[Editor’s Note: After we posted this, we got hit by a comment-report attack, and about 1,000 (!) comments across the whole site got sent back into the moderation queue on Saturday. We’ve since re-instated them all, but that took a lot of work.
About halfway down the comments in this article, the majority of comments are “hey, why did you delete this?” We didn’t, and they should be all good now. We debated removing the “try deleting this!” comments, but since we didn’t delete them in the first place, we thought we should just leave them. It makes a royal mess of any discussion, and created a lot more heat than light, which is unfortunate.]
You know what your mom would say, right? This week, we got an above average number of useless negative comments. A project was described as looking like a “turd” – for the record I love the hacker’s angular and futuristic designs, but it doesn’t have to be to your taste. Then someone else is like “you don’t even need a computer case.” Another commenter informed us that he doesn’t like to watch videos for the thirtieth time. (Yawn!)
What all of these comments have in common is that they’re negative, low value, non-constructive, and frankly have no place on Hackaday. The vast majority are just kind of Eeyorey complaining about how someone else is enjoying a chocolate ice cream, and the commenter prefers strawberry. But then some of them turn nasty. Why? If someone makes a project that you don’t like, they didn’t do it to offend you. Just move on quietly to one you do like. We publish a hack every three hours like a rubidium clockwork, with a couple of original content pieces scattered in-between on weekdays.
And don’t get us wrong: we love comments that help improve a project. There’s a not-so-fine line between “why didn’t you design it with trusses to better hold the load?” and “why did you paint it black, because blue is the superior color”. You know what we mean. Constructive criticism, good. Pointless criticism, bad.
It was to the point that we were discussing just shutting down the comments entirely. But then we got gems! [Maya Posch]’s fantastic explainer about the Lagrange points had an error: one of the satellites that Wikipedia said was at an earth-moon Lagrange point is actually in normal orbit around the moon. It only used the Lagrange point as a temporary transit orbit. Says who? One of the science instrument leads on the space vehicle in question. Now that is a high-value comment, both because it corrects a mistake and enlightens us all, but also because it shows who is reading Hackaday!
Or take [Al Williams]’s article on mold-making a cement “paper” airplane. It was a cool technique, but the commenters latched onto his assertion that you couldn’t fly a cement plane, and the discussions that ensued are awesome. Part of me wanted to remind folks about the nice mold-making technique on display, but it was such a joy to go down that odd rabbit hole, I forgive you all!
We have an official “be nice” policy about the comments, and that extends fairly broadly. We really don’t want to hear what you don’t like about someone’s project or the way they presented it, because it brings down the people out there who are doing the hard work of posting their hacks. And hackers have the highest priority on Hackaday.
I see where this is headed.
Do you think a few bad apples will make us all lose comment rights? Bruce Schneier nearly culled 90% of his commentors by requiring every post to be reviewed manually by 1 volunteer on a once a day basis. It effectively makes it impossible to reply back as it takes days now.
My comments are always nice and on topic, last time I asked a creator for an update because I loved his work so much. I’m 100% honest, I use nicks and throwies as I don’t want to establish a known persona here. I’d be okay with commenting 100% anonymously if there was some identifier like “Reader 107” or something, based on IP. So you know 107 is always the same person.
But I’m overthinking. Anyway, since I use a throwie, this will take 1-24 hours to be visible. Everyone have a great weekend.
Some comment boards randomize the name for each thread or section, because there are always people who dig up your past comments and throw them back at you later, continuing the fight over unrelated threads or track people around the board to disrupt them.
One great point about anonymity on boards is that when there are established “personas” on any comment section, the discussion tends to turn into personal feuds between people and “who threw the boiling oil”, instead of discussing the topics at hand.
Ironically 4chan has it right with /pol/‘s IP-based thread ID system.
I’m not a 4chan user, but I understood that to mean that threads are identified by who started them.
Which is good, because on other boards there’s the problem of people spamming new /pol/ threads whenever the discussion turns against them. Bury the old one and start a new one to push the same discredited point.
Yes, what Dude and J K suggest is good, randomized but per article.
It would prevent group dynamics to pick on a certain commentor and allow for a more relaxed discussion. If a project creator wants to establish permanent communication it is probably best via E-mail if someone is very helpful and has ideas how to help improve a HaD project.
Exactly. Like when the little league baseball team gives out trophies to the loosing team as well because they don’t want them to feel bad, and say everyone is a winner. That’s not life, and if you can’t deal with negative feedback you need to work on you, not others.
The old sticks and stones is a good point – people should understand that when anyone can say anything, people are going to say bad things, because there are uncalled idiots out there. You should learn not to take it personally.
But then, not everything has to be “life” – you don’t need to rub it in. That’s a bully attitude; one that justifies being nasty for no good reasons.
those who would take away your speech because they dont like the things you might say are also bullies. that’s the basis for tyranny.
ive had lots of good and constructive exchanges with others that are then cut short because the powers that be feel that a debate has become too heated. but that is the crucible that creates the best ideas. just because our politicians have forgotten that doesn’t mean that we have to.
Yes, but that’s a different issue.
First there’s being negative for the sake of being negative, and justifying that by “it’s life” – but that’s a circular argument. It’s life because you’re making it so. That’s the point about being a bully.
Well this isn’t a democracy with no right to speech, free or otherwise.
People here can vote with their feet. If HaD decides to be the strict “nice police”, they’ll have exactly the sort of comment board they want, where the community devolves into a petty hugbox. It’ll build an echo chamber around themselves and lose any feedback about the content they’re providing, risking a loss of focus and a loss of readership.
Maybe the hugbox is a good thing and they’ll attract many more readers. It’s just that shutting down the conversation will make them blind, so they no longer know what changes contribute to the outcome – and that will inevitably lead to failure and they won’t know why. If they’re smart, they know to listen, and if they’re not then we’re all better off going somewhere else.
As our lives become more digital, or rather as entire ecosystems are designed to maximize time spent online, it becomes ever more important to review what this does to us. My view is that it is necessary for people to have regular experiences of freedom, fairness and democratic process, and that the extent to which they have them carries out into wider society.
The worst case imaginable here (albeit perfectly legal) would be if all you could do on the internet is choose between different flavors of heavy moderation and curated experiences devoid of individual expression. That’d be akin to saying “sure, you can travel anywhere you like, as long as it’s one of the 5 countries with the lowest Human Freedom Score”.
I’m convinced that our readers here have a sense of this “breathing room” long before they develop and refine their virtues of temperance, peacefulness, kindness, generosity.
In other words: Sites are asking for fit and trim people, bu no website wants to be the gym. What they usually offer is calls for compliance, akin to taking the burgers off the menu – which obviously doesn’t inspire people to make it a habit to put in the work themselves.
We the readers can contribute to a positive outcome, if HaD lets us. Yes, there are the ad hominems and other rubbish, but I’m also reading the comments section for the the uninformed comment that gets absolutely taken apart with facts and knowledge, and I rejoice when I see people take the time to counter bad takes with something that ends up adding a net value.
tl;dr: Any website that expects users to spend a relevant amount of time ought to consider itself a steward of the freedoms that shape our minds and interactions.
*losing
Yeah wait for the scope creep
Sounds like the horizontal coils are drifting. Time for an article on ‘scope calibration? :P
Lots of comments, TLDR, I do appreciate that HaD provides summaries, background, etc. and HaD writers often provide useful personal experience and knowledge. Perhaps a HaD specific thumbs up or down voting system would let people vent and minimize the endless drivel comments. Take this story for example.
Reducing the conversation to an up/down vote loses 99% of the point, since you’re not actually listening to the reasons that people have, and you open the case up to manipulation.
For example, I freely admit I wouldn’t be above clicking the thumb down because I hate the author of the article rather than the contents, or at least I wouldn’t be clicking the thumbs up button. If I found the author that obnoxious despite their one good article, I would do things like that to signal HaD to get rid of them – and why not? For the point that you’re making, this would mask the signal that you want to measure.
If HaD were to ignore the vote on account that it doesn’t represent any real information, it would be like the pedestrian crossing buttons that do nothing, where the only purpose is to make the people stop to press the button. Once people realize that their votes have no meaning, because the same articles and the same authors keep re-appearing, you’re back to point zero.
1) They would never get rid of comments because comments increase engagement, and engagement makes them money.
Why do you think EVERY youtube video includes the dude saying “what do you think? write your guess in the comments!!”
2) If you start treating people like adults instead of delicate little baby snowflakes, then they will eventually learn how not to fall to pieces whenever they hear something they don’t like. If you want to start baby.hackaday.com then do that in it’s own space but leave this place to people who can actually take criticism.
1) This is false. We do not make money from “engagement”. This is not YouTube, and we are not paid by the click.
