I've also noticed comments modded down to <1 for no good reason. I like the idea that here, generally downmods to <1 are reserved for abusive or off topic comments, rather than just something you disagree with.

To the new users: If you disagree with a comment, please reply to it, stating why. Don't just blindly downmod it.

Just my 2c

I'd personally like to say "Please keep HN civil, free from trolling, and intellectual." This site has been a great resource - and that's at least partially because the tone of the vast majority of the community here is pretty serious.

I have an account on reddit as well, and my tone over there is different than my tone here. On reddit I make a decent amount of off-the-cuff remarks, occasionally troll a bit, participate in pun threads, and also have a decent amount of intelligent debate and discussion. Here I keep my mouth (fingers?) shut (stoppped?) unless I have something to say, because that's the vibe here.

Here, I'm more likely to vote people up who have a differing opinion on an issue, or even if they have an opinion that offends me, if they are able of stating and defending their position logically. On reddit, I'd probably just skim over their post.

Etc.

The tone of this site has gotten a little lighter since the first time I was here, and it seems to have gotten a lot more of a focus on the business side of things, which is fine - but if people aren't careful, the site will devolve into yet another pick-your-favorite-site-here.

So yeah. Please keep HN grown-up. It's nice to see mostly responsible discussion happening on a site like this, and I hope it continues to happen.

That principle doesn't work online. In general you can say stuff to people in person that's insulting and abusive, and then just give a wry smile and everybody laughs. You can't do that online. The guideline has it exactly wrong.

The problem is that what you say online about someone is frozen forever, and takes on more significance than either the sender or the receiver actually meant. In person, I call you an asshole, you're impressed that I said it to your face, we both laugh and move on. On the web I call you an asshole, you call me an asshole, it escalates, shows up in google searches for both our names, people who aren't quite up to speed on things (recruiters) take it more seriously than it should be... bad stuff happens.

I'd also prefer to see less "linkbait" on the front page; i.e. stories with titles that are, at best, only tangentially related and are instead overdramatized just to get clicks.

Curiously PG posting this gets 50 karma and counting, someone else posted a similar thing earlier in the week and got flagged dead.

I don't want to see this topic regularly but maybe the guidelines could be made more prominent for new users?

Duplicate submission. See:

https://smackernews.com/item/219081 HN

https://smackernews.com/item/133453 HN

What has caused the spike in new users?

As a reddit convert myself, I'm terrified to post here. I hear that Paul Graham himself sometimes singles out dumb commenters and publicly ridicules them. ;-) Best to keep a low profile.

I honestly hope that HN news does not degenerate into another reddit or digg-like news sites where comments and content are full of dramatized and useless material.

So far, I've found the users of this site intellectual, technical and insightful in their comments and as a result, its been a joy to participate in this community and I hope the crowd which this site attract remain the same - smart and technical people.

I find that the site has definitely spread apart in it's values. And the real problem is as "undesireables" flood in, the people who are truer to the original culture get disgusted and back away.

As a personal (though perhaps not universal) example, see here, https://smackernews.com/item/458256 HN , a +23 comment decrying the multi-page split of the article. See here, https://smackernews.com/item/398185 HN , my own comment railing against them wasting my time\effort like that.... modded down to -6.

I don't want to be a whiny nuisance about it, but when that happened it really alienated me from the community and quite frankly I don't think I've contributed much anything of value since. I felt betrayed when I chose to stand against that kind of crap and I was stabbed in the back. Add in the fact that the "rules" are not being applied equally as the culture splits, and it just feels random and unfair.

To conclude my soapbox, I could be doing approx. 50 trillion things on the internet right now, so stop trying to waste my time\effort with 11 three sentence pages, snarky\"witty" comments; and God save the YCNews

Edward Tufte has a good thread of collected moderation advice and policies from over the years here:

http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0...

Here is the short essay he provides to anyone who cares to comment, at the top of the comment form:

-----------------------

This board is only about evidence presentations and analytical design. For all business matters (book orders, courses, shipping, prices, delivery dates), please go to the Graphics Press contact information on our home page

On the Ask ET forum, we seek to publish questions and contributions that advance the analytical content of the thread, provide a good example, or raise an interesting question. Contributions should be relevant to the chosen thread. Please no marketing pitches, gratuitous links, or incivilities. There are about 6,000 contributions in the 500 threads now published on this board; they provide good examples of what has been accepted for publication.

