There is a whole world of difference between:

"Hey, did you consider this and that." and "What you have done is rubbish. You did not think"

For heavens sake the presentation ended with "And here we stop. But, hopefully, the discussion begins." http://www.wikipediaredefined.com/

If it was that bad, then you do not upvote it. if it was good enough for a discussion (upvote), then discuss politely.

Not once in the comments did I see an alternative suggestion. even it it was entirely different from what was proposed. It was all condemnation.

At least we can agree Wikipedia can be improved, they made a suggestion. If you cannot constructively improve on what was proposed, then you can avoid polluting it. Or better still propose your own suggestion.

It is far easier to work with people who are direct and harsh than the people who dance around the matter. You can never trust anything the latter group of people tell you, and so you end up wasting a tremendous amount of time because you have no idea what they actually want because they refuse to actually tell you.

(That said, there is a world of difference between "that is rubbish, you did not think" and "that is rubbish because you did not think about things X, Y and Z". The first is useless, the second is helpful.)

--

Your idea that people must offer alternate suggestions before criticism is ridiculous. If you present your redesign idea to the public and it's terrible, the correct response is "that's not very good, go back and try again", not "that's not very good, therefore I will spend the months required to come up with a non-awful alternative before commenting".

> (That said, there is a world of difference between "that is rubbish, you did not think" and "that is rubbish because you did not think about things X, Y and Z". The first is useless, the second is helpful.)

This is not true. They are both needlessly critical. You can compliment the design aspects you like, ask for issues to be addressed, and nurture ideas all without telling someone their work is rubbish. No matter what else you say, if you criticize my idea as "rubbish" I'm not going to hear anything else you say.

This "tough love" idea of telling people what they did is awful is just terrible advice and please stop spreading it. You don't win people to your way of thinking by telling them they did a bad job. It's plain false.

(And I say that with the full knowledge that my phrasing will make you less receptive to my argument.)

Environments where you can't discuss mistakes are poisonous. People make mistakes. People do stupid things. If those mistakes are not dealt with directly, they become larger mistakes, and you end up in situations where people don't take minor actions that can prevent disasters because they're afraid that somebody's feelings might be hurt.

As an example, a few years ago the college I was then attending switched from internally managed email to gmail. For a month after the switch, you could log into anyone's email account without a password. This happened in large part because there was a culture of ignoring mistakes, and people who regularly raises issues were branded as "complainers". And so when they were doing the switch, nobody was willing to stand up and say "have we done basic testing?"

There are, of course, times and places where your goal is not offending people, and criticizing them is obviously a bad idea. (Telling a VC "that investment you made a week ago was really dumb" is probably a bad way to get them to invest in your company.) But much of the time, that rule causes many more problems than it solves.

It's also worth noting that phrasing and delivery matter quite a lot, and that's something that's much harder to convey in text. There's a huge difference, as I've said already, between insulting somebody and criticizing their work. The first is not productive--the second can be.

We agree on basically everything you said. You're 100% right that phrasing and delivery matter quite a lot - which, and this is really the most important part, is exactly what the original post was trying to say. The tone and delivery of most of the comments on the original submission was just ridiculously hostile. And when you're giving someone feedback, that tone matters, whether you have to work with the person every day or it's someone you'll never meet.

Version 1: Your reply if fucking stupid, you arrogant bastard, and you successfully made an ass of yourself. Even if your example was relevant, which is not, everyone knows you can't ever get idiots in any IT department to fix something like missing password. Fuck, nobody gets a job in IT in a college department without being terminally brain-dead. You are not smart enough to realize that the right thing to do is go in the server room with an ax, and hope that when they rebuild the system they'll get a clue. Sheesh, you people are the reason we need an Internet license, to prevent folks like you from polluting the web with nonsense.

Version 2: Dear samdk, I fail to see why people would fix the email system faster if you criticize them or make them resent you. You did not provide the details of the story, but I know of a similar case where the problem was fixed in private, technical, and polite e-mails. That case involved early Sun4 systems where everybody could read anybody's screen over the network, so it was relatively critical too... All it took was showing the sysadmin's screen on mine to get things fixed rather rapidly.