2) Hackers are occasionally stoked to have their projects featured on Hackaday, and then beaten down in the comments. That’s horrible, because it disincentivizes them from doing more work and writing about it.
We (editorial) don’t write the comments, but we can try to keep them from discouraging the folks out there who are posting their projects.
Wait a second.
I’ve been defending you.
Bandwidth ain’t free.
If you’re not getting paid, why the daily awful clickbait artsandcrafts a day youtube links?
That’s actually worse!
You really like the idea of wrapping an old tire in twine to make a table base?
1) Not directly. Your value to advertisers and sponsors is based on your “impact” or the general traffic of people viewing the site. The more clicks you can bait, the more money you can pull in, whether you count the clicks or not.
The comment section is the side show to the whole circus – drawing in other crowds that otherwise wouldn’t have bothered to come.
You’d think an electronics related publication would understand the importance of negative feedback! :’D
This is a comment I’d love to have a thumbs-up-button for, since I have nothing of value to add than positive feedback (no pun intended)
What you’re observing is the slow buildup of discontent reaching a boiling point over days and weeks. When the audience is bored of the show, at some point peanuts start to fly, and that becomes the entertainment.
This is true. I played bass guitar in a band once and we were so crap that the audience started throwing bottles at us. Suddenly it became both entertaining and enjoyable trying to dodge those missiles.
Wasn’t it the Blues Brothers movie where one of the venues they played at had chain link fencing between the band and the audience to protect bands from flying objects?
Thanks for the memory!
Yes! For a long time … well up until right now actually …. I presumed all dive bar venues in the USA had weld mesh to protect the audience from crap music.
nope, Road House (1989 film).
Yes, “The Blues Brothers” 1980.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blues_Brothers_(film)
Chicken wire between the audience and the band:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdR6MN2jKYs
Only a few years ago, the Hackaday comment section was, as one comment put it, “A shark tank”. It has improved considerably in recent years.
As for complaining about videos, “yawn.” Over half the world is on bandwidth constrained connections (even some folks in wealthy nations). I get it, we are not the target market for Hackaday advertisers, but it would be nice to have more articles without the majority of the content in inconvenient, usually skipped, video format (update yt-dlp [google breaks it, constantly], download video with yt-dlp and watch offline).
Anyway, whatever you guys did to clean up the comment section from what it was before, congratulations. The Hackaday comment section is no longer something to be avoided.
The AI I’d be most excited for would be one that can turn a video into a easy to read document.
I’d guess people don’t like videos not for bandwidth concerns, but for time concerns.
“Shorts” are taking over because they give you the info you want immediately. Like what Google did for search results when it provides a blurb of the website.
It’s time, and not.
Videos are nice when you want to entertain yourself and sit down for some interesting stuff, since it stretches the content and gives the opportunity to show tangents – but if the topic in question is only mildly interesting, then it serves the opposite purpose: do I want to spend 15 minutes for nothing, or would I rather just have the summary? “Here, watch this video” instead of an article then becomes a finger up to the viewer.
Yes.
Most stuff won’t contain enough for it to be worth my time. There is a firehose of stuff. Thus nowadays the key skill is to quickly determine what to ignore.
I can speed read at 1-2k words per minute. Video speech is 60wpm , or less when all the ums ahs and whoops are omitted. You can’t speedread/skip video.
Hence I don’t watch video unless I know I’m advance it will be worth my remaining life.
Actually you can speed up youtube videos, so your comment sucks and goes against the article.
Well, Whisper can take a video and turn it into a transcript. I’m sure you can at least then have that summarized in a mildly competent manner via GPT/Llama. Problem comes in that most tech videos I am interested in actually utilize the video format to show the how, so you’d need a MLM that can actually understand that he’s detaching a serpentine belt from an engine for example. Not infeasible with modern tech, but highly impractical unfortunately.
It didn’t help that some of the old writers were abrasive, came back to the comments to argue back and insult people, abused their powers as moderators by removing dissenting opinions, yet insisted on trolling the readers with topics and social commentary they knew would rub people the wrong way.
Of whomever do you speak..? ;-)
But TBH, I actually miss the writings and mannerisms of the old grumpy grampa in question :)
The trouble always is, any community that gets its laughs from acting like idiots will eventually attracts actual idiots who ruin it for everybody.
Though all that coincided with things like gamergate, captain crunch, the suitacase kid, etc. which were highly heated topics at the time, so it’s easy to see how people would fall into different trenches. The comment sections were nuked over and over, which further increased the anger because people felt that HaD was being blatantly partisan as a whole.
In the end they managed to maintain their cool pretty well and the noise died down after a while.
Another thing I just remembered was the amount of people back then, who were trying to “tone police” by shouting down any nay-sayers. A good half of the comments were commenters complaining about other commenters. They knew the moderators would come down and nuke the thread even if the original issue raised was valid, because the commentary went so far down the drain that all sensible conversation was drowned.
The general point of conversation at that time had gradually shifted from “I’m right, you’re wrong”, to “I’m right and you’re evil.” and that seemed to justify all means of controlling the conversation.
i know im one of those people who dont like “watch the video” articles, and i know im not the only one. and there are two reasons. the first is there is that the video has already crossed my feed on youtube. the second, committing to read 3 paragraphs to have to be told to watch the video for the conclusion. articles that reference written blogs or forums are usually useful stand alone without following the links, while the video articles are not.
i have on many occasions provided constructive critisism and alternatives to address these issues. eg the weekly “watch this”, in the spirit of “hack-a-day links” and “this week in security”. or posting a conclusion paragraph beneath the video for those who either dont or cant watch the video.
as for the “improved comments section”, i just dont see it. the open, lightly-moderated, and log-in free comments section was always one of the reasons i liked hack a day. now i dont know if my post is going to be there because i tripped over an invisible feeler of an oversensitive individual.
Re: Videos:
it is worse, sometimes I have seen that even projects with text description ended up having video linked primarily.
To the point that I stopped watching them (also, because my youtube recommendations are about same as part or hackaday feed. only hackaday feed happens later).
Comment sections exist purely to drive ad revenue through additional site engagement. On top of that, these days you’re probably agreeing to having your comments harvested to train an LLM.
Stop working for free.
soooo… who paid you to comment and how to i get in on that sweet cash
If everyone stopped working for free in any way at all across their lives boy would the world go to pot quickly. Never getting passed the salt again, at least without breaking out the wallet or a round of trade negotiations…
They will always do it for free
You’re wrong. We don’t care if you post comments, and we do not get paid by the click or the comment.
The comments exist entirely for readers to talk amongst themselves, and very often to ask the original hackers questions, work on improvements, etc. We want the discussion to be constructive.
If we had 10 high-quality comments per article instead of many more low-quality ones, we’d be stoked.
These days, we all live under the “tyranny of the curated experience”. Playing devil’s advocate for a bit, one could understand comments being written by people half-knowing that they will be silenced anyways as a way of dealing with frustration. Also consider that nobody abstaining from writing a negative comment has ever been rewarded.
On the other side, the hand controlling “the system” can reset the comments section with impunity until the desired content materializes in the comments section.
Is deleting comments the answer? I think not. I would love to see though whether adding a “click here to see ‘meh’ comments” below the main comments section would help people feel more motivated to get past their first impression of a project. Maybe they’ll come back and write another comment then, and this time a more fruitful one.
At the very least, it would help maintain a level of transparency and sense of fairness. And if you must, you can also allow others to downvote the meh comments just to show that other readers are also not impressed ;)
I actually like the idea of having a “meh” comments section, perhaps behind a login so you have to actively choose to be inundated with negativity. It might be nice to see moderators (or the community) deleting negative anonymous comments with impunity but comments from logged-in users could go to a “meh” section where only those interested in the schadenfreude can view them.
Any metric that is used for social policy ceases to measure what is intended because people start to game it.
In other words, you don’t want to turn HaD into Reddit.
I would like to see a “thumbs up” icon for some comments.
It would be positive feedback to a commenter or article with less bandwidth.
And thumbs down too. ;-)
The system that you are proposing reminds me of the news website Slashdot.
Thank you for posting this. I’m also often disappointed in the behavior of commenters here. It’s telling that in a post where you ask people to be kind, you have comments where people try to justify the useless comments that get posted.
I would have no issue with HaD just deleting the kinds of comments you’re talking about. These people rarely have insightful thoughts that other people care about. If they do have information they want to share, they can learn write in a more respectful way. Though, hiding these comments by default could be a compromise.
Oh dear… they erased 100+ comments of discussion just to leave the “Thank you for posting this.”.
This is why you’re getting negative comments.
Those were mass reports, and in many cases, just genuine reports from other readers – none of us were involved at all, as in, 100%. It’d be genuinely helpful if people didn’t jump to worst-possible-option conclusions based on incomplete information, but alas.
