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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Could you be a little bit more careful in minting new truths about people's psychology, especially if you don't know those people, to score points in Internet arguments? The Maciej I know was definitely not disinterested in winning that YCF spot.

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The Maciej I know was definitely not disinterested in winning that YCF spot.

Did he want the YCF spot, or the $20k? I don't know him, but the fact that his immediate response was "I want my twenty grand" reinforces my belief that Kevin made the right decision here.

God forbid that someone so known for his sobriety in all things should on this one occasion have a jokey response.

If he reiterated that jokey response in his "good-faith conversation" with kevin, then kevin made the right call. I'll agree with tptacek though that they should've just said that, instead of talking about voting rings.

Different people. Dan runs HN, and I'm sure he thinks about voting rings all day long. Kevin is from YC, and thinks about founders and fitting into the YC community. I think it's safe to say that they both had very good, but entirely independent, reasons for not wanting to fund pinboard.

Let me save you the time and (having watched and read quite a bit of Maciej's stuff, internalizing his reasoning about many things in our culture) tell you that he was being deliberately facetious here. (Maybe "facetious" is too strong a word: he was merely speaking in jest, "calling YCF out", perhaps being a bit too flippant due to his (justified) frustration, if any). I'm replying to your comment because I see you reproducing your above point all over the place, and it's sad you think that way about this.

(That being said, for someone not familiar with Maciej's approach to things, I can perhaps understand why you'd think that way.)

There are probably ways he could have conveyed that better. Judging by the outcome, smarter people than me came to that same conclusion.

Now do you see the problem with how YC chose to explain Pinboard's exclusion?

No, it's pretty clear

> Did he want the YCF spot, or the $20k? I don't know him, but the fact that his immediate response was "I want my twenty grand" reinforces my belief that Kevin made the right decision here.

I agree, Kevin made the right decision as well.

I don't care about the decision. I care about how it was communicated.

The "Kevin talked to Maciej and it didn't seem like it would work out" part seems pretty straightforward. The voting brigade thing seems dumb, but Kevin was pretty explicit that part wouldn't have mattered.

Of course he was interested, trolls are always interested in getting a response.

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