Robot9000 might lead to "intellectually stimulating" trolling, but I agree it doesn't do much about post attitude.
A deep strength of hacker news is that when someone goes to the trouble of responding to a troll in a factual rather than inflammatory way, it is supported with upvotes. Responding like this can be difficult, but it's very effective - and good for the soul.
A weakness of HN is that intelligent, articulate writing is sometimes used with harsh attitude and connotations. That is, it's just as nasty as elsewhere online, just elegantly phrased. This is accepted, because HN favours intelligence over attitude (could just be my perception).
Comments
Robot9000 might lead to "intellectually stimulating" trolling, but I agree it doesn't do much about post attitude.
A deep strength of hacker news is that when someone goes to the trouble of responding to a troll in a factual rather than inflammatory way, it is supported with upvotes. Responding like this can be difficult, but it's very effective - and good for the soul.
A weakness of HN is that intelligent, articulate writing is sometimes used with harsh attitude and connotations. That is, it's just as nasty as elsewhere online, just elegantly phrased. This is accepted, because HN favours intelligence over attitude (could just be my perception).
Eliezer posted an article on denotations vs. connotations recently, which gave me a new perspective on this old idea: http://lesswrong.com/lw/4h/when_truth_isnt_enough/