oatmeal in a baggie and asked for lots of hot water.
posted by fixedgear at 2:20 AM on February 28, 2011
posted by fixedgear at 2:20 AM on February 28, 2011
What's interesting about Hacker News is that it shows how devising a technical system to promote good conversation simply doesn't work.
I'm sure it's possible if you use Lisp.
All kidding aside, the success of Ycombinator really turned around my opinion of Paul Graham. I used to think that he was a really smart guy who happened to build a great product at the exact right time and that he had incorrectly extrapolated that lucky success into thinking that he was an expert at tech entrepreneurship.
He's now managed to repeatedly succeed as a VC (very hard) which has convinced me that he actually is almost as smart and insightful as he thinks he is.
posted by atrazine at 3:38 AM on February 28, 2011 [2 favorites]
I'm sure it's possible if you use Lisp.
All kidding aside, the success of Ycombinator really turned around my opinion of Paul Graham. I used to think that he was a really smart guy who happened to build a great product at the exact right time and that he had incorrectly extrapolated that lucky success into thinking that he was an expert at tech entrepreneurship.
He's now managed to repeatedly succeed as a VC (very hard) which has convinced me that he actually is almost as smart and insightful as he thinks he is.
posted by atrazine at 3:38 AM on February 28, 2011 [2 favorites]
It's 4:49am PST so maybe it's the insomnia talking, but this is a really good community. Seriously.
The whole "Metafilter doesn't do ________ well" thing is so ridiculous because the things in the blank are always stuff like "Israel" or "abortion" or "race in America." Things that are incredibly controversial, potentially painful, and difficult to talk about. Which is why NO ONE ANYWHERE "DOES THEM WELL."
posted by drjimmy11 at 4:51 AM on February 28, 2011 [4 favorites]
The whole "Metafilter doesn't do ________ well" thing is so ridiculous because the things in the blank are always stuff like "Israel" or "abortion" or "race in America." Things that are incredibly controversial, potentially painful, and difficult to talk about. Which is why NO ONE ANYWHERE "DOES THEM WELL."
posted by drjimmy11 at 4:51 AM on February 28, 2011 [4 favorites]
and one of the things we actually don't talk well about is how we function as a community
It's sometimes sort of oogy to talk with earnest about one's own strengths, is what.
posted by shakespeherian at 5:17 AM on February 28, 2011
It's sometimes sort of oogy to talk with earnest about one's own strengths, is what.
posted by shakespeherian at 5:17 AM on February 28, 2011
It's the next big thing, I'm telling you. Nothing like a celery and watermelon yoghurt smoothie to help the smoked eel down your neck.
That's just one chillingly-small leap from sushi smoothies, then you could get all your nutrients through a straw. I have a sinking feeling somebody somewhere is already doing it.
posted by londonmark at 5:17 AM on February 28, 2011 [1 favorite]
That's just one chillingly-small leap from sushi smoothies, then you could get all your nutrients through a straw. I have a sinking feeling somebody somewhere is already doing it.
posted by londonmark at 5:17 AM on February 28, 2011 [1 favorite]
Oh, and yes, interesting article :)
posted by londonmark at 5:17 AM on February 28, 2011
posted by londonmark at 5:17 AM on February 28, 2011
The whole "Metafilter doesn't do ________ well" thing is so ridiculous because ...
It's also ridiculous because people use it as such a blunt, obvious tool to shut down discussion they don't like, or shut down comments from people they don't like.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 6:23 AM on February 28, 2011
It's also ridiculous because people use it as such a blunt, obvious tool to shut down discussion they don't like, or shut down comments from people they don't like.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 6:23 AM on February 28, 2011
Oh Metafilter doesn't do blunt, obvious tools to shut down discussion well SO KNOCK IT OFF AND SHUT UP
posted by shakespeherian at 6:56 AM on February 28, 2011 [4 favorites]
posted by shakespeherian at 6:56 AM on February 28, 2011 [4 favorites]
But that's part of what makes us a community. We've got quirks, and playfulnesses
And snark! Did I mention snark? (I was joking in my comment!)
Nevertheless, I look forward to the proposed application of bistromathematics to the Metafilter community.
posted by schmod at 8:22 AM on February 28, 2011
And snark! Did I mention snark? (I was joking in my comment!)
Nevertheless, I look forward to the proposed application of bistromathematics to the Metafilter community.
posted by schmod at 8:22 AM on February 28, 2011
and one of the things we actually don't talk well about is how we function as a community
I don't know that I agree, really, but maybe I'm misunderstanding you. The thing with mefi is that very early on, when Matt realized that people on mefi were talking about mefi on the front page of mefi, we ended up with Metatalk as an explicit place for that.
