To be fair, there was a good decade and a half, maybe two, where Usenet was the place to have deep, meaningful and respectful conversations. Most netiquette conventions were first established there.
Then Eternal September happened, binaries and spam flooded the network, and users looking for good discussions moved on.
Reddit went through a similar change more rapidly, and even today, despite of the shitposting, bots and Reddit Inc.'s disregard of its userbase, there are niche communities where well-intentioned discussion takes place.
There are also even more niche old school forums or IRC communities where people can take refuge from the rest of the internet.
But I do agree that HN is still a surprisingly respectful forum. Not necessarily because of Y Combinator's shepherding or a small team of herculean moderators, but because the community is self-moderated. I do think this will change and become more difficult, as more new users join the site. Longtime users have surely noticed the change already.
> You do it in person, with people you trust and respect. It's always been this way, even during the heyday of the free internet.
Sure, that would be the preferred way. But the reason we communicate online is because it's often easier to find communities of people with similar interests, than doing the same locally. Anonimity also has a positive aspect, in that it makes interaction easier for getting points across, as we don't let our human biases influence the discussion, and the merit of any point is weighed on its own. Discussions in person, especially around hot topics, often devolve into shouting matches and personal insults. Not that online ones don't, but typing text is often enough to assemble our thoughts in a calmer way.
OTOH, there's the obvious lack of human connection missing from online and text-only discussions. But then again, once a community is well established, in person meetups can happen. :)
> To be fair, there was a good decade and a half, maybe two, where Usenet was the place to have deep, meaningful and respectful conversations. Most netiquette conventions were first established there.
There were BBS-era networks that also had meaningful conversations. The Well (The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, ‘85), Citadel networks (‘81), Fidonet (‘83), and many others.
Then Eternal September happened, binaries and spam flooded the network, and users looking for good discussions moved on.
Reddit went through a similar change more rapidly, and even today, despite of the shitposting, bots and Reddit Inc.'s disregard of its userbase, there are niche communities where well-intentioned discussion takes place.
There are also even more niche old school forums or IRC communities where people can take refuge from the rest of the internet.
But I do agree that HN is still a surprisingly respectful forum. Not necessarily because of Y Combinator's shepherding or a small team of herculean moderators, but because the community is self-moderated. I do think this will change and become more difficult, as more new users join the site. Longtime users have surely noticed the change already.
> You do it in person, with people you trust and respect. It's always been this way, even during the heyday of the free internet.
Sure, that would be the preferred way. But the reason we communicate online is because it's often easier to find communities of people with similar interests, than doing the same locally. Anonimity also has a positive aspect, in that it makes interaction easier for getting points across, as we don't let our human biases influence the discussion, and the merit of any point is weighed on its own. Discussions in person, especially around hot topics, often devolve into shouting matches and personal insults. Not that online ones don't, but typing text is often enough to assemble our thoughts in a calmer way.
OTOH, there's the obvious lack of human connection missing from online and text-only discussions. But then again, once a community is well established, in person meetups can happen. :)