Sit down for a moment commenters, we need to talk.
Yes, you all knew this post was coming one day. We’ve talked about this topic at length internally, and we have decided that we’re going to clean up our act. For some time, Hack a Day has been growing a reputation as the prime source of extremely negative, vulgar, rude, sexist, and inflammatory comments in the hacking community. We’ve had complaints from readers (yes there are readers that aren’t commenters, thousands of them) and fellow members of the hacking community about this problem for a long time. [Eliot] even mentioned it back in 2009 when a job applicant expressed concern. We’ve nicely tried to steer things to the positive in a variety of ways, from suggesting commenters to be more supportive, jokingly making a troll detector, and simply stating that the comments need to stay “on topic and nice”.
When we see things like these tweets by [Jeri Ellsworth], we hang our heads in shame.
She’s not the only one. We actually get this quite regularly. As our readership grows, we see it more and more often. We get emails explaining that people have done a hack but don’t really want to post it because the commenters will just tear it apart in an unnecessarily aggressive and negative way. We have actually had people ask us to remove their projects and comments due to uncivil behavior. Constructive criticism is good, but insulting and angry deconstruction isn’t helpful to anyone.
We’re better than that aren’t we? We are fast, agile and fairly unrestricted in our content. We should be at the center of this community, not on the outer edges, reviled by many for the behavior of a few. Hackaday should be the teacher at the front of the classroom, not the kid in the back throwing wadded up paper at the kids in the front.
What we’re doing:
First off, as far as we can foresee, we will never close the comments section of our web site down. Hackaday should be a home for the entire hacking community and as such, you will always be able to settle in and have a reasonable discussion. We do not want to implement any sort of G+ integration or similar, nor do we want to require registration to leave a comment. We will if we absolutely have to, but lets try to avoid that.
Comment sections and forums have often been a place where negative comments can get out of hand. There are many theories for why this happens, but the result is usually the same: rules and moderation. Many sites have already laid down the law and are adhering to their goals of keeping things civil. We realize that we are to blame if our image is this poor, so we are doing something about it.
From this point moving forward, Hackaday comments will be civil. If you are posting an empty in-joke (“where’s the Arduino?”), a declaration of “not a hack”, a racist, sexist, completely off topic, platform-hating, or personally insulting comment, your post will be deleted. This will be at the discretion of whichever Hackaday staff member happens to see your comment first.
Can you criticize Hackaday?
You can’t walk into a business and start screaming about how much they suck without being escorted out immediately. Same thing applies here.
We are always hard at work trying to find interesting hacks, makes, repairs, tweaks, videos, etc. that appeal to a wide spectrum of readers. We put this web site together for you, as well as 200,000 other individuals. Not everything will appeal to everybody. That would be impossible. However, if you don’t like a post or project, just skip it – we’ll have another one ready in short order. We will feature projects that appeal to the seasoned EE as well as the complete beginner. We were all beginners at one time, and it would have been great to have something like Hack a Day around back then to show us hacks ranging from simple to advanced.
From time to time however, Hack a Day can be a less than desirable place to hang out, especially for those who are coming here for the first time. We don’t want to chase off young, creative minds. As a community, we should be helping those that are just starting to venture into hacking electronics.
If you have a problem, email us. You’ll probably actually get a response that way too. My email is Caleb@ and you’re always welcome to email me personally. Again, please be civil (yep, I’ve had my share of death threats).
Grammar/spelling corrections and dead links:
No need to comment, just email us. A message to team@ will suffice, but you will probably get a quicker response by emailing the author directly. We know we have issues – we’re often so excited about a hack that some little goof slips by. Email us and we’ll fix it. Don’t write a 3 paragraph comment about how important the oxford comma is, or how we’re obviously incapable of functioning because we accidentally flubbed a word. We promise we will never intentionally screw up some grammar, spelling, or punctuation.
What you can will do to help:
Be constructive.
Every project here probably has an area that could be improved, or a part that was done inefficiently. Support your fellow hackers by offering your expertise. Explain why something isn’t working, or how you would improve it. Don’t slam them for their shortcomings. Also keep in mind that different people go about things different ways. Poster X didn’t build something the way you did? Offer an alternative without being insulting. If someone chooses to use their brand new Core i7 monster system to drive a few LEDs, that’s their prerogative. Inside, we all know that it is not the most efficient use of money or technology, there’s no reason to beat that dead horse in public.