> (And I say that with the full knowledge that my phrasing will make you less receptive to my argument.)

This means you write this for yourself and not to fix things. This is the reason why rule #1 is a good rule: it places the other guy in the center. Your ultimate goal in a negotiation is to get the other side to do what you want. This means they are the center of the universe at that moment. You illustrated that very well with your VC example. What makes a VC different from an IT admin? That you think they are more powerful?

Jon Kershaw, who manages killer whales for a leaving, likes to bring the point that if you try to force a killer whale to do something, you end up dead more often than you want. To bring killer whales to do what you want, you need to make them want to.

Back to the story at hand, I liked the new design, except for the J-like capital I and a few details. Yet, I would certainly have remained silent on the thread because of the vocal and needless criticism, which I find a bit low for YC.

There's a vast difference between honest feedback and what was in that thread. Publicly taking someone to task for a design experiment is shameful behavior, especially given this community's standards of participation.

I think that's a terrible and even dangerous attitude - especially when done in public - for several reasons.

Firstly, if you heavily criticize something when many people are watching, it might keep you from receiving balanced feedback. Some people probably liked some of the aspects of the redesign, but with dozens of people in the thread saying how awful it was, they will rather not speak up and talk about what they liked. If you tell a mass of people "X is rubbish and whoever came up with this is stupid", and some more people join in, the others will probably assume they are idiots for liking it and say nothing. As an analogy: When I was younger I really liked a girl in my class but all my friends were going on about how ugly and weird she was, probably because of some kind of social feedback loop. So instead of telling her that I liked her, I started joining in with the "X is stupid" meme because I didn't want to look like a fool in front of my friends. Had they not talked about it in such an extreme way, things might have went differently, but because of the situation, I lost all my courage to admit it to her and my friends.

Secondly, if you mix valid criticism with being a dick about it, people will more likely think that your criticism is less valid since it's easier to just assume you are an asshole. Most people are emotionally attached to their work. If they weren't, their work would probably suck. They'll learn how to handle criticism, but that doesn't mean it won't hurt or demotivate them if you tell them it's rubbish.

Thirdly, there is absolutely no need to ever mention that it's rubbish or awful. All you need to do is to list the points where they failed and maybe give advice on how to improve it. Calling their work rubbish helps nobody and makes you feel smarter and more powerful than you actually are. If you treat people like this, their work will become worse, not better, and at the same time they will probably stop asking you for advice because you can't stop being a dick about it instead of just encouraging them to improve on what they did by giving valid advice.

People aren't just machines that you can tell "this is all awful, throw it away and start over" without hurting their feelings in at least some way. You should learn to use these emotions to steer them in the right direction, not condemn them and call people who express them unprofessional. You'll get a lot further by nicely packaging your criticism.

    "X is rubbish and whoever came up with this is stupid"

Obviously people get emotionally attached to their work. I certainly do. But you have to be able to let go of that while you're receiving feedback, or there's no point in you getting any.

Again, to be clear, I would not say "this is rubbish" or "this is awful" while critiquing a design. I would say "this is not working at all because you're ignoring considerations A and B". There are many, many design ideas that just do not work. As a designer, you are much better served by someone telling you "this is not working at all, you need an entirely different approach" than you are by someone trying to hint you towards evolving a design that's based on a faulty premise.

All other things equal I think internet interactions are "weaker" and carry less weight that regular in-person interactions. If I come to your desk and say "good job" or "I think what you did is terribly lame", I'm sure it won't have the same impact that if I wrote it as a comment in some website. I think that's why internet interactions tend to be more polarizing. So I don't think your question is appropriate.

Besides, for many articles linked on HN we don't know whether the creators are ever going to read our comments. I might be a little more gentle and diplomat in a "Show HN" post than in a regular "look what I found in the internet" post.