Some new contributions go to a non-public queue, which is frequently reviewed by a member of the editorial board in order to decide whether the material should be posted. About 30% of submitted contributions are posted; after publication, about half survive the occasional reviews of published items. The editors are unable to reconsider their decisions or to answer any queries about editorial decisions (some of which may well be mistaken). Publication policies are described in detail at Moderating internet forums [Ed. the link I mention above]

If your contribution is published, your email address will be masked on the board, and your identifying IP number will not be published.

-----------------------

Feature request/experiment: Put a small second column on the right side with the 'new page' on the main page.

I suggested this to reddit a long time ago when they first started to really get lame, but it never caught on.

While this is up on the front page, I'd like to say that I love HN and the people on it.

There's lots of things I like about HN, like that links can't be down voted and that downvoting comments is an exclusive right to people with good karma.

However, the main thing I like about HN is that I see lots of civil discussion and people giving useful comments and suggestions. When I have seen disagreements (I believe I've been in a few myself) I notice that people tend to do what they do in real life and simply 'walk away'. When I read something that really irks me I usually just close HN and will come back later or whenever when I've forgotten about it.

maybe make this post a sticky, so that everyone will see it right away. Can be temporary one...i.e. first 90 days you see this thread at the top of the list, then it goes away?

A suggestion:

Any chance that news stories could be throttled or more heavily edited/moderated just after a spike in new users? Just a thought, it could help to filter out those who are interested versus those just looking for another forum to do their usual thing on.

Is it possible to change your username somehow? I'd switch over to using first name/last initial or first initial/last name if it is. I like being held personally accountable for what I write here, and the real life conversation standard.

I showed up here because a real-life acquaintance wrote a nice post about HN on his blog, here: http://www.robsayers.com/programming/HackerNews.html I had visited in the past when it was purely Startup news, but I hadn't created an account.

As I'm more of a tinkerer and explorer than entrepreneur, the bent is more toward my liking, since the revision. I really like the attitude--or rather lack thereof--and look forward to becoming a part of the community.

> People like it here because one can have a civil conversation.

It's true, I don't know how I stumbled across this site but one thing I noticed is the 'high quality' comments compared to other social news websites.

I'd say to the regulars be patient with us, the new folks in town, since we may be a bit jaded by some of the other places we visit and, yes, the anonymous nature of the Internet does bring out the worst in people, including me.

One thing I've learned when commenting is "less is more" (although you'd never know by this three paragraph 'comment').

Well I post here once in a blue moon when I see something of interest, and I also comment. My long term goal is to break 100 points on my next submission.

It's a sad thing that it's been years now and we still have to have guidelines that essentially say what everyone was told by their mother when they were a child. I think this will improve some day when either 1. we ban dogs from the net or 2. we start shooting the bad ones :)

As an aside, PG, congrats! I saw recently that you were promoted up a level. It's a wonderful thing, non?

For some time I read hacker news nearly daily (one of the rare places) and mostly because of the comments. Some members here have good points, ideas and are right at the mark. Even with this valuable board discussion if many of these non sense comments increase it will turn away good members. With the anonymity of the internet there will be always some characters that need moderation and so far ycombinator did a good job. Keep it up.

From all the downmodding of the linked comment, I gather a lot of people are going to disagree, but I actually think the comment may have been the most helpful one in the thread.

Its message was:

    Prioritize, focus on things that are relevant to 
    your success, not on things that only matter after
    you've succeeded, i.e. see the bigger picture.

Perhaps the delivery could have been better.

From my experience posting, I'm learning more about what's acceptable, and sometimes I even delete a post that's dragging down my karma.

But more interesting - With the experience of posting here, I should be able to write a press release for my startup that appeals to hackers.

> We're trying to see whether by asking people to be civil we can avoid the kind of nastiness that anonymity breeds by default.

Plus liberal use of disabling people's accounts without notifying them let alone asking them to change something.

I agree wholeheartedly. It takes effort on the part of all of us to maintain a useful and constructive environment here at HN, and I have GREATLY appreciated the thoughtful, insightful and provocative discourse here.

The group is indeed its own worst enemy

https://smackernews.com/item/460624 HN

What about putting a cap on the number of users that can register per day? This keeps the community growing but in a controlled fashion.

Where did the new spike come from?

is there an IRC channel for HN?

hacker news is not digg. end of sentence.

hossam

design flaw.

http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2008/05/summon-monsters-ope...

hate to carp on it, nobody likes hearing I told you so, but a design flaw is a design flaw.

Slashdot used to be (reasonably) well-informed discussion. Digg at the beginning too. And reddit as well. rec.sports.baseball.bos-redsox, too.

All successful forums grow big and become worthless. The Y C kids need to learn this.

Never gonna' give you up Never gonna' let you down. Never gonna run around and desert you.