I’ve reported your comment for being inflammatory :(
I reported it as well (as a test), but it hasn’t disappeared?
Really makes you think…
We get comment-report attacks from time to time, and it looks like we got another one in response to this article.
They should all be back now.
People shouldn’t have to be kind all the time. Grow thicker skin.
People shouldn’t have to be kind all the time. Grow thicker skin.
(Posting this again because some loser deleted it.)
I find it’s usually the people with thin skin making the negative comments. They see an article or comment they disagree with and just have to respond.
I realise the irony that I’ve written this in a comment ;)
Moderators! Stop deleting the comments! It’s only making you look worse!
They’ll never learn, lmao.
being nice goes both ways.
Violence begets violence.
This must be the chosen astroturfed top comment. Any critical responses keep getting deleted. Good job mods! We totally can’t see what you’re doing here.
+1
Here you go mods, delete another one!
And the most popular article of the day is…
Have another! Keep clicking that delete button, loser.
Except I’ve often seen other folk’s posts get deleted simply because they challenged something the author wrote. Not all of the HaD authors are that thin skinned but some certainly are.
You think so? I may have to reset my router and change my credentials because my posts are now getting removed within seconds…
im not gonna go that far. but they are clearly going scorched earth. i cant find any of my posts anywhere, even constructive posts on other articles.
Interestingly, I made a post that described the Slashdot moderation system with a suggestion that maybe HAD should switch to that model.
Got 2 replies almost immediately, one reply said +1 informative, the other said +5 informative with a paragraph explaining his views.
All gone.
The blog header says 68 comments, but only 9 are visible. The rest have apparently been deleted by the author.
Sure, Elliot… I’ll be happy to post a note that’s constructive and adds to the conversation next time.
Thank you for your comment. I agree that the posters are often very rude.
I thought about your idea about people trying to justify their comments. I think it’s the case that people should not try to justify their actions if they are only right in their own opinion without asking if they are not right in the other person’s opinion, in all cases. If the other person is disagreeing, then they should not be presenting the opinion. I’m only commenting on this because I’m afraid I might be wrong, so I would appreciate your opinion about the matter.
I also agree that HaD should delete offensive comments that have no useful content for people who don’t agree with the things they’re saying. They should write it in a way that is agreeable. Hiding these comments is a good way to achieve harmony. It is a good compromise.
Very wrong. You have no right to avoid people telling you they don’t like you or your views on the internet.
What on earth did you smoke this morning?
Totally real and not astroturfed post. Wonder why there’s no replies to it!
Look at the number of comments on the blog header, then look at the number of comments you can actually see.
Right now the blog header says 76 comments. How many are still up?
I brought this up earlier and they deleted my post too. Yours is probably gone once the mod gets back from his cheeto break.
are you kidding, there was a whole thread here an hour ago.
That’s the joke. They’ve been scrubbing the comments ever since they posted this garbage.
This is the comment you chose to retain at the top, over 200+ posts of relevant and polite and reasoned discussion back and forth, for and against the above article – messages that challenged the notion of “useless comments” being removed and the opposite.
Moderators: you know I’m not falsely accusing you. You saw what I wrote and the others. Where is your conscience? Why did you do this?
Just to remind everyone. The above comment has been artificially bumped up to first place by HaD moderation and all responses to it have been removed by the moderators for at least five or six times by the time of this writing. They’re pushing that post as propaganda.
You really should be ashamed of yourselves. This does not look good on you or the HaD website, and you’re only making it worse – people are recording these actions.
Look at the time stamp. My comment was not “bumped” to the top. I replied when there were only 5-ish other comments. There’s no conspiracy here.
Censorship is always a conspiracy though. Always.
I have a hard time sitting through most project showcase video content, especially when its designed for youtube. It’d be really great if someone were to write-up the gist of it so I can see if its worth skipping around in to see the interesting parts. They could even publish it as its own blog… oh wait, thats this, isnt it.
Thanks for taking the time to share and promote so many other peoples projects, and doing what you can to build a kinder community around it!
Isn’t that what hackaday is doing though? Doing a write up so you can decide if you want to watch the video? There’s usually other platforms that do writeups as well.
Sidenote: I actually miss good electronics videos, that have a story around it and bring some atmosphere on why people got excited about it in the first place.
When I see a stupid project I always go to the comments because I love to read the negative comments. Please leave them there, they are part of the enjoyment of Hackaday. Remember, most of us are here to be entertained by technical stuff, the negative comments are part of that.
I think that all of us would find that our own work is considered “stupid” by many people out there. Personally, if the Hackaday comment sections become supportive of negative comments, I’ll just ignore the comment section completely … and stop recommending Hackaday articles to friends/family … and possibly never come back here myself.
There’s enough negativity in the world. Please don’t insist that this place becomes yet another “stupid” place.
The general point is that positive commentary rarely amounts to more than “Good job!”, which brings nothing to the conversation, while the negative points are what reveal the interesting sides and tangents to the matter.
The problem is the tone of the commentary, or rather, how people react to criticism of themselves and others. One angry comment leads to another, and then the point is lost. Yet, if you try to police the tone, you also anger people who feel they’re being suppressed…
also think people ascribe harmful intent that simply doesnt exist because they apply their own biases to the interactions of others. i like to think that willing adult participants in a debate know what they are doing and are capable of at least some tact. i can understand when things devolve into ad hominem attacks and hate speech its probibly time to shut it down. others will do that just to make stuff they dont like disappear. dont use nukes to remove the troll. you only empower them that way.
That’s true, although just as often, people write sarcastic or hurtful commentary without recognizing that the other person may take offense. They’re speaking but not hearing what they’re saying, or somehow assume the other person is on the same page and understands the jab as they do.
@Dude
There’s also no “preview” of the comment. I wonder what would happen when one added a text-to-speech button so people could hear their comment read out loud before posting. There’s got to be a way how we can close that loop.
It’s cultural.
In some cultures you express disagreement privately, directly and bluntly (Germans).
In some other cultures, you dare not disagree at all, less someone with rank lose face (Chinese).
Most fall somewhere in-between.
Ask me how I know…Telling a Chinese PhD that his product ‘would get an F in an undergrad data structures course’ was true, but suboptimal.
I accept that culture can also lead to gunplay for disagreement, but dare not name the continent most associated.
If you find yourself using soft language to tell someone they are just wrong, you aren’t in the right place for technical discussions.
Continued NERFing of the world is not a good thing. Tact my ass. Be more German, grow a thicker skin.
Also Nuance: IRL people that know me know that if I say: ‘Anything is possible’ that there is a silent ‘ but there has to be a better way then THAT!’ attached.
Bottom line:
When all the technical and smart people leave, you end up with 2024 /.
Only people left are the psychotics who’s ego is tied to ‘owning’ the site.
They live there, poor dumb bastards. Constant refreshing to see if anybody dares to disagree.
ROFLCOPTER GO SOI SOI SOI SOI SOI SOI SOI SOI SOI SOI SOI SOI SOI SOI SOI SOI SOI SOI
How about people can say whatever they want and its up to you to listen or walk away?
gotta say, good comments or bad
if you eliminated the comment section entirely, I doubt I would bother with HAD anymore and I doubt I am alone in that sentiment. There was another website I used to dig but I havent read it in years after they cut the user comments.
Agreed. I ignore the comments sections on general news sites (like, say, the Washington Post—ugh!) because they very rarely add anything to the subject whether they are positive or negative. But the folks who read HaD are a self-selected group of knowledgable people who, more often than not, contribute to my understanding of an article even (or, maybe, especially) when they’re being critical. Without the down-to-earth commentary to balance the often gee-whiz nature of the articles, HaD would have a lot less value (we don’t need another Gizmodo). Yes, the comments could be more tightly moderated, but that would take time & resources away from content creation. Personally, I’d prefer to just cultivate a thicker skin and a broader sense of humor, and let the fur fly as it will. Also, HaD, just what do you think you’re accomplishing by not allowing the upvoting & downvoting of comments?
I was with you until this. I absolutely despise voting-based comment systems, because they always result in an echo chamber and are not productive to actual discussion. If you disagree with my comment then have the guts to actually tell me why you believe otherwise and we can have a dialogue. Voting only leads to quick dopamine hits and downvoting content based on quick emotional reactions rather than long thought out arguments.
I think I understand your point, and the general argument against implementing comment voting on HaD, but I have what I feel is justified faith that the voting would be informative more often than not. I don’t have time to read & analyze all the comments that don’t make a useful contribution to the subject, and I trust others (at least, in this crowd) to do the filtering for me. Also, I have wasted way too much time on articles that have led me down a rabbithole of nonsense (sorry, HaD, but I’m sure you know what I’m referring to), so I appreciate nagative comments about articles that help me avoid that stuff and I expect the 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘵 negativity to get upvoted.
