Out of curiosity, where's the discussion the OP is talking about?
I do think meanness is worth calling out, FWIW, though in my experience HN discussions are better than most I see online (though far from faultless, of course).
...which in turn gives me faith that when there really are unduly mean discussions, someone calling them out can actually improve things (whereas I imagine an article calling out meanness on /. or similar and can't imagine who would even read it).
However, what I see in that thread are valid criticisms. The article and author were self promoting the author's expertise in UX -- with the promotion rather more prominent than the article content. Meanwhile, aside from the, um, "self aggrandizement", the site violated cardinal UX rules.
Readers called him on it without using faux polite weasel words, and he says he'll fix it.
Pretty sure constructive feedback is what submitting your own material to HN is for.
That discussion lacks basic civility. A good half of comments there is not something that their authors would've been willing (or have guts) to say to guy's face. Hilariously, they are in fact being mean.
There's a lot of things that I truly believe that I wouldn't say to someone's face, depending on the size and belligerence of the someone, and whether I care at all whether they agree with what I believe to be true.
Using that as a metric is silly. Is that too mean?
...which admittedly doesn't have a great discussion, but it's not worthless.
The one you linked, though, is worth highlighting as a completely useless discussion, due to some meanness (mild as it goes), but mostly just a sad lack of thoughtful commenters, all of whom seemed to think several dozen redundant comments about the OP's headshot on his blog post was valuable feedback.
I didn't see any discussion whatsoever on the actual content of the OP.
I think he is talking about the discussion[1] about the new facebook news feed.
This is not an isolated instance, however. For some reason people who reply seem to always look at things from the worst prespective possible. Some are valid concerns, others not so much but you end up with a (very) pessimistic view of things if you consider only opinions expressed on HN. It makes me feel a bit sad and down.
I think this happens because people who like the post, product, etc don't know how to express appreciation in a meaningul way. Maybe it is easier to pinpoint specific things that you don't like than to be specific about a product you like. You get that overall feeling that it is an improvement but cannot easily pinpoint all the reasons why.
I also have faith that things can improve if people, instead of only writing about specific things that they don't like, take some time to also write about the small things that often go unnoticed but make great products great.
English is not my first language so I looked up in a dictionary the word "mean" and one of the meanings was "Extremely unpleasant or disagreeable". It pretty much sums up the top comments on that thread.
"They always try to make it interesting by making it sound like it's about stories and people and stuff. When really it's about cats and food and silly quotes of not so famous people."
I don't think it is Facebook's fault that some friends post this kind of things and I can't see how this comment is constructive in any way.
"Great. It isn't Schadenfreude exactly, but I hope big changes ups (that they have to make because doing nothing is not an option) like this accelerate their decline.
I don't think Facebook will go away any time soon but it will become another Yahoo and that can only be a good thing for the ecosystem in terms of opportunities."
This one is like wishing Michael Phelps dies so you can win some medals.
These are just some examples. If you read the Linode thread you will also find that the top comment is negative, has nothing to do with the content of the blog post, and does not offer any constructive criticism that people from Linode could use to improve their service. In all fairness in both threads there are also a lot of positive comments and constructive criticisms but for some reasons those tend to get burried.
OK I don't see those comments as being in the slightest bit mean - I would be appalled at anyone wishing any kind of harm (or even directing criticism at) an individual rather than their work.
NB
I am British and the apparent ambient meanness level in most banter probably appeals to be quite high - in reality it is just the fact that we probably waste more of our time on attempts at humour than most other nationalities....
I do think meanness is worth calling out, FWIW, though in my experience HN discussions are better than most I see online (though far from faultless, of course).
...which in turn gives me faith that when there really are unduly mean discussions, someone calling them out can actually improve things (whereas I imagine an article calling out meanness on /. or similar and can't imagine who would even read it).