You should do what you've been doing all along. Provide occasional reinforcement: post items urging people to look at the guidelines, urging people not to upvote naked snark, and perhaps urging them to downvote snark that seems to be catching on.
One or two comments to the effect of, "I agree with this, but the way it was phrased is toxic to the site, so I downvoted it" can't hurt either.
I don't think yours is a problem that requires a technical solution. You've already got a critical mass of people who give you extraordinary deference. Just use them to to fix it.
How about if a comment is losing a significant amount of points then the author is required to view a simple guidelines page on the next visit to HN and sign off on it.
Aren't we discussing the problem that comments that should lose a significant amount of points actually get good scores? Moreover, it's easy to avoid reading bad comments with bad scores.
I was thinking it would contain the offending comment, a little message about it being flagged for not meeting community standards, then briefly list the community standards.
A little word of encouragement and a button to show they've actually got the message- and off they go. I don't think it would need to be confrontational or make them actually agree to anything (since they might have good reason to disagree). But a gentle reminder about acceptable behavior could help new people get acclimated.
Comments
You should do what you've been doing all along. Provide occasional reinforcement: post items urging people to look at the guidelines, urging people not to upvote naked snark, and perhaps urging them to downvote snark that seems to be catching on.
One or two comments to the effect of, "I agree with this, but the way it was phrased is toxic to the site, so I downvoted it" can't hurt either.
I don't think yours is a problem that requires a technical solution. You've already got a critical mass of people who give you extraordinary deference. Just use them to to fix it.
How about if a comment is losing a significant amount of points then the author is required to view a simple guidelines page on the next visit to HN and sign off on it.
Aren't we discussing the problem that comments that should lose a significant amount of points actually get good scores? Moreover, it's easy to avoid reading bad comments with bad scores.
Like they sign the EULA for software?
Yeah kinda, but designed to actually be read :P
I was thinking it would contain the offending comment, a little message about it being flagged for not meeting community standards, then briefly list the community standards. A little word of encouragement and a button to show they've actually got the message- and off they go. I don't think it would need to be confrontational or make them actually agree to anything (since they might have good reason to disagree). But a gentle reminder about acceptable behavior could help new people get acclimated.
Maybe the guidelines should be '0'th or the '1'st post once or twice a day.
If it is shown that often, it will lose its impact. Showing it only once, especially if the cause is listed, evokes a much stronger sense of shame.