"Not once in the comments did I see an alternative suggestion."

The onus isn't on us to spend two months coming up with an alternative suggestion, when we can clearly compare the existing design with their proposal.

If I'd personally spent two months trying to re-invisage Wikipedia, I would certainly have brought that up.

But the firm did not do that, which gives the "project" the hallmarks of a pure PR exercise for the firm (which is what it obviously is).

The reason this matters is that design is very hard to do because of the real constraints that must be met, in terms of existing technology, limited budget, limited time, internal politics, etc. Pretending constraints don't exist can offend people who spend a lot of their (frustrating, hard working) time actually dealing with them.

Compare with book or movie reviews published in newspapers. They frequently give very harsh and sarcastic criticism, and this is considered fair game. The standards of politeness for face-to-face conversations and public commentary are different.

Why can only goodness be cause for discussion? The top comment by tptacek actually goes into a lot of detail about what's wrong with this. That's useful discussion. It's not positive, but I thought his comment was very high-quality discussion, even if the tone was not positive and happy.

That said, when I find myself typing something venomous (more often than warranted), I try to take a breath and delete. Worked for Lincoln: http://www.examiner.com/article/an-unsent-letter

I think that these designers could do just as good a job of demonstrating their creativity by using a fictitious brand (and possibly even drawing comparisons to known brands in the article). It is not classy to drag someone else's brand through the dirt.

Wikipedia is fairly democratic, they're open to redesign decisions if they work for the site and are free. See this response to the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:2012_main_page_redes...

Of all brands the designers could have chosen, Wikipedia may be one of the most appropriate.

The first step in a web design project is always discovery, so that the design firm does not waste their time (and my employer's money) on work that does not solve the right problems, or cannot be implemented.

Ad agencies, in contrast, will typically come to a pitch meeting with some concepts or prototypes. But that is ok because ads are self-contained products that are largely free from legacy systems.

I do really enjoy seeing creative individuals do unrequested design comps, but I think you hit the nail on the head: Don't drag someone else down to do it.

Without the hostility, the submitter might get the idea that hackernews liked the article.

You say the response "is not constructive and leads to no learning whatsoever". I'd like to substantively address the second claim.

    "A smart man learns from his mistakes.
     A wise man learns from the mistakes of others."

And this is learning from the event itself! What learning could this event LEAD to? I don't know, someone might pick up a book on design?

(As an aside, I didn't address "not constructive". I have a truly marvellous rant on the emptiness of this concept that this comment field is too small to contain.)

Sometimes these redesigns reek of audacity, sometimes they're just not done very well. In any case, hostility is not necessary to make that point. The situation is not so dire that we need to be mean to someone to tell them we don't like something. It's hard to share what you've done with the world, and it's even harder when many people from a community you respect will shit on you in the case you overlook something.

I don't mean to be impolite, but don't try and pass your anger that something has 400 points on hacker news for some sort of tough-love criticism.

Work on your communication skills.

It is so sad that people instead choose to criticize the flaws and ignoring the good and valuable ideas just so they can be extra critical.

I hadn't seen the post you mentioned, but the whole thing was so dripping in arrogance and a complete disdain for Wikipedia and its international users and contributors it is begging to get panned.

Basically, it is the original post that is not constructive to the point of being hostile. There is very little "polite" about it.

Maybe it should have been ignored rather than reacted to, but this kind of thing would provoke a negative response anywhere.

Also, I suspect the whole scenario of arrogant designers presenting a design that completely ignores the needs and identity of the client and the audience, interspersed with arrogant statement declaring their own superiority is not entirely unfamiliar to many here. At least my first reaction was "oh great, that again".

This is not a way to start an friendly open discussion or get constructive criticism. It's a provocation, which is also a perfectly valid way to start a debate, but it does set the tone.

I love wikipedia, but it is poorly designed. In fact, there has recently been speculation that the decline in new editors is due to wikipedia being too arcane, particularly on the edit side. Despite its popularity, I can't see how that basic notion is even controversial.