And I think that's more of a difference between this place and a lot of other web communities than is the issue of whether we talk about our own community functioning: at a glance at the front page or some threads there, you might get the impression that mefites don't talk about the site itself in explicit or nuanced terms, but that's mostly a manifestation of the shared cultural expectation that such stuff has a place and that place is grey, not blue or green.
I don't know HN well enough to know if they really have a formal back room of any sort; I didn't notice one when I was there. I know that BB pretty much explicitly does not unless something has changed very recently; they have a Moderation Thread but it seemed to be a place for (a) complaints to go to die and (b) a tiny handful of regulars to pal around, and had basically zero utility as a place for ongoing community discussion. Stock Overflow didn't originally and there was some predictable growing pains—attempts by the initially unmovable site management to contain metadiscussion out of view with workarounds and deletions, met by the irresistible force of community members wanting to discuss the community they were in from within that community's stomping grounds.
It's pretty much a given that any online community is going to want to talk about itself, to talk about how it functions, what the rules (both administrative and social) are and should be, what the culture is, what it can be vs. what it oughtn't be vs. what its perceived to be, etc. It's a given that folks who like a given community will be prone to some exceptionalism about it; it's a given that folks who dislike it will be prone to grump about all the things that are wrong with it. And I think a very significant issue in whether or not all these navalgazing discussions cause frustrations for readers (member and non-member alike) of a site is whether there's an established venue for that stuff to take place. Here, that's Metatalk.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:40 AM on February 28, 2011 [3 favorites]
I don't know that I agree, really, but maybe I'm misunderstanding you. The thing with mefi is that very early on, when Matt realized that people on mefi were talking about mefi on the front page of mefi, we ended up with Metatalk as an explicit place for that.
And I think that's more of a difference between this place and a lot of other web communities than is the issue of whether we talk about our own community functioning: at a glance at the front page or some threads there, you might get the impression that mefites don't talk about the site itself in explicit or nuanced terms, but that's mostly a manifestation of the shared cultural expectation that such stuff has a place and that place is grey, not blue or green.
I don't know HN well enough to know if they really have a formal back room of any sort; I didn't notice one when I was there. I know that BB pretty much explicitly does not unless something has changed very recently; they have a Moderation Thread but it seemed to be a place for (a) complaints to go to die and (b) a tiny handful of regulars to pal around, and had basically zero utility as a place for ongoing community discussion. Stock Overflow didn't originally and there was some predictable growing pains—attempts by the initially unmovable site management to contain metadiscussion out of view with workarounds and deletions, met by the irresistible force of community members wanting to discuss the community they were in from within that community's stomping grounds.
It's pretty much a given that any online community is going to want to talk about itself, to talk about how it functions, what the rules (both administrative and social) are and should be, what the culture is, what it can be vs. what it oughtn't be vs. what its perceived to be, etc. It's a given that folks who like a given community will be prone to some exceptionalism about it; it's a given that folks who dislike it will be prone to grump about all the things that are wrong with it. And I think a very significant issue in whether or not all these navalgazing discussions cause frustrations for readers (member and non-member alike) of a site is whether there's an established venue for that stuff to take place. Here, that's Metatalk.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:40 AM on February 28, 2011 [3 favorites]
It would be cool if there was a HackerNews place that wasn't focused on creating the next Facebook, or using Scala and Ruby on Rails and (insert cool framework here). Sometimes I have questions on implementing something that are more high level architecture questions, and I've yet to see a good place for discussions like these. StackOverflow isn't really great for this. Maybe some place where the motto is "Developers doing boring stuff with accounting packages."
posted by geoff. at 9:11 AM on February 28, 2011
posted by geoff. at 9:11 AM on February 28, 2011
I think the world would be a better place if we all tried to emulate MetaFilter.
posted by JeffK at 9:30 AM on February 28, 2011
posted by JeffK at 9:30 AM on February 28, 2011
I don't know that I agree, really, but maybe I'm misunderstanding you. The thing with mefi is that very early on, when Matt realized that people on mefi were talking about mefi on the front page of mefi, we ended up with Metatalk as an explicit place for that.
Misunderstanding, but it's because I didn't articulate what I meant very well. I meant "talk about how we function" in the sense of stepping back and appreciating, from time to time, just what an unbelievable success MetaFilter is. We talk way more about what sucks on MetaFilter than we talk about what rocks. But that's specifically what makes MetaFilter so good.