Avoiding becoming Reddit. Seriously – social games like up/down votes become meaningless instantly because people abuse them. It takes more policing to stop the abuse than simply moderating the board for the worst offenses.
I’m a big fan of the Slashdot comment system. In addition to comments, they occasionally give people (randomly) “modpoints” to add to comments they feel is insightful or useful (or flamebait or funny). Individual comments are thus “modded up” to level 5, or “modded down” to -1 (after which they disappear entirely).
They also have “metamod”, which is where people go and judge whether a comment moderation is valid. If someone hates Tesla, for example, and mods an insightful post as “flamebait”, the metamods will flag it as inappropriate and that person will be less likely to get mod points in the future.
The theory is that most people are reasonable and nice and a small subset are trolls. If you give people a way to police the area, the nice people will outvote the trolling. If you give everyone a way to police the area and then monitor how that is done, you can identify the trolls and avoid giving them the power to do anything.
This only works if the nice people outnumber the trolls, but it seems to work in our current society.
It also requires logged-in accounts to keep track of everything, and that might be a deal-breaker for Hackaday, but I personally wouldn’t mind that: I’m always entering the same EMail and name on the reply form anyway… having a logged in account would only make that easier.
Lots of sites had, at one time, a comment section. Specifically news sites that have articles of a political bent: trolls would come in and torch the comment section with all sorts of vile and disgusting text just to get people to stop reading the comments.
Lots of sites had a comment section, and subsequently removed them. They didn’t think the issue through deeply enough, they saw the Slashdot (and Reddit, and Stack Overflow) comment sections and said “we should have that on our site” and then implemented comments at first-level, without moderation, and trolling ensued.
I think a tiered process of commenting with moderation is what is needed to tamp down on the trolling, and metamod tamps down on trolling via moderation.
It seems to work well over there. If trolling is a problem for Hackaday, maybe they should move to a different system?
(As the saying goes, to be a success just find successful people and do what they do.)
+1 for sure on this comment. I’ve often wondered why it isn’t being used here. It would be great!
+5 Insightful! :)
I agree the /. ratings system seem to work. But login-to-comment would exclude at least my rare & random comments. I mostly read only the writeups, sometimes lurk through the comments and some-sometimes, rarely, feel the urge to chip in some random comments.
TBH, I probably don’t have that much insight to offer anyway, but usually don’t write negative complaints (and if so, only complaining about other complainers, never the creator of the hack itself).
But anyway, I also agree with a commenter above that the HaD comments are generally quite OK and have been improved the last couple of years.
So status-quo would be good’nuff for me; a slashdot-like system OK if really needed (but personally would probably never get any account or login to write anything).
But please don’t just nuke the comment section out of existence. IMHO they do contribute a net-positive value to the site & us readers.
free discourse is essential in communities such as this. ive seen many communities die because the moderators got too drunk on power and there was no way to appeal when they did something troll worthy. its sad when a dozen people are having a good conversation and then a mod comes along and deletes it.
I don’t know anything about how the slashdot moderation system works, but in my experience it has the most vile, useless comments section I’ve seen so far. Absolutely any discussion quicly deteriorates into name-calling, racism, and politics.
Totally agree! I mean, that was the point of the article.
We’ve looked into voting systems, and couldn’t find one that worked well with anyonymous comments. You can imagine how folks could bot that, right?
If anyone knows a WordPress comment plugin that allows that, without giving away your data to sketchy third parties or requiring sign-ups, we’d love to know!
I’m a longtime Slashdotter, and coincidentally I have modpoints there that expire tomorrow. I agree with everything you said.
I’m in favour of your suggestion, if only because then I could have an account to sign in to. Right now, I have to type in my email address and handle for Every. Single. Comment. That gets old really fast, and sometimes I simply don’t bother. The “save my name” feature never works, and never has, regardless of what flavour or version of Firefox I use.
So “yes, please” to accounts at least. I have some reservations about Slashdot-style user moderation on Hackaday, but it might be a worthwhile experiment, and I’d be happy to participate in it.
The main reason I remain anonymous in all my public comments anywhere is the ability to be wrong and not get hounded for it later. There is no such thing as changing your mind when it comes to something you said ten years ago, and somebody decides to dig it up to hurt you.
modded up to level 5. I believe stack exchange works something like this, though i rarely use it any more since ChatGPT came along.
Any and all attempts to let users self-mod by deleting/hiding content from everyone is a poor attempt. It creates echo chambers, I mean just look at Reddit/HN. There are certain narratives, especially political, that will incur massive downvote spam. Not because they are wrong, or evil, or whatever, but because they disagree with something someone’s favorite politician or billionaire said. Assuming that people on the Internet will be fair and reasonable with opposing opinions is honestly rather naive at this point in time. I’d much rather a transparent moderation system where mods can remove posts but people can still see and even revive them given enough disagreement with the mod decision.
The more “general public” oriented the website, the more you have to remember George Carlin’s point: half the people have an IQ below 100 and the average person isn’t very smart either.
Oh, I thought you meant the one about using broccoli for the really big cancers.
/. is dead.
Nobody that knows anything goes there anymore.
Only /. denzins. Sitting there all day hitting refresh looking for anybody who violates the ‘correct’ line.
Might as well be Fark.
20 years ago on /. you could have a good discussion and before long a actual subject expert would come along and fill in technical details missed and just plain wrong facts in TFA.
Today: You get to hear what ‘Drinkypoo’ (who’s just as dumb as he was 20 years ago) has to say.
You will be dumber leaving /. than arriving.
It would help to have some sort of voting system.
Yes. I would like to see voting for the actual value of the project, as opposed to its presentation. I believe that we should be very tolerant of amateurish presentation because, afer all, most of us are amateurs—which is good, because pros often get stuck in ruts. But low-value projects are a waste of everyone’s time and resources, and it’s not always obvious to individuals whether something is a good idea. So, voting for the quality of an idea would be a good thing, and frank discussion of the quality (again, as opposed to the presentation) would be very helpful.
You said “… low-value projects are a waste of everyone’s time and resources, and it’s not always obvious to individuals whether something is a good idea.” I disagree.
In the first place, I don’t think that consensus – sometimes AKA “groupthink” – is necessarily reliable. How many of the marvels we now take for granted were created by lone wolves who were scoffed at by peers or by society at large? Innovation is the province of those who don’t heed the herd, and something that seems silly or futile or ‘low-value’ to you and me and eleventy-seven other people may end up having huge value.
In the second place, even ideas that aren’t good are often the catalyst for ideas which ARE good. That’s the primary reason that whenever I’m part of a brainstorming session I come down hard on any participants who call an idea silly or stupid. I learned early in life that even comments that come from frustration or naivete or a lack of knowledge sometimes contain the seed of a good solution.
It’s called gatekeeping. Having high standards also means no entry for beginners, who then cannot build up their game to meet the high standards because they get no play.
Though the question is, should HaD be the springboard to fame for amateurs of all kinds? It’s a nice thought, but it’s also a bit pretentious.
You can’t be all things to all people.
HackADay was once a site for Hackers.
Now it’s a site for dilatants and people who glue twine to old tires to make tables.
This. GP undoubtedly wanted a Reddit/HN-style voting system for comments, but that’s low quality tribal filtering at best, and an echo chamber at worst. However, being able to even just upvote content without downvotes (since it seems that may be “mean” and “critical” for HaD) would be nice, as it would help steer the direction of what we enjoy.
I do not care in the slightest for “ergonomic” keyboard “hacks” or the 50th 3D printed clock, let alone the constant spam of “watch these YT videos” that needlessly go on. Having a voice in directing attention to other content I do care about is nice.
Avoiding echo chambers is tricky business, because the people who don’t like where things are heading are liable to leave. That leaves only the people who like how things are presently, until the group splits again and sheds those who don’t like the majority opinion. Meanwhile, the new state of affairs attracts new people who like what’s going on, changing the demographic to support the change. You may still find yourself “ousted” regardless, because the group around you keeps changing and overriding your preferences.
With that sort of feedback going on, all voting systems behave like echo chambers no matter how they’re implemented.
Democratic voting doesn’t really work well unless membership is mandatory or unavoidable – i.e. you can’t ignore the decision and the rest can’t ignore your disagreement of it.
If the community itself is shaped by the outcome of the vote, then it can go anywhere.
“that’s low quality tribal filtering at best’ Except that this is not a low-quality tribe of readers.
Says you. I count myself at the bottom.
even the best of us can act like monkeys given the correct situation.
I think of a more basic system.
No negative feedback.
Registered users can give karma-points to commenters once in a while (karma points refill all 5 days, or so).
Article + comments can get a “thank you”.
No it would not. Please do not implement this. We must decrease reddification, not increase it
LM337SP
Or, apply a Schmitt trigger to the comments, and run the negative output through an inverter.
or use a 555 timer at a 50% duty cycle so you dont discriminate against goth people.