Meanwhile, somebody comes up with a redesign mockup and it's the end of the world because 1 page (out of ~ a dozen) doesn't make it easy enough for people to switch to the right language version?

Anyway, I'm not sure about 'all the hostility,' but I agree that thread was a little weird. I expected HN types to maybe not be thrilled with that redesign, but at least agree that wikipedia needs one.

Perhaps tomorrow you'll profess astonishment when someone walks into Yankee Stadium wearing a Red Sox shirt and uses the PA system to "objectively" redesign the Yankee pinstripes to "be more functional, more useful, more pleasing to the eye"? Oh, lordy, lordy, who could have predicted the harsh language in response? I thought New York was a civilized town!

If the designers had actually wanted to improve Wikipedia, the correct strategy is to start small and modestly, and aim the pitch at the decision makers - presumably Wikipedia has a design committee? - not the entire Internet. You suggest ideas one or two at a time and collect feedback as you go, not merely because you care what the customer thinks - you do, right? - but because you're trying to get them to feel invested in the new product instead of clinging reflexively to the old.

People don't see designs objectively; that's an artist's special power. The see designs like they see puppies. If a strange puppy walks in and starts fighting with my puppy I'll call Animal Control and have it dragged away in a cage. But if my new puppy chews the furniture, I might scold him, but I probably won't disown the little rascal. The secret is to introduce the small, cute, innocent little puppy to the customer and have it be petted for a while before you let it soil the old rug, drive the customer's other pets insane, and run up vet bills.

He didn't say that Wikipedia has to change, it was merely just his design idea that he wanted to share with the world. Yes, if he actually wanted Wikipedia to change there is a process of contacting Wikipedia and going through the whole bureaucratic process but I think it was more of a show what's possible. Kind of like that design project that was on HN a while back showing a possible rebranding of Microsoft.

I may be in the minority here but I don't believe it warranted such harsh criticism.

Well, the cynic in me -- which I've been trying to restrain throughout the last few days of this discussion -- thinks he was doing it primarily as "content marketing" for his design firm. Maybe it's a little unfair to pin that motive on him. And I certainly have no way of knowing what the hidden agenda was, or even if there was one. But when you make a "pitch" to the entire Internet in this fashion, generally speaking, you're doing it to get attention (and business).

There's nothing wrong with content marketing. Some HN luminaries do it all the time. But the content has to provide some value, and a lot of folks (myself included) are still struggling to find the value in the Wikipedia redesign post.

I'd be like someone doing a very swooshy automobile design, and then moving the clutch to the passenger's side, just for kicks.

Also, in general I believe that hacker culture should tend towards cutting through the bullshit. You have no expectation of courtesy except for the courtesy of honesty on the Internet.

Harsh criticism is the quickest way to let someone know they're doing the wrong thing, and the fastest way to get your point across.

It's no harder to write a courteous and constructive criticism than it is to write a harsh and mildly condescending one. The former can serve to foster creative discussion while the latter often kills it.

You earn respect and the courtesy of others falls out the other side. And even with all the trolls, anonymous bluntness and dens of iniquity that exist on the internet, there are plenty of ways to engage in positive or constructive feedback loops.

But if you've got a bad product (in this case a poorly executed and thought-out speculative redesign promotional piece) and you actually host it on a .com domain name for said product, it stands or falls on it's own merit.

Had this been a forum post or addressed to a design community with a culture of courteous discourse, I would decry the lack of respect and courtesy provided free expression, but as it stands, this was a cynical and misguided top level domain attempt that failed and should be called out as such.

At the same time, this redesign is supposed to be an advertisement for this agency, so much so that they bought a domain for it. It's not just something they did for their mother's crochet club. It is supposed to show the depth at which the agency thinks. It is supposed to show their design chops. It is supposed to illustrate that they can tackle large problems. It fails, incredibly, at every single one. In an industry where everyone bandwagons onto concepts and ideas due to a lack of their own, this behavior needs to be called out. The scale at which they completely botched this project is astounding and people need to stop thinking colors and minimalism will solve information issues.