MetaTalk is the best thing about this site imho. I fucking love it. I secretly suspect the blue exists to give an excuse for the grey to exist. Right now I'm talking with another ex-HNer about creating an HN replacement (for the business side rather than the tech side), and I think I mention MeTa at least twice an email. Taking the "discussion about discussion" and putting it in a special place simultaneously decreases noise in the blue and green, and encourages every member here to seriously think about what benefits a good discussion and what drives good people away. If Hacker News had a place like that we'd have less of a perpetual struggle going on between factions there.
It's kind of a moral core. And the fact that MetaFilter agonizes over the difference between good and evil is one of the secrets to its astonishingly moral community.
posted by Rory Marinich at 9:30 AM on February 28, 2011 [2 favorites]
Misunderstanding, but it's because I didn't articulate what I meant very well. I meant "talk about how we function" in the sense of stepping back and appreciating, from time to time, just what an unbelievable success MetaFilter is. We talk way more about what sucks on MetaFilter than we talk about what rocks. But that's specifically what makes MetaFilter so good.
MetaTalk is the best thing about this site imho. I fucking love it. I secretly suspect the blue exists to give an excuse for the grey to exist. Right now I'm talking with another ex-HNer about creating an HN replacement (for the business side rather than the tech side), and I think I mention MeTa at least twice an email. Taking the "discussion about discussion" and putting it in a special place simultaneously decreases noise in the blue and green, and encourages every member here to seriously think about what benefits a good discussion and what drives good people away. If Hacker News had a place like that we'd have less of a perpetual struggle going on between factions there.
It's kind of a moral core. And the fact that MetaFilter agonizes over the difference between good and evil is one of the secrets to its astonishingly moral community.
posted by Rory Marinich at 9:30 AM on February 28, 2011 [2 favorites]
I'm probably talking out of school, here, but it seems to me that one of the things that keeps Mefi running well is the profile page. I mean, most of the places I've hung out online are ugly vBulletin places or whatever, so maybe HackerNews and Reddit and whatnot work more like this, but it hasn't been my experience. But Metafilter is the only place I've been besides, I dunno, Facebook, or something, where I spend a significant amount of time looking at folks' profiles, checking out their favorites (both given and received), their comment history, their contacts, etc. vBulletin profile pages seem sort of starkly informational, like some kind of forgotten database entry, inhospitable and maybe a little too I'm-a-creep-for-looking-at-this. Maybe it's that here, the only place to see a picture or sex or relationship status or age or location or free-form text (I guess the analogue would be the sig?) is on the profile page, and none of that is attached to someone's every contribution, so the profile page is very welcoming and purposefully designed to have eyeballs on it.
But so anyway it makes finding out information about community members a willful act-- it cannot occur through osmosis like a lot of places, where the intended or unintended result is that most users merge into a grey smear. Without looking, I could tell you what Rory Marinich's profile picture looks like, what Joe Beese's approximate favorite count is, what city jonmc lives in, how many people The Whelk has added as a contact. It means that I feel like I'm getting to know people here through intentionality, through purposeful investment of time and energy. It, to me, is one of the biggest ways in which Metafilter performs itself as a community rather than a website with member accounts.
posted by shakespeherian at 9:41 AM on February 28, 2011 [3 favorites]
But so anyway it makes finding out information about community members a willful act-- it cannot occur through osmosis like a lot of places, where the intended or unintended result is that most users merge into a grey smear. Without looking, I could tell you what Rory Marinich's profile picture looks like, what Joe Beese's approximate favorite count is, what city jonmc lives in, how many people The Whelk has added as a contact. It means that I feel like I'm getting to know people here through intentionality, through purposeful investment of time and energy. It, to me, is one of the biggest ways in which Metafilter performs itself as a community rather than a website with member accounts.
posted by shakespeherian at 9:41 AM on February 28, 2011 [3 favorites]
And the fact that MetaFilter agonizes over the difference between good and evil is one of the secrets to its astonishingly moral community.
Agonies over the differences between good and evil are the bare necessities of any moral code.
posted by shakespeherian at 9:43 AM on February 28, 2011 [1 favorite]
Agonies over the differences between good and evil are the bare necessities of any moral code.
posted by shakespeherian at 9:43 AM on February 28, 2011 [1 favorite]
Usenet-grade Pedantry
Is there a new Iain Banks Culture novel out?
posted by GuyZero at 12:00 PM on February 28, 2011
Is there a new Iain Banks Culture novel out?
posted by GuyZero at 12:00 PM on February 28, 2011
Usenet-grade Pedantry.