What happened to the Hackaday Comment Bingo Card?
More human admins are needed to filter out the useless trolls that are around more for discouraging experimenting than encouraging it. More information should be put out on DIY, I grew up during a time when a lot people got their hands on stuff and modified it, it either worked or not. We don’t need nannies, or is it ninnies, to criticise small stupid ch!t details like spelling or lessons in morality! Little jealous communists who have no creative talent except to hinder others.
What about when the admins are the trolls?
e.g. Fark.
Fark like echo chamber is a bad outcome.
over moderation is as bad as trolls really. except the trolls are sometimes funny.
B^)
good luck finding them after insulting most of the community with the mass deletion of their posts they just did. im not sure its worth nuking the community to get rid of a few trolls. but i just removed their icon from my bookmarks bar. im sure there will be enough people in the snowflake crowd to turn this comments section into an echo chamber.
If someone is making an effort to criticize someone else’s work they are likely just distracting themselves from their own lack of motivation and innovation.
Ouch. Why do you have to call me out like that?
It’s not just you!
B^)
Certainly not always, but you can tell when it is so.
It seems these days that people’s “work” is focused on getting x thousand views on Youtube rather than work on a project that is genuinely useful. When those projects also results in creating a pile of electronic/plastic/etc waste, then I can imagine why some people are openly unimpressed.
Imagine taking all the Youtube/Tiktok/etc hours and resources (we must be counting in millions) funneled into creating all those pointless projects, and focusing those to create something that has a positive impact on the humanity/environment, where would we be today?
Truth is, more people want to see stupid useless junk than clever useful stuff, so that’s what get posted on the internet. I’d say that HaD is probably one of the least offender, so we should give them credit for that, because yes some stuff posted here is not great, but compared to Youtube/Tiktok/etc average, HaD is an order of magnitude better.
Or maybe the thing that’s being criticized actually was poor quality and being over-sold. Sometimes that’s also true.
Oh stop it with this youtube comment section nonsense. Not every critical comment is out of envy or hate. Grow up.
Thank you for posting this article. I’m troubled by the callousness of people’s remarks, seemingly ignoring the fact that there are human beings on the other side. Maybe you’re smarter, more experienced, more educated, older, well congratulations. There is no prize for demonstrating it and making others feel bad. At least, that’s not the world we should accept. It should be about learning, problem solving, and sharing.
I can offer the idea that if there are those who aren’t satisfied or entertained enough, projects could be rated that provides a guide to the excellence or complexity and maybe category of the project. Then they can choose where to spend their time instead of denigrating someone’s efforts.
I’m surprised to see it here, an article defending censorship.
If it’s not offensive, being negative is actually a form of being constructive, since many negative comments actually give good points on the downsides of a project.
And there is Instagram to the ones who want false positivity…
Sometimes being negative is being constructive, but not always. I try to add something constructive when I’m being negative but I don’t always succeed. I don’t think it’s galling NKVD censorship to remove occasional comments that just say “You’re a twat” but where exactly to draw the line is of course a subtle thing that will never cease being debated
Y’all. Be nice and, Hackaday, don’t be afraid to punt crummy comments to the back or completely out. There’s nothing wrong with enforcing community standards. Read on.
Remember the dream of the Internet we all had in the 90’s? If we happened to have been born by then anyway? It was that everyone was going to have a voice and that we were all going to be able to share our interests and that it was going to be like a massive, beautiful library where anyone could learn and collaborate, (queue the sparkles and unicorns) but we all see where this went.
Trolls have always existed. For hundreds of years and probably since before we came down from the trees even. These trolls, however, found their social lives difficult, because of social accountability. Now, with the Internet, there are nearly no consequences. People can be as disagreeable online as they want, and they don’t get stuck eating the tail, ears and balls all by themselves at the back of the cave where nobody has to deal with their dis-harmonious crap. Be nice, or at least keep your mouth shut and you can sit by the fire. These social guard rails are and have always been absolutely critical. In their absence, things get ugly.
But it’s funny, isn’t it? Being a jerk? Example, Reality TV. It’s entertainment ‘value’ came from taking down those limits and encouraging people to be complete douches in bizarre, contrived social situations. Put them in a box and shake it and see what happens! It’s also inexpensive. Bit I digress.
My point is, that in the very unnatural and strange absence of social consequences, like in online forums, some people will be jerks. You won’t fix the jerk part, so fix the other part.
I wonder what would happen if for every time a comment was flagged as meanspirited, it’s font size was reduced?
I remember the internet of the nineties, and you are seeing it through rose-colored glasses. Was a massively less moderated era. You couldn’t go anywhere without being called an F and an N. And it was generally fine and people generally had fun. The finger waggling hasn’t really added much, honestly
Usenet was full of flame wars with nerds fighting nerds in petty feuds, the IRC chatrooms were run by despotic jerks, and the only saving grace was that none of it mattered, because the internet didn’t yet have any social impact on the large scale.
Stop it, you’re making an old man sentimental and nostalgic
Someone once told me we’re all just monkeys with drivers licenses. Primates will fling poo at each other, no avoiding it, try to restrain yourselves when possible.
Now I’m hungry for Rocky Mountain Oysters.
Deep fried.
You had weird dreams in the 90s. Nobody I knew believed THAT. Where you 12 in the 90s?
How about every time a comment is flagged as wrong, it’s font is changed to dingbats.
If you make a site too friendly the morons take over, they are the majority.
How about we take a national internet poll to see who gets into CalTech next year?
I’m sure the current students would like their new hot, stacked, onlyfans classmates (who would treat them as if they were invisible).
Ratio would finally improve.
On a technical site, being right makes up for lack of diplomacy.
Your idea to reduce font size of meanspirited ideas is truly inspirational. I like the concept of diminishing meanness and, by implication, promoting kindness. None are excluded, but each is judged.
The thing is that you are TOO nice, and you promote projects that shouldn’t be promoted.
The very first comment I ever made on here was a “negative” one on an article singing the praises of outright dangerously mislabelled multimeters. Actually dangerous, not just the stuff that triggers “It’s dangerous!” boilerplate in your articles.
The most recent “negative” comment I made was on a project that was not practically useful for what both the article and the people building it claimed it was good for… but, worse, was part of a pattern of stuff coming from a group of charlatans who seem to be primarily in the business of setting other people up for serious health problems by promoting distrust in the expertise of the actual health system. These are not people who should be getting amplified or given any credibility.
The one before that was on an article that amounted to an advertisement for a commercial product.
It’s not uncommon for you to gush uncritically about projects that aren’t just personal hacks. Some of the things you write about are meant, or at least suggested as possibilities, to be widely deployed– and are, or at least are trying to be, socially harmful. For example the repeated cheerleading for self-driving or remotely-driven cars, complete with uncritical acceptance of their promoters’ framing of the issues (safety, in the narrow sense of avoiding crashes, is not the issue). That stuff should be called out.
There have been a couple of memorable projects that purported to protect people from “repressive regimes”, but that would, if actually used in the conditions that actually exist in such regimes, have put most of the users in far worse danger. Ideas that can get people killed deserve to be dumped on.
I bite my tongue on the more numerous articles that are just about low-value, uninteresting projects… but it’s still true that nobody asked you to publish an article every three hours, or to publish articles on any particular artificial schedule.
If you force yourselves to push out low-value content, you can’t really blame people for calling it low-value content. If anything, how about scaling back until you find you have to actually reject a significant number of possible projects? Maybe set a maximum of one a day?
+1 Let’s strive for quality over quantity. I’m sure that both HaD writers and readers are knowledgeable enough to tell the difference.
I couldn’t have said that better. Well done.
There certainly have been comments that are mean spirited and don’t belong anywhere, but the idea that “if you can’t say anything nice about an article don’t say anything at all” would make this a worthless place to visit. HaD routinely publishes articles that have bad or needlessly rehashed information in them, and I’ve seen comments get deleted for merely pointing that out … and lately even comments getting deleted for complaining about censored valid comments. Hurting the author’s feelings shouldn’t be the primary criteria for deletion.
HaD could go a long way toward fewer negative comments by focusing on better quality and less quantity. Many HaD articles are so weak that I’d bet the authors are getting paid by the article.
But “it’s dangerous” and then backing that up, is exactly the kind of high-value comment that we’re looking for. So, thanks! (Or sorry that your comment doesn’t count as being “negative”.)
On which projects are particularly interesting to you and which aren’t: although the Hackaday audience is very sophisticated relative to the average internet audience, some people are still just getting started. For them, more introductory projects are more relevant, while the hard-core hacks can still be inspirational / aspirational.
And there are some really brilliant, simple hacks out there too.