You know what else encourages hackers to do more projects? A pat on the back. I talk to people all the time who say that they just don’t have any constructive criticism for the projects, so they don’t comment. Well, that and they know they’ll bring the ire of the worst commenters if they happen to ask a silly question. Drop in and say what you like about a project. Those positive posts might just be enough to encourage that hacker to take it a step further. How many projects have you seen dropped simply because people thought there wasn’t any interest? Tons. If you like a project, let them know.
To encourage this, the writers are going to be keeping an eye on the comments. Randomly, when we see someone being exceptionally helpful, we’ll contact them and send them a prize. This will most likely be in the form of a hackaday sticker, but we’ll see if we can’t find some other fun things as well.
Help us make Hack a Day great. Please.
[Update: we’re working on a comment flagging system currently]
[Update: threading and comment reporting have been added]
@pt
Where was the good debate? All I saw was a petty argument.
mostly from you with all those “lets see the work that you’ve done”, “when I started Hack A Day”, “it works so why bother following good design principals”, “our kits are a successfully learning example for all”, “sure you could do it like that, but we chose not to”,
And the worst comment:
“well we might consider changes if paying customers want changes” -I.e if you want me to listen you have to pay me.
All your ‘my dick is bigger than yours’ remarks just weren’t helpful.
You’re holding yourself and the company that you work for up as an example of greatness with open hardware, open designs and open minds ready to listen, but in reality all you proved in that thread was:
You’re not open to suggestion or approachable, you’re just like the other trolls, hard headed, arrogant and argumentative.
If you hadn’t acted like a dick you wouldn’t have been called a dick.
I’m surprised it’s days later, you’d surely had time to go back and re-read. can you really not see where you may have been in the wrong? (no I’m not saying that everyone else was perfectly fine).
back on the topic of this thread, no we don’t need +/- rating systems, name validation, lack of anonymity or indeed anything else like that, we just need a report post button.
That way HAD staffers can be alerted to bad content, and take appropriate action, and the audience at large will have effectively no say, so no group mentality burying the right yet unpopular views.
‘I don’t like criticism, censor your content or I will bash you on popular public mediums till you do’
Luckily most of us aren’t just “trolls” but engineers and scientists and can very easily go anywhere we want, notably updated blogs that don’t change ‘allowance’ with anything that could potentially create a negative trend in their ad-revenue..
I’ve read every page of hackaday, but never commented. I think this is a great move. There’s no reason to put up with trolls or haters. Well done.
@dan – you’re right, i put a lot of content/opinion out there and i’m held to a pretty high standard, good reminder and good lesson. i know i can also be wrong too :)
Read HaD often; it’s included in my “daily websites”.
Commented a few times. Tbh, I might be considered one of the aforementioned trolls, because the only few comments that I have left were “this is considered a hack?” posts, because… well…
The latest “hack” that I commented on was taking pieces of publicly available software (VLC, Apache) that were DESIGNED to be able to do exactly what the hack was about. It was to stream video to a popular consumer electronic device with a complete OS with >500 MHz CPU.
Effectively, this was considered a hack:
http://wiki.videolan.org/Simple_Stream_VLC_to_Website
It wasn’t branded as a “beginners guide” or anything, but a full fledged hack.
There wasn’t any hacking of the consumer device. There wasn’t any extra code required. Just some basic configuration to Apache.
All the other hacks I’ve seen actually require some semblance of knowledge, or stitching two things that weren’t suppose to go together to accomplish something in a non-obvious or kinda-cool way.
Everything else
Excuse the various typos and weird lines because of poorly edited changes in my last post, I was a bit out of it.
But I think it was still clear enough, just a bit of a painful read, so sorry about that.
Over 500 comments! Is this the most commented article on hack a day or what?
… i hope they don’t delete my comment with the new rule and all(i am not trying to troll
Back in 1986 when I started Troll BBS I never thought “Troll” would enter daily use, or would be used to describe the really awful childishness and obscenity spewed like filth on blogs forums and websites. I started “Trolling” as a way of sparking debate and providing the useful “devils advocate” to spark discussion and bring users to the site. Unfortunately the word took on a different meaning and thanks to the expanding internet became associated with the lower forms of life that seem to slink into every debate or discussion, adding nothing but vitriol.
Sorry for the inconvenience
Trollicus formerly known as Dead Cat
Middle road is always the best. If you tighten the rope too much, there will be a mass exodus of hackers – people you were trying to woo at the beginning with “hack” in your site name. Hackers are generally not very pleasant personalities. And now you want to kick some of them out… OTOH, plain insults and vulgar words can be easily filtered out by a program. OR somebody could actually take time to read all comments before allowing their posting.