Take for instance the thread on .Mail (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4291803). The designer does good work, but didn't display the app as well as he could have. The discussion delves into everything from ways to better present the information to does this app even have a place in the ecosystem to I would never use this !@#$%!! While a good portion of the comments are harsh, if you drill down to the intent, there's a lot of good stuff there.

These are the conversations I love about HN, even though they tend to be a little dry. I've yet to find a more passionate group of people who understand the web and have played with and built enough of their own products to know what they're talking about. And not to generalize, but that's how the programmers I've worked with tend to be, and I love that about them.

While some people might see this Wikipedia redesign as a playful experiment and treat it as such, it's intention was to sell you on the agency's talent. When you look at it through that lens, there's a lot to complain about and I don't think it's out of bounds to do so when we all work in this industry and these are the types of people we're (indirectly) competing against.

This is the problem. The MSM is full of hyperbole. One nice thing about HN is that it is rarely rewarded here.

You could have said:

People are hostile to that posting because it talks down to its readers by being a gigantic infographic. It could have been explained in a few paragraphs of text. Also, the idea appears to be made by people with a preference for form over function. Therefore it has little practical merit.

It would have made the same point, without the hostility or hyperbole.

Personally, I found the overall idea unrealistic, but it was interesting to see Wikipedia mocked up in another way. Their schematic using the color bars for languages gave me some ideas.

The guy that spends 13 hours a day shovelling fish heads probably thinks that my 9 hours in a chair in front of a screen doesn't really consist of 'real work'.

You can't tell me that you've never wondered if he was right.

P.S. Form over function is not evil.

I must disagree wholeheartedly, all the more regarding a tool as valuable as Wikipedia. As small as I try to keep my identity, this is part of it.

I suspect some of the hostility we're seeing is a delayed reaction to the prevalence of this viewpoint here. HN no longer has consensus about which of the Two Cultures is favored.

People who keep using that phrase as an excuse to hate on anything designed that they don't like are the truly revolting people.

Stifling discussion, silencing opinions, and perpetuating engineer-elitism.

Maybe usability studies, A/B test results and if at all possible some form of prototype, even if it is just static.

Plus the article lacks consideration for mobile and small screen platform (i.e. considering edge cases). In fact I'd go as far as to say it actively disregards them by choosing gigantic fonts and lots of useless whitespace in favor of useful content.

The project in general looked to me like the response to an academic design brief, and taken individually, the comments were largely consistent with the sorts of comments which might be made during a juried crit in a US architecture school. However and although piling on can occur in a juried crit, the pack mentality is constrained by time - unlike typing on the internet.

On the other hand, nothing in the comments when I looked at them stood out as even close to the limit of what a paying client or one's boss might say during a design presentation or review. Tptacek's top comment might have been conveyed as a Jobsian "This is shit," and perhaps accompanied by a discussion of whether or not the designer should seriously consider ever reproducing.

One factor I think led to the volume of comments is that unlike most "Show HN" threads, this one was not couched as an MVP (or in this case a minimum viable design), but as finished project. In other words, it wasn't "Here is the landing page with a new logo and a drop down menu for choosing the language," with changes to the editor left for version two.

What I think contributed to a more visceral reaction among HN'ers is that the designer as hero approach feels at odds with the particular ethos of Wikipedia which is iterative and collaborative - particularly telling considering that audacity and heroism are among the common fetishes of HN.

In my opinion, the level of criticism was not unusual for HN. I've read plenty of blunt responses (closer to "This is shit") on "Show HN:" threads. It was really the volume which was unusual, and that I attribute to the subject matter.

On another note, I think the lack of a down vote button on submissions might explain this behavior. If a topic is highly polarized/controversial, it might end up on the front page with a lot of up votes even if most HNers would have down voted it. This results in a lot of people venting off in the comments who would have otherwise simply down voted.