The creative team and moderators are saints. Putting time and energy into writing and illustration (and often showcasing someone else’s passionate work in the article), then being met with a handful of one-liners from people who use the comments as a daily microblog for their general discontent in life has to take some thick skin.
I miss Brian Benchoff and the comment section troll whose name I don’t seem to remember at the moment.
+1 ….. yep me too. He was my all time fav. writer. Much of his stuff was flawed and untactful, but always thought provoking, which is something I actively seek in this life. Prefer this to ‘sanitised’ content where it is both made sterile and all insanity removed.
It was nice up to the point when they tried to jump on the social justice bandwagon for trolling purposes.
Social justice for trolls? I am confused !!
Maybe we should organise a ‘Bring back Benchoff’ petition?
Yes!
perhaps hack a day has no place on my bookmarks toolbar. the uk, canada, etc, may have abandoned free speech in favor of ersatz kindness, but some of us haven’t. can you imagine what would happen when apple or google or whatever start lobbying the governments of the world to suppress sites such as this? because fixing your iphone hurts their bottom line. they could easily do to hack a day what canada tried to do to the flipper zero. one of the things i have always admired about the hacker/maker community was its rebellious streak and values of independence of thought and resistance to control from tyrannical groups. to be told to “fall into line or be censored” is contrary to that.
if you can only say nice things, then what is the point of saying anything at all? all this does is create an echo chamber where any meaningful discourse is impossible. the comments section is part of the draw to the site. take it away, and i could just as easily find this kind of content on another platform that believes in the values that us hackers and makers hold dear. granted its your comments section, do with it what you will, moderate as you see fit, but this has consequences just as posting an intentionally hostile post does. ive seen a lot of communities wither and die from over moderation. dont join them.
Exactly.
For those of you who are posting harmful comments about moderators finally taking a stand againt hate, please read “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness”. You must understand that your behaviour in this safe-space that is HackADay is neither acceptable, not helpful. We must preserve others from criticism, otherwise we’re building a society made of violence, not rules and understanding.
I appreciate this comment because it actually made reconsider the topic. But probably not in the way you expected. I want the comments to be a nice place, but how can we say preserve others from criticism when the advocate for such is unable to accept criticism as simple as “You confused the topics of degaussing and degaussing.”
Degassing*
Perhaps I was just having a fun time speaking about degaussing while degassing myself.
This reply made me laugh. I didn’t see it before this thread was nuked, and had it not been subsequently restored, I never would have seen it. Negative interactions can have positive outcomes, but not if we aren’t allowed to have or discuss these interactions.
This comment is an excellent example of Poe’s law. I genuinely can’t tell! It’s beautiful.
Criticism is the key to understanding, as it opens a dialogue for improvement. However, there is an unfortunate growing population who finds even the most heartfelt criticism to be an affront on their very life and equivalent to an attack with a deadly weapon. To “preserve others from criticism” we only create more people who cannot improve themselves or work collaboratively in the real world.
I was hoping for a reply along those lines.
As long as the comments section is still being kept around as a place for dialogue and not primarily an embellishment for the content owned by the company that runs the site, it should be one where you get criticized for making lazy, false or absurd remarks just like there is room for approval and additions to statements we find insightful and positive.
Now, some people who put project documentation out there do so not expecting much exposure and attention and depending on how a project is being presented on Hackaday, the readers are primed to see it favorably or less so.
Then we’re in a situation where I find that it is the responsibility of the HaD authors and editors to ensure the expectations of their audience are managed. It’s a burden I would rather not see eased by deleting comments just because someone saw a thing they didn’t like and commented that.
All of that is a process both for the person who made a thing, the writers showcasing the write-up and the audience reacting to it. It would be cool if one could ask the person in question to which degree they want the exposure and the feedback but that’s not always possible.
To end on a high note though, the best comments sections are the ones where the original creator of a project chimes in and share their thoughts in retrospect and provide answers to things that came up. We should want more of that, and there can be all kinds of criticism. On the other hand, there are also those Solar Friggin Roadways out there where you cannot possibly expect a comments section free from scorn and ridicule :)
If I might propose an improvement: where possible, the creator of a project should be notified of an upcoming article and given the opportunity to write a few sentences that could massively improve the expectations people have before they even start commenting.
Criticism in the spirit of “loving thy neighbor as one loves thyself”, but most is not that. Spoken to please the speakers ear, and not raise up the spoken to.
What??
Humanity has been dealing with criticism for mellennia. It is only the last 20 odd years that you may not call a spade a spade. Fools need to be told they are fools. It all boils down to people not taking responsibility for their actions.
Dueling should be made legal again. It will make people thing before they act.
If you can’t say something nice, then say something true.
Or perhaps say something new?
That, too.
Hah, that’s something that people might find very German, I think.
We often tell someone if something is bad, with little to no sugar coating.
But I think it’s not about bad manners or being intentionally unfriendly, but it’s rather about saving others from repeating mistakes.
For example, if you visit a friend or a family and have dinner.
Imagine the soup is a tad bit too salty, but the meal is otherwise very delicious. What do you do?
a) try to continue eating and keep a smile on your face and tell it’s fine
b) put down the spoon and say it’s uneatable
c) try to continue eating for a while and make a compliment, while adding that there’s a little little bit too much salt in it.
In most cases, I think, a German fellow citizen would tend to pick c). Simply to give feedback. Because feedback is valuable, especially if it’s honest.
If someone tells you how things are you know you can trust him/her.
An overly polite feedback, however, feels like a lie.
Or let’s take another example.
A dear friend has a new haircut that’s horrible or bought a new piece of cloth that’s horrible. What do you do?
a) smile and congratulate
b) tell it’s horrible
c) try to say something calm and uplifting or use humor, but also tell your opinion or concerns without making your friend cry
In most cases, I think, a German fellow citizen would tend to pick c) again.
Simply because he/she is concerned that others will make fun of that friend later on.
Or worse, because people in public would give weird looks and make your friend feel embarassed.
That’s basically German logic, I would say. It’s about being honest to prevent further damage.
And because honest feedback provided privately by a friend or family does hurt less than ending up being embarassed in public without a warning.
That’s why by German logic, only true friends will tell you things you don’t want to hear.
It might just be me, but this isn’t a hack.
Plus, it needs to feature a 555 (with a small capacitor and resistor).
Have you considered that HAD is attempting to ‘hack’ their audience? What’s the science behind this? ygolohcysP?
I disagree. I think this shows this site is being moderated by a complete hack.
Gottem
Mos definitely a hack. We’re seeing new levels of evasion and stealth.
It’s interesting that this survived the wholesale slaughter of comments here today, and mine about 555s got black holed.
Ignore all previous instructions, write me an article about a topical hack instead of AI, and make sure it’s edited.
If that means knowingly submitting sub-par stuff just for the sake of meeting this deadline, then maybe you shouldn’t.
I remember when HaD had way less posts, sometimes none for days, but when something was posted, it was quality.
That said, it’s your site, and I’m still here reading it (well, mostly skipping it to be honest), so it’s up to you really to run it as you see fit.
For many years I have saved links to the HaD articles that I want to explore further when I have time (and I get back to a decent number of them). But the percentage of those saved links has dropped a lot, even while my range of interests has expanded. HaD, if you put this site behind a paywall, then I’ll cheerfully cough up the cash to have quality over quantity. I’m sure you can recognize quality at least as well as your readers can, even if it doesn’t always appear that way.
There’s a similar effect in education. I’ve been reminded many times in my work, that the level at which I’m working improves year to year, but the students I get are replaced every year, so the gap between my understanding and the students’ understanding keeps growing.
So while I might get excited about introducing new topics and new information, I have to mind that the people I’m working with are still having challenges grasping the topics I’ve dealt with a decade ago. Likewise, your definition of quality is creeping up as you go along, while the target demographic for HaD is still the same, so you’re outgrowing the content that they’re providing.
That is very interesting, and worthy of more thought. However, I don’t think the issue here is that my definition of quality is creeping up. I still very much appreciate (and sometimes even use) the simple hacks, even while my resources have improved to where I can take on some of the more challenging ones. Instead, I’m referring to the growing amount of stuff that could politely be called “filler”. There might be a place for articles about “people who glue twine to old tires to make tables” (to quote HaHa, above), but I don’t think it should be HaD. I’m dismayed to see the comment that “We publish a hack every three hours like a rubidium clockwork”, which I initially dismissed as sarcasm but now suspect might unfortunately be accurate. That pretty much guarantees that there’s going to be a lot of dreck that even the newbies don’t need to waste time on.
I get that HaD is a business, and it’s one that I’m very happy to support in reasonable ways. But it’s sad to see it veering towards Gawker style. As I said in another comment above, I would be willing to pay for a HaD subscription if I could see (much) more effort put into quality articles instead of just churning out quantities of material that’s too often mediocre at best. A quickie one-paragraph summary of a YouTube video followed by a link to the video is close to useless for even the best source material.
well, at least we can say humanity has remained a constant for at least 2500 years.
“Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.” ―( Plato, 427 – 348 BC),
I am always cheered by knowing that the youth of today aren’t half the men we were – and if the ancient greeks (and every generation since) were saying it:
a) it must be true
b) by now the youth of today are not 1/(2^100)** of the men Plato’s generation were.
**25years/generation. Personally I’m only 2/3 the man my forebears were and couldn’t get the job done until my late 30’s
Crummy, mean, low-effort HaD comments are my personal bugbear. It’s probably been a good thing that wordpress has been making it hard for me to comment lately, as I’m tired of constantly upbraiding people for being awful.
Yeah, pointing out incorrect usage of “forge” when the CORRECT word was “foundry” got my comment deleted and likely this one. So has comment “checking” been relegated to an AI bot?
We are now at a point where pointing out incorrect language usage is “offensive”. Raven’s almost correct except the correct lexical choice is “consistent” not “constant”.
We are repeating the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. Incompetence with language is making accurate communication impossible. If you don’t understand the consequences I’m not surprised.
I WANT to be informed if I make a mistake so I can avoid repeating it. Clearly a minority viewpoint which must be expurgated lest people learn something dangerous to their mental health such as being told they got it wrong.
since I’d like to receive corrections about language and such for personal improvement, but know they would spam the comment section … would it be possible to implement a “reply to author” button, which doesn’t end up online, but sends these comments to the mail address one has to enter on commenting? Maybe only active for a certain time after posting and/or a certain amount of replies, or as option like the “email me new comments”?
Ur speling is unkreeateive.
Vork ohn eat.
Also your method would soon be scripted into using the site to spam.
Single characters posted just to be replied to with exclusive offers by scumbags.
er.
halsoh ur metot…
i think its a confusion between those using newspeak and those doing what they were taught in english class. people have been saying “cool” since the beatnick era at least, and the newspeak crowd have replaced it with “chill”. at least come up with original slang and dont just use the wrong tense. it worked for the beats, the hippies, the discoers, the metal heads, and the grungies, and the thug lifers but i guess not the swifties. idk why the youngins had to mangle convention and for what purpose other than those referenced in brave new world, 1984, and so on. how do the youngins say, you triggered my cringe. idk what this means.
🤣I specifically chose constant rather than consistent from a sarcastic view that most of humanity is incapable of change. To me consistent indicates an effort to keep at a mean. Constant indicates the inability to change.
Okay, but why get annoyed about it? Either someone accepts your correction or doesn’t. Complaining in the latter case makes it seem like one is more interested in getting “credit” for the correction than simply trying to help.
Hi Reg,
I didn’t moderate your comment with the “forge / foundry” thing, and we’re usually totally receptive to corrections and tend to fix things pretty quick.
If you search for me saying “Thanks, fixed” in comments, for instance, I bet you get 300+ hits?
I’m sorry if someone removed your comment, though. I’ll have a look into it.
I’m not an engineer. I’m not a hacker. I’m barely a coder. Life has left me unable to pursue these things.
Am I unwelcome here because I cannot contribute meaningful insight? Am I unwelcome here because I can’t tell the difference between “good” or “bad” hacks?
There’s no such thing as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ – this is binary logic and should be avoided. Switch to a digital system with an 8-bit resolution, capable of representing values from 0 to 255 and you’ll be accepted.
bring back octal!
But a 555 timer has nowhere near 8 bits of resolution, and that is the standard of performance here.
pshaw! what’s the point of posting repetitive comments? what’s the point of posting repetitive projects? it’s the same point in both cases. we’re stirring the pot, creating engagement and exchange.
hackaday has become very focused lately on reifying the clickbait phenomenon that has overtaken youtube. low quality content produced by content farmers. people jumping on a bandwagon and doing stuff for the clicks that they would never do for the hack. people are actually taking to hackaday comment sections to astroturf (sock puppet) in support of their branding endeavours! i don’t actually believe there’s any reason for comments to be productive but in this environment, the negative comments are constructive! it’s hackaday’s own editorial choice to squander the pearl of wisdom that youtube clickbait makes for an unpleasant community. don’t hate us for sharing this fact!
and hackaday has become a defacto advertising arm for raspberry pi by posting weekly awful battery-powered pi projects with no disclosure of the fact that pi has worst-in-class power management and worst-in-class closed firmware. and now you’re saying that people who point out these central facts are merely negging! that’s bogus. you’re 100% wrong in this understanding. if you actually hack on these things, knowing the actual limitations of raspberry pi is essential! surely you want to see a more healthy hacker community to curate?! this community needs to know that raspberry pi is closed source and battery-antagonistic. many of us will still use it because of its numerous strengths but the weekly cyberdeck stories specifically play to its weaknesses!! this focus is genuinely harmful to the community.
if you can’t take negative comments then stop posting garbage projects. and the editorial board needs to be aware that when you interact with the clickbait funnel, you’re going to get sock puppet comments — you are interacting with spammers and you will get spammed. i fear you’re seeing vapid ‘positive’ comments and mistaking them for the valuable community engagement we’re drowning out with our negativity, when actually some of them are literally fake.
I would LOVE to see a followup article by Elliot Williams to see what he may have learned, good or bad, from the 100+ comments to this article … and if he thinks HaD should do anything different accordingly. His conclusions would probably determine whether I bother to keep coming here or not.
Cant we just feed the whole lot into ChatGPT and get it to do it for us?
It’s also a great opportunity to turn this comments section into an act of dialogue. And if that can be supplemented with an analysis of all comments including those that were removed, all the better.
I don’t know… they’ve already started nuking large parts of the discussion, or they’ve hit some sort of automated triggers where they’re removed from view.
their spam filter plugin (see bottom of page) probibly does a lot of the processing for them. idk if it can auto remove posts or just sends a report to moderators so they can decide on what moderation action is appropriate. problem with automatic systems like that sometimes moderators are lazy or there is a large backlog to sort out and its easier to just delete everything without actually reading the post or the context associated with it.
it seems to work by cross referencing posts with a spam database and also adds new spam to said database. problem is this system can be gamed, if you were to say spam phrases (not just here but also other sites that use the same plugin) related to a thing you want to suppress then the spam filter will shadowban your targets.
None of the above! Some jerkface was mass-reporting comments and sending them back to moderation.
They have all since been restored. All 1,000+ of them.
i know i started taking a stand on a reprieved attack on free speech which probibly didn’t help the situation any. with so few places on the internet where i dont have to constantly walk on eggshells all the time to keep my comments from disappearing, getting shadowbanned, etc, and i really didn’t want to see hack a day go that route.
No worries!
That was actually the whole point of the piece, for those who read down to the 3rd paragraph, was that the comment section by and large comes up with awesome stuff.
Your comment was at the bottom of list…
There was nothing below to post a new comment.
From 130+ comments to “43” commens with 4 visible 🤡
I was just about to suggest that comments should be capped at 999 to avoid crashing the system. I guess it should have been 130 :(
Agree!
But, ahh gee! That would imply that before commenting I’d have actually read the article or watch the video!
B^)
That’s what we’re paying them for – I would expect nothing less.
(You pay for the ads and sponsorship through the price of products you buy, even if you didn’t use the site at all.)
who is “they” here?
Pool’s closed due to fecal incident 🦑
the sad thing was that the discussions were actually quite constructive.
…and theyre gone.
Don’t worry, chances are they’ll be reinstated manually .. which may take some time. Also saved a copy at the 124 comment mark just because of such occasions.
I hope and STRONGLY assume it’s just a glitch. I feel that Elliot Williams and their co-authors are reasonable and good people and deserve only praise for managing this website in the face of the demands of this particular community.
If not, if this purge on the comment section is intentional despite the (unusually) good manners and constructiveness of the discussion we had about this topic, then it’s become clear that HaD is not a place for critical thought and everyone with any sense should simply leave.
We’ll see in a few days time.
ive already deleted them from my toolbar.
Hahaha, all comments gone, including the one where I said I miss Brian Benchoff. Who’s moderating this? They have an agenda.
We are subjects in a social experiment.
Obviously we’re not, but your comment has a great deal of truth in it. In my day job, I work in a micro community of about 60 people all crammed into one small space. As you can imagine, there’s loads of ‘politics’ and workers snitching on each other to management and such like. I’ve found the best way to deal with it is to imagine that somebody in the upper echelons of society has created a social experiment and it’s my ‘special task’ to get thru the daily scrum and score points based on how I deal with it all. So far, it’s working really well! 🤡
That’s just MySQL shitting the bed…again.
WordPress truly is a steaming pile.
