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Ask HN: Is it just me, or are HN comments becoming more and more negative?
74 points by ncarlson on Nov 6, 2009 | hide | past | favorite | 157 comments
In the early days of HN, there seemed to be a tight-knit group of entrepreneurs that offered support and advice to each other. Now when I read comments, there seems to be a race to see who can write the first criticism or who can pick out the first inconsistency.

Don't get me wrong, constructive criticism is essential for growth. But I feel like the atmosphere of the comments dialogue is becoming more and more negative each day. Am I the only one feeling this?

Maybe I'm just overly sensitive.



                 Quality of HN Comments Over Time
   |                   . .
   |                  .   . 
  q| . .             .     .
  u|    .           .       .               . . .
  a|     .         .          .           .       .
  l|      .       .              .      .           .
  i|       .     .                  . .               .    
  t|        . . .                       you are here -->. .
  y|                                      (that's all)
   |________________________________________________________
    S O N D J F M A M J J A S O N D J F M A M J J A S O N D
                 '08                     '09


Looks very seasonal to me... probably indicative that most of the readers are in the same hemisphere.

I know that when winter approaches for me, I tend to get a little disheartened with whatever I'm doing, want to quit and do something inspiring and new... Then when spring rolls around, things are so much better and I have a new lease on life.

I'd suggest comments reflect people's internal barometer, and there probably have been studies on this...


The majority of the english speaking net is in the northern hemisphere anyway - with notable examples of southern hemisphere mostly being limited to australia and brasil, sure there are other net users south of the equator, but those are the two countries with the most presence online...

The reason why brasil's huge online population doesn't really count in these kind of things is because they largely keep to their own communities, often portugese-speaking.

So it being seasonal in appearance isn't really much of a surprise.

I'd also argue that geek-types (which most of us are) seem to be more prone to SAD.


move to california ;)


Graph is shockingly accurate. I've deleted and created accounts in each peak and trough you laid out.


Why do you delete and create accounts? How do you delete an account?


Wouldn't this mean that you're part of the problem? Just kidding :p


Did you generate that from intuition, or by some concrete algorithm?


I'm pretty sure intuition : )


I smell a GraphJammer.


I assume this is what chasingsparks is referring to: http://graphjam.com/


That's different. In the early days of the web, the quality of any board <<<<< forum was destined to plummet every September, then slowly rise with attrition until after Spring break.

But then maybe there aren't that many students here ???


That looks like a damped harmonic oscillator to me.

Which I guess makes sense :)


Hopefully it's driven.


A little, probably. There are good days and bad days. I was particularly struck by the harshness of this one:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=925034

and also that such a huge number of people piled on to vote it up.

In fact, that makes me wonder: could it be the voting that makes the tone of the site seem more negative? There are often nasty comments lurking at the bottom of a thread with 1 point or less, but they're not very noticeable. Whereas this one + 49 points (currently) = an angry mob.


I think one problem is that there are two different ways people can vote. One is to cast a vote for or against a comment, expressing your opinion. This works well when there the point total is low.