Be curious to hear pg's thinking on the absence of downvotes for stories. This particular story was of such low quality, that I wonder if people were really upvoting the discussion as opposed to the original story.

Know-it-alls are intolerant of views that are contrary to their own, usually very narrow opinion on how things should be done. Woe betide anyone who does not do it their way.

This trait is far from unique amongst hackers, and neither are the negative reactions to it.

The designers should take this as valuable input, ignore the subjective comments, and move on to create greater things.

It was just design for the sake of design - it didn't need to be based on a MediaWiki theme or anything like that. It's just a visual representation of what 'could be'.

As far as that particular Wikipedia thing: I think a lot of people really liked the design, and most of them clicked the upvote. On the other hand, most of the people who didn't like it couldn't downvote so they left comments instead.

So part of the hostility you notice might just be the fact that they took on Wikipedia and really put themselves out there, so it was a controversial post. And HN needs to fix the downvote thing (there I go being negative again).

One other thing is that you have people with really different backgrounds coming to Hacker News. Some people are like me and have a lot of coding experience including, for example, enterprise(y) application programming. Other people have much more experience in marketing and/or graphic design and/or UX/UI.

This might just be another example of me having a bad life, but there also might actually be a bit of pent up resentment between UX/UI designer people and coders in general. I will be too honest as usual and elaborate.

Basically, what it seems like from my own programmer perspective is that the people doing the software UI design in Photoshop or whatever think that they know better how to build software than me and therefore are placing themselves over me in the project decision making, even though they have written very little (or zero) code. That sort of misplaced disrespect could possibly sometimes make a person feel righteously hostile. Of course, I do realize that UX is its own field with knowledge that isn't automatically absorbed in the process of coding, but that doesn't really change the situation between coders and UX designers.

Maybe this is being a tad catty, and standing in the way of innovation in some respects but design led initiatives that don't take a close look at the world from other discipline's perspectives are usually doomed.

I don't think they ever had any intention of it becoming a default wikipedia/mediawiki design - it was simply a way for a design team to show their chops by saying 'this is what it could have been / could be'.

I can totally understand the frustration from the engineers and developers who get that 'the design team always think they know best' feeling - hell, I've been there countless times - but I don't think they meant for that.

But reading some of the comments in that thread, I felt awful for them - nevermind a lack of constructive criticism, some of it was just out and out hate.

I'd like to think if they were ever taken on to design a site they'd be able to sit down with the developers/UX team/marketers/SEOs/whoever and come up with something that works for everyone. That's a lot of what being a good designer is about.

(For the record, there really has been countless times I've been given a design from a designer and almost wept with frustration. Mostly with agencies that employed print designers who've been forced to now design for web.)

I think you might be conflating honesty and hostility.

Slow down people. These people put a ton of work into a project which is really cool. They deserve constructive criticism.

It's not a new trend, you're just starting to notice it. I've been coming to HN off and on for years. It has always been unpleasant. I get physically uncomfortable whenever I come back here.

The community here is toxic. It's dressed up in the veneer of thoughtfulness, but it doesn't take a genius to identify the cultural attitudes, group-think and see how the detractors are treated. I got burned by my wrongheaded assumption that it actually was a place for reasoned discussion. Not gonna make that mistake again.

Edit: I feel bad getting upvotes for a snarky off-handed comment. So here's what I think: Contrast and compare the comments to thread regarding the hn statistics page. I don't get the feeling the community is critical for being critical's sake at all.

If nobody harshly slams this, they might think they're good designers.

The designers are so arrogant, thinking they could redesign such an important website.

Harsh feedback makes you better.

--

First, I have never encountered anyone important (to me) who cared what HN thought, or even rethought their opinions after reading HN slam something. I've only heard people talking about HN as a source of news, not as a relevant gauge of anything, and certainly not to reconsider if one is right or wrong.