As for Jeri, part of the reason for her popularity IS that she is female AND we know that she looks nice AND is very smart. If some anonymous faceless guy was posting the same stuff, there would be much fewer comments (and trafic on his/hackaday) site. Popularity is a double edged sword, which endangers your privacy. We all know that.
BTW, comments (and latter forum) were introduced to increase traffic – nothing shocking/new about that. If you water down reader comments, you may slowly cut off the very branch you are sitting on.
And sometimes comments are the most interesting part of the hack experience. We all do hacks for audience. One of my projects was greeted with: “this must be the most boring video ever” comment. I laughed a lot at that. What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.
So it is best to proceed with the middle road (no nanny state/no wild West).
Its interesting to see a post like this on HAD. Theres nothing like an inflammatory comment to get peoples hackles up. The internets anonymity only serves to fuel this. Potentially we may be able to publicly humiliate the people who don’t conform to the views of the masses…..
…..ohh wait if i post this benile and innate comment people will pull it apart and reassemble it in a way that suits them totally disregarding the authors true intention. Much like Hacking consumer products.
Dont let it get you down.
Eliminating (my) empty (lame) in-jokes will certainly take a lot of happiness out of this pathetic posters existence.
(sigh!)
The problem is not regular readers or people that make comments… The problem comes from paid individuals that their job is to insult and try to discourage inventors and free minded people from sharing their hacks… Who pays them? Big corp of course… maybe even governments… Please don’t be discouraged… pay no attention to insults or destructive criticism. And you, the one that likes to make threats and insult people that are only sharing their great projects. Why don’t you try and make something instead of criticize! Don’t sell out and write rude comments because you are paid to.
After seeing the pill reminder article, and how over zealous some people are to cry “TROLL,” have doubts over a peer driven system.
I have had projects posted on HaD before and i (luckily) never got any overly negative comments. However i agree 100% with the the new direction HaD is taking on this problem. I have read my fair share of really negative comments on this site. Especially the ones about Jeri Ellsworth made me ashamed of even reading them. I don’t think this is a problem isolated to this site but i agree the issue seems bigger here at HaD.
Finnaly i just want to give all you people at the HaD offices a big thums up, this is the way to go!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Previous was a joke. Thank you for the change. This site is one of my favorites.
Bravo. I’d love for our comment section to NOT be the start of every hack-site-related joke.
Yeah, some of it can be really funny, and the occasional ‘where’s the audrino’ is good for a laugh, but overall we need a cleanup.
While wildly more complex (and, possibly, overkill) /. has a good ‘filter’ system to show the funny when you want the funny, but hide it when you’re feeling not-so-funny.
Thanks for this site and thanks to all the people that do projects that are featured here… to all the people that do projects please keep doing what you love and don’t listen to the trolls. And to my follow readers like me that hardly ever comment just say a kind word now and then. I will try to do this from now on…
One of the sentiments that I keep seeing here is “I’m ashamed” and it’s eating me up.
There’s no shame in providing a truly open forum. Trolls are just a part of the internet, and women aren’t exempt from trolling.
Jeri should be happy for the traffic, and I think singling out HaD was a tacky move on her part. She is the one who chose to be a celebrity, and it would serve her well to remember that before moaning about it. That being said, I think she’s a great talent, and I hope this fiasco won’t sour her to the site.
I appreciate the hands-on that you guys are taking, whether I feel it’s justified or not. I’m sure someone has mentioned slashdot’s moderation system, and I think that it would be ideal. It offloads moderation to the community, and doesn’t involve deletion, which I think is wrong in any public forum.
Good luck, guys. I’m a proud reader :)
Your attitude is exactly kind of thing we don’t need here.
“Jeri should be happy for the traffic, and I think singling out HaD was a tacky move on her part.”
She should be grateful that more jerks come from HaD than any other source? It’s “tacky” to speak the truth?
“She is the one who chose to be a celebrity, and it would serve her well to remember that before moaning about it.”
Now you’re telling her how she should feel? It’s not your place.
Try being more sensitive to your fellow humans.
I AM going to have to see how this goes. Maybe if we make some progress towards something resembling an adult discussion i’ll post something.
i’ve got a custom rabbit cage water bottle i’ve been debating sharing for a while. 5 gallon Ozarka bottle and some plumbing supplies. No electronics. No Computer parts at all. Just the kind of thing that would make people say ‘not a hack’.
‘Not a hack’ for non-electronics wasn’t too bad before this change. See my water change system:
http://hackaday.com/2011/01/17/aquarium-water-exchanger/
Yeah, i saw that. i really enjoyed that. I was thinking of doing it myself. Some say ‘not a hack’ like its the greatest of blasphemies. I’m quite proud when i do rarely make something unique.
