Wow, I thought I was just being shy, but I've been adhering to a similar strategy my whole life when joining a new group: stay back, let the group welcome you in instead of forcing yourself into the group.
I also find that befriending single members of the group outside of the normal group environment works well in gaining some legitimacy in the group. After friending one person, you just apply the transitive property of friendship a couple time and hey! you've got a ton of new friends.
The basic point seems to be "if you're new, shut up". Probably good advice in most cases.
Perhaps the headline could be changed to "How Groups Perceive Criticism From Newcomers" - I was expecting an article about how a group changes based on an influx of newcomers, which has been a topic of interest on HN lately.
This reminds me of a great book, "Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation", by Lave and Wegner (an anthropologist and a computer scientist). This book deals with how newcomers to a community of practice interact with core practitioners to learn the central knowledge/beliefs of that community. As newcomers move from the periphery to the center of practice, their criticisms to the body of central knowledge become more acceptable to the community as a whole. This of course causes the "center" of the community to shift over time as new members cycle in to a community and old members exit.
This article solidifies something that's been rattling around in my head for a month or three.
It relates to a post on HN (which I can't find now) about job interviews. I think the article was written by an interviewer, who said he liked to hire someone who could offer a knowledgeable, well reasoned critique of his organization.
The implication is that, if you're looking for a job, you should aim at doing that kind of thing. I had a problem with that, but I could not articulate it very well. This article filled in the gaps in my thinking.
I think it is perfectly reasonable to take criticism
from an 18 year veteran more seriously than from a
2 week new jack.
In both cases you are assuming to gain a new perspective
from the experience of another human.. Is it not reasonable
to assume that someone that has spent a vast quantity of
time in a particular environment would have a better
perspective than a new jack?
And, do we need a study to tell us that groups are hostile
toward newcomers that give them criticism?
I don't see why you would want to change anything as a newcomer. There's no way you are going to understand the process well enough by then. First get to know the people, figure out how they think, how they work and how they communicate. Then figure out what's wrong and start telling them about it. You have nothing important to tell in the first few weeks. Ignoring your criticism is the rational thing to do.
At a lower level the way to get change done is to agree with people on anything you find sufficiently unimportant. On the thing you really want to change you'll explain that it's really quite similar to what they've been doing before, except you start taking into account A, which should be something they can identify with. To be able to do this, you need to know who you're talking to.
I'm just experiencing "hostility to newcomers" on HN. My comments have been repeatedly voted down for no apparent reason. I just can't imagine people loving nuclear weapons and such so why vote me down for speaking out in favor of pacifism.
Not true. After reading through your past comments on this site as I have, you will see that the only times you have been downvoted are when you bring political views into conversations where it is almost entirely off-topic.
Plenty of your comments in other threads have been upvoted, so laying the blame for your treatment on the rest of the community here is disingenuous.
It's not off topic to speak out against militarism on a post that is cheerleading the military for being hilarious. I know people in the US love guns and are proud to "liberate" countries in the middle east but in Europe people think differently. I was surprised to see militarism being hailed in a tech and business oriented social news community. You don't want my political opinion stop promoting the army.
Hold on. You've been here for almost two years. You registered 8 months and 11 days after News.YC launched. You are in no way a newcomer.
PS: Cool, an excuse to use Wolfram Alpha! It does calendar computations quite nicely. "Feb 19, 2007 to X days ago" to figure out when someone joined relative to the launch of News.YC.
Yeah, I registered two years ago and clicked five times. After that I've been here just once. Then I started contributing a week ago. So I am indeed a newcomer.
It's more the other way around: No one knew me so they assumed I'm new. Don't you ever look at the author of a submission or comment to recognize the nick?
> I just can't imagine people loving nuclear weapons and such so why vote me down for speaking out in favor of pacifism.
Because HN doesn't reward cluelessness even if it is riding a unicorn. Spouting false choices, attributing strawmen, and self-righteousness doesn't help.