Is there a new Iain Banks Culture novel out?
I believe you mean Iain M. Banks. HTH HAND.
posted by zamboni at 12:11 PM on February 28, 2011 [2 favorites]
Is there a new Iain Banks Culture novel out?
I believe you mean Iain M. Banks. HTH HAND.
posted by zamboni at 12:11 PM on February 28, 2011 [2 favorites]
or using Scala and Ruby on Rails and (insert cool framework here
Same problem on /r/programming. New stuff is cool but too many "hello world using node.js/redis/backbone". Also too many "real programmers program like this" posts" and bickering over whether programmers should be able to implement a linked list.
Probably should be a"enterprise" stack overflow but it would probably just devolve into json vs XML arguments.
posted by Ad hominem at 1:04 PM on February 28, 2011
Same problem on /r/programming. New stuff is cool but too many "hello world using node.js/redis/backbone". Also too many "real programmers program like this" posts" and bickering over whether programmers should be able to implement a linked list.
Probably should be a"enterprise" stack overflow but it would probably just devolve into json vs XML arguments.
posted by Ad hominem at 1:04 PM on February 28, 2011
I think the world would be a better place if we all tried to emulate MetaFilter.
Yeah, this. We would, however, have to upgrade the banhammer the BanHammer of Death! I can see the time-out facility in my mind - what was that novel where all the old people were strung up from wires and fed intravenously again?
posted by dg at 1:59 PM on February 28, 2011
Yeah, this. We would, however, have to upgrade the banhammer the BanHammer of Death! I can see the time-out facility in my mind - what was that novel where all the old people were strung up from wires and fed intravenously again?
posted by dg at 1:59 PM on February 28, 2011
I think the world would be a better place if we all tried to emulate MetaFilter.
Too slow. Every other site should run a virtualized instance of Metafilter under it's own site. Fast! Easy to administer! dynamically reconfigurable!
posted by GuyZero at 2:47 PM on February 28, 2011 [1 favorite]
Too slow. Every other site should run a virtualized instance of Metafilter under it's own site. Fast! Easy to administer! dynamically reconfigurable!
posted by GuyZero at 2:47 PM on February 28, 2011 [1 favorite]
I can see the time-out facility in my mind
People come to my place and paint my barn. By the time they're finished with one side, the other side needs painting again.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:51 PM on February 28, 2011 [1 favorite]
People come to my place and paint my barn. By the time they're finished with one side, the other side needs painting again.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:51 PM on February 28, 2011 [1 favorite]
There are plenty of people here who would have no problem convincing others that painting your barn is so much fun, they would be doing the others a favour by letting them serve the time-out for them.
posted by dg at 8:07 PM on February 28, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by dg at 8:07 PM on February 28, 2011 [1 favorite]
There are plenty of people here who would have no problem convincing others that painting your barn is so much fun, they would be doing the others a favour by letting them serve the time-out for them.
It's pretty therapeutic okay! Here, why don't you just take my paintbrush and try it for a few minutes while I just wait over here
posted by thsmchnekllsfascists at 11:39 AM on March 1, 2011
It's pretty therapeutic okay! Here, why don't you just take my paintbrush and try it for a few minutes while I just wait over here
posted by thsmchnekllsfascists at 11:39 AM on March 1, 2011
Jessamyn's awful particular about that barn; it's got to be done very careful. I don't believe one user in a thousand, no, ten thousand could do it the way it's got to be done. Cortex wanted to do it, but she wouldn't let him; pb wanted to do it, and she wouldn't let him.
posted by zamboni at 12:13 PM on March 1, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by zamboni at 12:13 PM on March 1, 2011 [2 favorites]
That's because pb wanted to incorporate Ajax so that, every time he got to the end of a wall, there was a note saying '1 more wall, click to paint'.
posted by dg at 5:56 PM on March 1, 2011
posted by dg at 5:56 PM on March 1, 2011
Jessamyn's awful particular about that barn; it's got to be done very careful.
So no paintball gun murals?
posted by the_artificer at 6:50 PM on March 1, 2011
So no paintball gun murals?
posted by the_artificer at 6:50 PM on March 1, 2011
jessamyn: "People come to my place and paint my barn. By the time they're finished with one side, the other side needs painting again."
I am getting my overalls on right now.
posted by not_on_display at 7:39 PM on March 1, 2011
I am getting my overalls on right now.
posted by not_on_display at 7:39 PM on March 1, 2011
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posted by Ardiril at 6:15 PM on February 27, 2011