Comment by erikb
9 years ago
I love how this article became an example exactly of what's wrong in politics in general. There is a huge group of people in every political unity, that doesn't care about general consensus, understanding problems, considering different points of view. Yet, these people tend to turn on their political flak cannons from time to time and march into the political landscape like elephants into a porcelain shop (thinking about a funny picture with Trump here).
Many IT guys are like this. They hope their desires are simply well known by everybody and the results ought to be handed to them. That there is a self-responsible process going on that desires not just the fulfillment of a single person's desire but group consensus is just outside their spectrum. They don't even see that it exists.
So instead of discussing about responsibility they decide to use the consesus finding methods like flagging a post to just shut down what is oncomfortable to them, no matter what the results for the group are.
I'm really confused about what could be done with these people. They have the highest amount of participation options anybody ever had on the planet. Yet they don't want to participate. They just want to get fed. And you can't just ignore them because they are so many.
I totally agree, but there are two things to note:
- I think for many the "flag" button is in a grey area between downvote and an actual flag button. I am pretty sure many people use it as a downvote button with the original meaning of StackOverflow's downvote, so it might be partially unintentional and with no ill intention.
- HN should probably implement a downvote for stories, leaving the flag for truly abusive behaviour. Then implement their algorithm based on (Up/Downvotes radius) * (Total votes).
This would probably allow for conversations like this, polarized/controversial but still valid, to remain in HN.
My observation from other communities with downvote buttons is that they encourage more groupthink, not less.
With no downvote button, it's at least possible for a subcommunity to get a thread near the top for a while. Downvotes let the majority suppress these.
But what's worse, an actual downvote button, or not being able to stop people from using flag as one?
Yes, it is mostly used as a downvote, which doesn't make it always right.
Btw. in fact there was a downvote for stories for some time. But leadership decided to take it out due to it being misused like flagging is misued by some now. At least by calling it "flag" for many people it's still clear that "this is content that doesn't belong on HN, like Spam, ads, sexual content etc".
Hacker News now has the ability to hide stories. This should be the default reaction to stories which one simply doesn't want to engage with, but which are not obviously egregious, rather than flagging them. It also hides comments from those stories.
Maybe better tools like "Dialogue Mapping" with IBIS (identifying Questions, Answers, Pros & Cons on a shared display as a conversation proceeds) can help solve the issue of constructive participation by all parties? For a start, see Jeff Conklin's book on: "Dialogue Mapping: Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems".
This is a process. Like every other process it requires people to participate in it. Or does it pro-actively contain methods for near-majority amount of people not participating in it? In that case please make an example or explain it a little more, because it is not obvious. Pretty much all methods I know require participation. Example: What would SCRUM be if nobody writes or interacts with the stories?
Dialogue Mapping with IBIS takes an existing common participatory process of discussions or meetings and makes it more effective. It involves a trained facilitator constructing an IBIS diagram in real-time in a shared display which supports the groups collective memory.
It potentially supports people discussion complex "wicked" problems like those frequent in politics in a way where controversy and disagreement can lead to collaborative construction of a shared knowledge map.
There are limits discussed in the book where people in politics may not want to participate in IBIS sessions because they don't want their private agendas exposed or challenged.
Ultimately the hope in reasonably healthy organizations is to find out what feasible solutions have the greatest buy-in from the group to make a decision to move forward with them.
Of course, you can also use IBIS tools just by yourself -- but that may miss out on some of the group's collective knowledge and wisdom.
Here is an example of Dialogue Mapping by someone using IBIS to dialogue map the "Lord of the Rings": "Dialogue Mapping The Lord Of The Rings with Paul Culmsee & Nick Martin" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-sv5I59Fxw
i'm constantly surprised at how many people in our industry have a problem with articulating their own desires / needs in general.
i wouldn't be surprised if the same people asking HN how to get a higher salary are the ones hitting 'flag' on individual posts they don't like. you can't just push a button and get what you want in life.
"The eagle's hunt is direct, straight down to the goal" - Friedrich said.
What he would say today when every eagle's goal is the good cage and feeder?
https://damiravdic.bandcamp.com/track/bog-je-koncept
Damir Avdić - God is concept
________
Everything worth "reading" about ex-Yu wars and world/EU politics one could find in the works of this guy, afaic the greatest artist of 21. century - the position took in 20th century by the Jew is now taken by the Muslim.
What are you trying to say?
Your last paragraph reminded me on the verses of this guy Avdić.
The rest is politics - in 20th society turned a deaf ear to the hint of the holocaust and artist like Dylan had well shaped our souls afterwards.
At the end of that century there was a war in the middle of Europe only few understood at that time and those few are even decimated these days.
Zaev took the cabinet yesterday and there's no link on HN about that and that's fine. Still, don't think because of that that Zaev wasn't the greatest news in European politics this year.
And about daily politics, what you guys think it would have greater impact on US economy: Paris withdrawn or Riyadh drawn?
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