Frankly, nobody ever should pause and reconsider what they are doing because of HN's sentiment; at this point it's still better than some random forum, you get a lot of useful links and facts, but the critiques are totally worthless. People rarely try to be helpful here, it's just a positive feedback loop of nerds trying to show that they have more refined taste, more nuanced discernment, or a bigger mouth than the nerd before him.

As I mentioned in the other post yesterday about the NYTimes reporter being beaten there are more emotional posts now which are on the site just related to how bad big companies, government, the music industry, Google, Facebook, Craiglist and Hollywood is (this due to the PG Destory Hollywood post I'm sure).

It seems there is more bandwagon jumping lately on hating anything which is big and makes a lot of money, so it is inherently bad (see every post about Craiglist this month). HN talk is usually about startups and small business, it seems to go against the ethos here about building businesses that somehow when you make a lot of money you are now 'the man' and must be destroyed, or at least give your hard earned work to new HN'ers startups to help them profit (information wants to be free and all), since that must the right thing to do.

Is Square set to become the enemy soon due to their big deal they just signed with Starbucks?

There's no point being nice to people when they present flawed work - that just propagates bad work.

(and my CTO is way harsher on my Pull Requests than anyone has been on the Wiki redesign anyway)

There is a point in being nice, it's part of being sociable. We could have all the best solutions in the world, but if we can't share them in an agreeable way then they are going to be useless

Think of a world where parents mocked their toddlers for presenting them with a anotomically and structurally defective picture of their family and home. Would the child continue to create with happiness or just associate experimentation with negative response?

I'm comparing the act of creating and reviewing. More explicitly I wanted you to think about how a new designer would respond to overly harsh and non-constructive critisim in the early stages of developing their skillset.

Bad work stopped. Niceness maintained.

For what it's worth, I thought it was an interesting and refreshing design proposal, though I did have issues with the way they chose to render logos and use screenspace--it was a bit too kitschy in its minimalism.

This is the internet, it's how it works, it's how it worked since at least Usenet (and probably before, but I can't testify of that). The social norm is different than regular "face to face" conversation.

It's harsher, but it's also often more honest I think.

That's exactly what PG intended HN not to be. It's meant to be different, nicer, better thought out. If it devolves to a common web message board, we lose what makes it special. Read this, if you haven't before. Especially the last paragraph:

http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

In any case, if there's a secret HN where everyone is nicer, sign me up.

If you're frustrated about the general status quo, some people will become extremely vocal, and use language to stand out in the crowd and have their opinion be heard. Venting alone becomes therapeutic to them, because it's their way to contribute to the process.

...until they need to do it again in the next thread.

There's also an exact opposite of that: People who choose their words carefully in order to be polite and constructive. That's what you describe, if I understood you correctly.

I personally think that most people here are constructive, no matter whether they're giving harsh responses or polite ones, because it's all feedback. It's part of the discussion. I think we (not just here on HN) shouldn't get caught up in social norms too much, as it only hinders the actual discussion. Words are just words and the way somebody tries to get a point across is a part of his character and others just have to accept that.

But still, there's a line in the sand and that's ad hominem attacks. This is what can truly kill constructive communication and should be avoided in any community.

However, just my 2 cents.

Most people have strong feelings about Wikipedia because it has become a big part of many people's internet experience. And people usually don't like change and can become offended when people propose to do so.

Perhaps we should all watch Derek Siver's "A Real Person, A Lot Like You" on a regular basis.

https://vimeo.com/26110865

Suited me just fine. Whether or not I agreed with the design conclusions they came to is not the point. They gave something a try - good on them. Maybe it sparks ideas for someone else.

Failing or succeeding aside, surely the spirit of this whole community is about trying ideas and getting constructive feedback.

And that gets to the point of why people are hostile on HN: because the site administrators and moderators are hostile and hellban users for the most benign comments.

Leaders and administrators set the tone. It all rolls downhill, as the saying goes.

Oh, and my account will be hellbanned and my connection slowbanned yet again for speaking out. As per usual.

TLDR: Look to the admins of the site. They have been setting the tone all along. That's where the hostility is originating from.

