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Disclosure: I have done research on Hacker News comment sentiment: http://minimaxir.com/2014/10/hn-comments-about-comments/
You are asserting is a false dichotomy, where any negativisty is "bitching." If that is true, then the inverse, where any positivity is "pandering," would also be true. Between these two options, negativity is more productive since it actually leads to new insights and context, in stark contrast to the echo chambers of other SV-pandering tech sites.
The reason your comments about Meerkat (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9269693) were downvoted, for example, were because they added nothing to the discussion.
I rest my case.
Negativity has its place, but so does positivity. My comments on meerkat did add to the discussion, and, despite your disagreements, were upvoted. I like Meerkat - I think it's cool. I think Ben is a really smart guy, and no, I don't know him or have any connection to the product. But that's not the point.
The point is that it's endless and entirely one-way. It's a negative feedback loop. The more you hate something the cooler you are, because you must be intelligent enough to have reason to hate it.
Don't you see how this feels? I have 7,800 karma. I've commented on HN for years. And you assume that my leaving HN is because you called me out on one comment and that I can't handle negativity.
Is what we're doing fun or enlightening or positive or contributing to anything in any way?
Fuck this. I'm out.
Mostly I'm confused at what specifically you had an objection to since the submission provided no examples.
I've been commenting on HN for years too. HN is bad when it comes to issues about race/gender, yes, but for general demeanor, it has been improving a bit, thanks to dang and co.
The comment you linked to added to the conversation just fine. That it was downvoted seems churlish.
Negativity per se isn't a problem, but gratuitous negativity is. We've been planning for a long time to add something to the HN guidelines about that, and are likely to do so soon.
Edit: Very soon. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9317916
It may be helpful to explicitly differatiate negativity vs. gratuitous negativity in that case. (Most examples of gratuitous negativity I've seen are low effort "this site sucks" comments, which are downvoted for reasons unrelated to negativity, and ad hominem attacks are already in the guidelines.)
Have you tried https://news.ycombinator.com/classic yet? I've continued to enjoy HN for 2081 days thanks to this useful filter, which removes submissions from newer users.
This is helpful because it is primarily the users under 1000 days who are much lower quality. By browsing the classic section I find I can recapture some of what the message board was like when I joined nearly six years ago. The dream would be an HN with both submissions and comments filtered to users who are older than 1000 days.
It could be something like:
https://news.ycombinator.com/classic/item?id=9316022
This would allow you to filter out comments from the newer users.
Sounds like you are bitching about bitching