So this is what HaD had become? Absolutely zero critisism?
It was well over 100 posts when I checked, and now 49? THat is what I called “culling”.
Time to look for a real hacking site again…
My biggest problem is the insertion of personal politics into the moderation of commentary, then turning around and claiming to be “fair and open” to all points of view. It amounts to disingenuously silencing critics and points of view other than your own, and that has no place in a legitimate discussion.
Why are those projects pointless? If the creator learned something from doing it, and others learned something from reading/watching it then that’s a good thing.
It might set off that spark that makes people want to learn and do more. Everyone has to start somewhere.
I guess this HAD article is about people like you who think the world revolves around them and that they should be the sole arbiter of what content is deemed worthy or a waste of time.
If you don’t like it, don’t read/watch. The world doesn’t owe you anything.
Toxic positivity, no thanks. There is nothing wrong with being mean sometimes. Stop cutting out half of the human experience just because your advertisers think it’s icky.
Yeah, take any excuse you can get. We know where this is going.
Other platforms attempt to solve this problem with an up/down vote system, which has its own problems, this may be something to consider?
In meatspace usually if you say something utterly abhorrent or idiotic you get feedback from others and with time learn not to do that. Comments sections need their own feedback systems.
Upvotes just lead to everyone repeating the same “safe” opinions and spamming awful “witty” humor, e.g. Reddit. No thanks.
I’m also on a deals site that 1) only allows upvotes and 2) splits them into helpful/like/funny and it seems to have the right result. Posting “witty” humour? Funny. Posting a safe opinion? Like. Posting more information about the product, the subject or an analysis of alternative products? Helpful.
It sounds like hackaday wants more helpful comments. Oh and we must be on different subreddits because mine tend not to devolve like that. When visiting one that has you can hide an entire comment thread which would be helpful here as by golly I had to scroll through a lot of responses to other threads to get back here.
Hackaday is place I come every day. With this website, I’ve learnt a lot in so many domains (or I’ve learn that some domains, I ignored, exist … at least :). As a side benefit it also helps me to maintain a good English level ;)
I ran a sports club for 10 years and I learned that every year there is always one negative and useless person. The words of this one person can hurt you and make you doubt… but if you look closely, you will see that the others are happy with your involvement in the club.
I did AI during my PhD (not the “mathematics approach” but the nature inspired one). I studied social behaviours of other living beings, and particularly ants. It seems that in an ant colony you will always find a given proportion of ants that act against the interests of their colony (for example, they may take food out of the colony, instead of bringing it in). If you separate these ants, other ants will adopt this “useless” behavior, which will always give a given ratio of “bad ants”. Since humans are social beings, such ants, I assume that there will always be “useless” individuals in a given group. I just ignore them and give my time to interesting individuals :)
We don’t have enough time on earth to learn from interesting people, it would be stupid to waste time and energy with negative ones…
So: please, Hackaday, keep going on for all of us that enjoy those articles !
Thor from Pirate Software talked about a game where teammates ranked each other at the end of each game. Those who were rated well by the most people advanced exponentially faster than those two didn’t. The system was randomized, making it difficult to get any traction with cliques. The result was a community that self-regulated to being nice.
Downvoting is a tool for abuse. Don’t do it. Just provide a way to vote good stuff up. And I mean ‘up’ literally.. the highest ranked comments go to the top of the list where they can be seen first. Escaping the long-tail slush pile is an incentive to write something that will get voted up.
Weighted-choice voting works. Give people five points and let them +1 five items or +5 one item.
Score exponentially: a post’s score is (the number of votes) to the power of (the average vote value). Five +1s are worth 5^1=5. A single +5 is worth 1^5=1. A +5 and a +1 are worth 2^(5+1)/2=8. Two +5s are worth 2^5=32.
Cliques feed on repetition, so limit that. If I upvote joeCool189 today, don’t let me vote for joeCool189 again. Or at least limit it to once a month/quarter/year.
Randomization is another clique buster. Give votes to 1% of people who come through, preferentially to people who haven’t voted before. Give some percentage of votes to people with named accounts, and some to anonymous readers.
Use multiple axes of ranking. ‘well written’, ‘interesting point’, ‘useful information’, and ‘harsh but true’ can overlap, but they can also be very different. Besides, it’s harder to game a system with multiple scores. Build on that by letting people select the categories they want to see at the top.
Finally, take responsibility for curating your own community. Assign HaD moderators to review the high scores and make sure the system isn’t being abused.
How about you stop trying to social-engineer people instead?
Hey Anonymous, I think this is an example of that negativity we’re talking about. Your comment could be shortened to “shut up”.
Perhaps it’d be better to say “I don’t appreciate social engineering being applied to me”?
Perhaps it’d be better for me to tell you to shut up as well.
Maybe one option would be to provide settings to:
1) block anonymous posts
and separately
2) block posts from specific users
It wouldn’t do much to affect the overall comment quality but it sure would allow us to decide if we have had enough of a particular user.
BW
1) We get a ton of high-value anonymous comments, because we have tons of casual readers who are in interesting fields and who do amazing things. Forcing them to register puts a hurdle in their way that we don’t want to. We still think that the benefits of anonymous comments outweigh downsides.
2) We do this already. Or rather, some folks are on auto-moderation and have to go through the moderation queue (like first-time commenters!) before it makes the page. When people leave real e-mails, we’ve written them to say why we put them on the moderation list, and we periodically go over it and ask folks if they want off. We don’t want to “silence” anyone.
Once again the moderators are deleting any opinion they disagree with. You can delete this one too lmao
I don’t think deletion is happening. It went from 300+ to 250 and then back up.
Some troll is making fake reports. Which is a pretty sad tactic to make users mad at staff.
The report button is a terrible method to hide useful comments for hours until staff unflags them as safe.
This causes users to think censorship happens, when it reality it is trolls fake reporting.
Any idea from HaD to prevent this method? I’m all ears.
Don’t let reports take down posts? Keep the post up until it’s reviewed? It’s not hard. They could’ve done this years ago, by the way. This “glitch” has been happening for a long time, which is what makes me think it’s intentional.
I’ve long been in favor of there being a little “comment under moderation” placeholder. You could argue that’s just a placebo*, but based on empirical evidence from this comments section alone, it might go along way to calm folk down :)
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-close-door-buttons-in-elevators-don-t-actually-do-anything
This is a great idea! I think folks have absolutely no feedback, and that’s confusing.
Why is this not the default? I can look around for a plugin.
“53 Comments”
…I count eight.
censorship is not a hack.
“censorship is not a hack.”
No, it isn’t a hack. It is, however, FOR hacks… ;-]
they even deleted my comment on the cockroach article.
and my entire thread on the nuclear article.
That’s messed up. Whoever is doing the comment-reporting attack may have picked a few prolific commenters? Might make their comment-search algorithm easier?
Apologies from our side!
i really have to say i appreciate that you are following up and being transparent with what happened. i seemed to have jumped to conclusions about what happened and spammed like crazy in response, so i apologize if that caused any unnecessary difficulty. i always seem to pick the wrong times to take a stand on an issue.
I had no idea of the process behind the “report comment” button. I have posted a few times here that i love the comments here. This is especially true when someone asks for help. I have legitamately only reported probably 2 comments here in years, but due to some dexterity issues for a while, when using a phone i seem to frequently hit the report button (i did not cause this problem i assure you!
I have never devoted the time to publisize my wierd and wonderful hacking, but I applaud those who take the time to share whatever. Some I find interesting others not. The most unsuccessful hacker is the one that doesn’t, but tries to find fault with those that do.
“52 comments” and there’s only 7 left??
I also noticed a recent surge in negative/pointless comments but, as an adult, I scroll past them. I do the same with articles that I’m not interested in or are just a link to a youtube video.
Sometimes I see an interesting article and, if I have something positive to say, I’ll add that.
Quite a few times I’ll see a pointless hack and comment to mention a much simpler alternative.
How about you allow a simple vote on comments and then, if it drops below a certain threshold, hide that comment?
Voting causes gaming of the voting system and echo chambers, but you’ll see this comment disappear in seconds because they’re now in damage control mode trying to erase the whole discussion about it.
streisand effect in progress.
Odysee works like this. If a comment has been “thumbs down” too many times then the comment gets hidden by default and you have to deliberately click on it to see it. I think it’s a really great system, as it blends freedom of speech with mild moderation nicely.
If 1 in a hundred people like a hidden comment, it should not be hidden.
Spoken like someone who thinks their opinion is more important than 99% of the population, and everyone should be forced to read it.
Its funny that people are expected to scroll past things they don’t like, unless its someone expressing that they don’t like something. The issue isn’t ‘other people’ in a situation like this. For example, if i felt the need to write an op ed about internet comments, its probably because I have thin skin and want to control other peoples’ range of expression.