Added to that a certain attitude of 'just because I'm right, I can be mean'

All just leads to an environment where trying new things is discouraged. The guy didn't follow the status quo, he tried something different. What happened wasn't quite a pitch fork smack down, but it felt pretty mean spirited.

I certainly didn't see anything constructive in the comments.

That said...

I responded to the OP who seemed to be making a general observation, based on a particular post. My reply was to be in generalisation too, so it may not be a correct view of the state of HN

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return

All of this has happened before, and will happen again.

Plus, if they actually had access to coders who could take a full image of wikipedia, div it up and refactor it to a db, then wpredesigned.com could actually run as a real site, with hourly updates from wikipedia merged in automatically.

I think the Wikipedia article was an emotive exception.

EDIT: Thought I'd add that there were a lot of positive and friendly comments surrounding the Curiosity landing. So I don't feel like the tone of comments is leaning in one particular direction.

Cards on table: I have often avoided replying through fear of people not liking my opinion, regardless of how well thought out it might be. Often only replied if I already know my views are acceptable here. In fact, to get Karma up, I have merely posted agreeable posts. For example, I have noticed that having a go at the MPAA gets lots of up votes. See what happens if you dare argue for the MPAA, you enter down vote hell!!!

That has to be badly wrong, right? Surely its is the worst sort of mob rule and utterly stifles diverse opinion. Is that what HN is all about?

However, I don't know of a better way to do it, so it is better than nothing.

Many here were jealous someone had the nerve to redesign their precious wikipedia and lashed out at the poor sap who dared stuck his neck out.

It may not have been perfect, but what project of that size could be? A few things on the page looked like an upgrade to me. The appropriate reaction should have been, "interesting, meh," rather than ugly comments.

"...no one ever kicks a dead dog." --Dale Carnegie

http://www.westegg.com/unmaintained/carnegie/stop-worry.html...

I did like their redesign though so this may skew my perception. I don't like Wikipedia's landing page. It's quite frustrating to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfwwHa-7Ux8

A well-reasoned, polite and civil viewpoint that doesn't match your own should not be downvoted. The result of this is that people will not post viewpoints that differ from what they think the community will agree with. That doesn't help anybody. It causes groupthink and a hivemind mentality.

Downvotes should be handed out to posts that do not contribute positively to the discussion, that are spam or trolling etc. Not to good faith comments you don't agree with.

You cannot earn any glory in publishing your code if people don't tell the truth. To be pleased by one «I love what you do», you should ready yourself to get a couple of «you are doing crap». Coders are not expected to publish good code at first, they are expected to improve their work through sincere feedbacks. That is our culture.

Social norms are unproductive when it comes to work in cooperation.

The fact that Asperger (sociopaths) are 10 times more prevalent in coding expertise might not help.

Excellency in coding is an aristocracy that needs no excuses and don't fear critics. You shall not fear the fight if you believe in your creation, because good design can stand the assault of the best criticisms.

Social norms are only their to protect a hierarchy of status. Truth protect the hierarchy of competence.

If you are just a hipster searching for a social status based on consensus then flee for this is war against you. THIS IS SPARTA!!!!!

This is not an accurate characterization of Asperger syndrome or the hacker community. Wikipedia offers the following definition:

Sociopathy is the result of social conditioning which leads to a lack of natural human values. It refers strictly to a social condition where a person knows, yet has been socially conditioned to disregard, the intrinsic human values which are believed to be universal.

The somewhat similar characteristic of Asperger syndrome is a lack of demonstrated empathy. In the case of a harsh review of someone's project, this could manifest as statements that are accurate from the author's perspective but do not take in to consideration how they might make the reader feel. I don't think being blunt in a review is a sign of disregarding universal intrinsic human values.

The real point is there are no truly acceptable positive feedbacks if one does not equally express negative feedbacks.

So ... one should not whine for getting flamed even if it is socially unacceptable to discard all this work because that's the path for improving...and later maybe getting praised.