I gave up Hack a Day long ago. The comments were too insulting, mean and rude. I would never post a project here. Unless you take out the trash.
Hmm… not entirely sure what to think but I think I would prefer it if negative or inappropriate comments were just marked as spam but could still be viewed… I don’t think anything should have to be removed.
Just my two cents.
I myself keep my projects off the web for this exact reason.. I do stuff for fun, not to be told off on how I could have saved a component, or how some idiot disagrees with my design/style/platform. But, well, that’s just the internet for you..
As for Jerri, well, attractive, intelligent female online.. It’s kinda fun to read through her comments, it’s quite a unique display of pathetic people :D
I don’t mind a small, entertaining and friendly troll , yet sexism is unacceptable. Hope all the fun stays. Report function = Good work!
finally!
I’ve been afraid to submit things actually
I hope this effort will succeed! Comments can be very very useful. They can be a part of the “wealth” a reader can find in such a site. On the other hand, comments that only try to insult a maker and his work prove that the corresponding commenter is… well, If I say what I believe of them I’ll break your new rules! ;) Comments should be critic but only in a constructive way!
Needs some help on the readability section, but it’s an overall nice upgrade :)
Also i truly believe that trolls will get what’s comming to them…one day…one sweet day.
my idea:
set up a banning system that doesn’t let the commenter know his comment was removed.
Put a cookie or record his IP.
block his message from appearing to everyone else except him, he thinks his snide remark is still there, but gee golly, nobody seems to get stirred up anymore.
Any other comments he makes still appear, but only he sees them. He will need to use two computers or reset his router after every mean comment just to see if the comment was even posted.
This is better than removing his comment for everyone because it wastes more of his time.
A negative comment WILL affect you whether you choose to “ignore” it. The more there are the more it WILL affect you in the long run.
So i’m going to ask you, are you 10?
Well, I’m not really a hacker, and this is the first time I even bother to comment here, but this decision by the HaD staff has effectively given me a reason to never submit quality content to this site (that is, should I ever manage to produce any).
You see, I can easily ignore the trolls, I’ve been dealing with them on a daily basis for the past 10+ years. What I am unable to ignore is an overzealous moderator constantly breathing on my neck, scanning my every post for any sort of commentary that someone, somewhere might find objectionable or in bad taste. I say: no thanks. I’d much rather be called a faggot and/or have my work be harshly criticized than have to give up the freedom to speak my mind honestly because of a few oversensitive souls whose fragile ego requires this kind of protection.
tl;dr You’re alienating potential contributors and allowing some delicate flowers to hold you hostage of their precious emotions. It’s a mistake.
Long time lurker, first time commenter. Good luck with this, whatever it takes to keep HaD on the top!
i believe the negative/abusive comments are out of place and can upset some people. however, thats the way of the fucking world. grow up. you’ll have those people no matter what. shutting them up is only going to have “hackers” (people who submit projects here) wonder why their great idea they had wont ever work.
if hackaday wants to start being corporate fascists (apparently that’s what you’re going to do regardless of what users care about), then thats fine. expect me to;
a. never mention hackaday to anyone
b. only give negative comments when people ask me about it and
c: make sure to keep my projects off here.
have fun spending time deleting my comments!
First time poster. Let’s keep this site useful for learning please.
I say leave the comments, people have to justify their arguments or they get shut down – it makes people accountable.
Also, i think the HaD admins need to work out a proper definition for what is a “hack”.
Why not just implement a comment rating system, a la slashdot.org? Some of the off topic comments from slashdot are some of the funniest things I’ve ever read. I love internet memes.
The people who don’t like those kind of comments can just surf at a higher comment rating level, hiding the lower rated comments. Trolls are quickly modded down by the community at no cost to you, the website maintainers.
its a good thing it finally happened!
YES!
GREAT move from Hack a Day!
This HAS been a long time coming, and I for one am excited to see this. I have run many sites where comments had to be continuously monitored and addressed because of immaturity and ignorance.
I think this will bring the site to a higher level.
+10 Hack
I know I am way late on this. I had to google itbecause one of my comments went in to moderation status. Comment moderation is not in the hacker spirit. My last post on hackaday
Long time commentor, first time reader…
Ok, I’m guilty of trolling.
But I am glad to see an absence of ardiuno jokes !!
Actually I was never sure if
1) the author knew their project was reposted on HAD
2) bothered to read the troll, I mean comment section
I would like if jeri was not continually proposed too or other sex remarks.
Is there any comments more rude and more irrelevant that “It works for me!” ?
Systematically blocking this one from technical forums would be a great start.