I'm probably one of those darned newbies who isn't a real hacker and is screwing the place up. (Sorry.) So I wasn't around in 2008 (or whenever the Glory Days were). I don't feel like this article or other discussions about the issue have really given me a good idea of what HN supposedly once was that it isn't anymore. I wish I could get such info. I think that kind of information would hold out some hope of figuring out a real solution -- a means to raise the bar or deepen the discussion or whatever it is that people are wanting.
I know there are other large forums on the internet but this is the largest one I have personally participated in. I think such large forums are breaking new ground, socially, in ways that do not compare to sites like Facebook. Where else can I actually speak with my 80K closest friends? If I am in a room of 500 at work (and not on the stage, because I am not one of the big wigs), only a handful of people around me can hear anything I say. We all can listen to the presentation, but we cannot converse. Here, any and all of us can converse. It is unlike anything you can do "IRL". I suspect that is part of the issue: No one really has a model for how you manage that kind of social interaction. And the models we do have break in that setting.
Part of "the glory days" was a much more interesting debate. Currently, lots of HN comments are either going for the cute/snide/sarcastic joke, or argue dogmatic points.
The discussion was about Google's two factor auth. Somebody asks for a good API, poster #2 suggests OpenID. I joke "you read the part about 'good' API". It's by far the highest-modded comment I have. (Which makes me feel guilty every time I see it). Sure, I don't have a lot of comments or karma, so it might be a fluke, but it exemplifies what's wrong with the discussion.
HN'08 would've modded me to 0 for that and moved on. HN'11 rewards playing to the audience.
A) Meatier comments/debates require a certain level of trust that the debate is about ideas and not about pecking order. That is enormously hard to achieve in most settings. It gets harder when the community grows. A smaller group is much more able to know each other and all that.
B) My best understanding is that formality is what older cultures with larger populations moved towards as a solution for such problems. I know I find some stuff at work endlessly annoying because of the disconnect between the setting and the social behaviors/assumptions. My mom is European and my dad was career military and my ex husband was career military. Europe and the American military are both more formal cultures than the American Deep South where I grew up (and live currently). I find some of the assumptions of more 'casual' cultures to be very uncouth.
I don't know how to raise the bar on formality for a place like HN but my best guess is that would help with this particular issue. I like a good, healthy debate. I rarely engage in it because most "debates" are really fights (ie they are "arguments" in the other sense of the word -- emotional, social, ugly), not intellectual discussions.
Anyway thanks for tossing me a clue. That does help me think about the issue, unlike most of what I read in these discussions.
That is an interesting thought.. I've never looked at it from that angle, but formality is certainly a buffer against "pecking order" fights. Then again, as much as I'm happy in a less casual setting, I wouldn't go so far as addressing fellow HN posters as "Sir" or "Ma'am" :) (But maybe I should...)
It's also interesting that in the last 6 months or so I ran across a couple of sites that take your HN karma as a predictor of your geek-worthiness. Well-intentioned, I'm sure, but it encourages gaming the system. HN karma now is not only something valuable to the HN community, but outside.
It would be very interesting to see if kuro5hin/slashdot/reddit "decline" periods correlate with wider acceptance of their karma metric.
I don't know that formal culture necessarily has that much to do with using titles (though that can be a part of it). I think it just doesn't assume familiarity. Informal cultures assume a degree of familiarity which you logically can't achieve with your 80K closest friends and I think that is one of the roots of evil here, so to speak. I read a story once about a young American man who had an affair with a British woman and then ran into trouble because when he met her in public, she was offended that he behaved in a familiar fashion merely because they had slept together. Her view: "We've never been formally introduced."
That may make no sense to many people here. I can't think of a better example though right now. Formality gives people a certain degree of social space that a "small town" mentality (for lack of a better phrase) fails to provide. That space reduces friction enormously.
I know there are other large forums on the internet but this is the largest one I have personally participated in. I think such large forums are breaking new ground, socially, in ways that do not compare to sites like Facebook. Where else can I actually speak with my 80K closest friends? If I am in a room of 500 at work (and not on the stage, because I am not one of the big wigs), only a handful of people around me can hear anything I say. We all can listen to the presentation, but we cannot converse. Here, any and all of us can converse. It is unlike anything you can do "IRL". I suspect that is part of the issue: No one really has a model for how you manage that kind of social interaction. And the models we do have break in that setting.
Just thinking out loud.