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Comment by untilHellbanned | Hacker News Reader

What kind of talent earned this guy this job. Seems like cronyism from what I can tell from Wikipedia.

Personal attacks are not allowed on Hacker News. We ban accounts that do this, so please don't do it. Instead, please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

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I didn't think the question was so bad ... but the guess of cronyism is only one of half a dozen you could pick. As part of that list, it is in fact a possibility but to immediately jump to only that was a bit of a slight.

I'm also interested in the other half of the question - what made the MIT selection committee willing to promote an uncredentialed candidate - that's a gutsy move in a university environment as faculty are very protective of the status of their group.

If someone is talented enough, schools will bend the rules on credentials. You can't do it "on the way up", you have to be "already there." I suspect that a school out there would be willing to triple his salary, and Mr. Ito could walk with faculty and corporate contracts and rebuild the Media Lab somewhere else. This is a small price to pay to keep him.

This is perhaps also made a little easier based on the field. In the arts, faculty members do get by without Phds a little more often than in science. Sometimes an MFA is enough.

If he had written it in the same spirit as your excellent comment, of course it wouldn't have been a problem. Indeed you've done a fine job of turning it into something interesting (but note that you did it by depersonalizing).

But what he actually posted was a snarky drive-by smear. This doesn't strike me as a difficult distinction.

I wasn't faulting your reaction ... but I was looking for the best in his/her question rather than assuming it was a baseless attack. I like to play devil's advocate but even without personal attacks, that can be dangerous around here. When your handle is "untilHellbanned" people might perceive you to be trolling by default.

Did he edit his comment? Questioning something, however misguided, is not an ad hominem.

A genuine question would have been phrased neutrally, but that one was dripping with insinuation ("what kind of talent", "this guy", "seems like cronyism").

Snark posing as a question is toxic. Considering how easy it is to avoid when one wants to, I think it's reasonable to hold HN users to a higher standard on this.

The hand at matter is whether it was a personal attack or not, which it wasn't. It's OK to question someone's credentials; nobody is beyond scrutiny. It's not OK to attack his person in order to do so. (E.g. "how can this liberal/short/japanese/cat-loving guy have earned this position").

No I didn't edit my comment. It's still exactly as I first wrote it.

While I'm too old to care about your knee-jerk threat, I think you better be careful about policing HN like this. It is really off-putting and IMHO creates more of an existential threat to HN than my very reasonable inquiry.

There is nothing personal about my question. As I see it, this guy has questionable credentials to get such a prestigious job, so I ask what has he done. It looks he owned a bar, made some investments, his dad was high up in a quasi-impressive tech company. Again, very vague credentials which say he has money but no particular skill.

> There is nothing personal about my question. As I see it, this guy has questionable credentials to get such a prestigious job, so I ask what has he done.

If that's all you did, I would say that's not a personal attack. But how is saying "looks like cronyism to me" not a personal attack?

Well it's possible that he is a talentless fool that got his position through family connections. It's probably more likely that he is genuinely top of the game, but just doesn't spend much time building his public profile. That's a good and all too rare thing.

Being at the top of any game nowadays gives publicity. My 12 y.o. nephew's hockey league in North Carolina of all states has its own website, so not buying this argument.

Wow, untilHellbanned, I was actually on your side in this strange thread.

Until you mentioned your 12 y.o. nephew.

You may have just set a new Hacker News record, moving up Paul Graham's Disagreement Hierarchy from DH0. (Name Calling) all the way up to DH4. (Counterargument) in just 2 replies!

http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html

What is wrong with mentioning 12 yo

When I was at the Media Lab <mumble> years ago, his group was perceived internally as one of the top groups, and everyone I knew who worked in his group had great things to say about him.

pcl, out of curiosity, what group was that? I was under the impression he didn't have his own particular group. Just that he oversaw other groups. Could be wrong though...

I only ever worked down in the basement, and visited via the corporate sponsorship avenues, so I'm just repeating what I've heard. Have never worked with him directly.

How about judging someone based on what they've done, rather than making idle speculation from their Wikipedia page? Sometimes the cynicism in this place is depressing.

Really? Because I feel like the comment sections here are usually people being positive and agreeing with each other, while dissenting opinions are silenced.

The truth of the matter is that there are certain topics that heavily follow the HN hivemind, and there are certain topics that are highly polarized and endlessly debated. Hivemind example: remote work is good and companies that refuse to do it are stupid. Endlessly debated example: college degrees are useless.

Comments that disparage YC companies are often quickly hidden or buried as well.

I disagree. In fact, the topic of whether or not HN is biased towards YC / favors YC falls into the endlessly debated category.

I asked what has he done. Considering how high profile this job is, a Wikipedia page in 2016 should make this obvious. In his case, it's decidedly not clear so I asked the question.

Yes, if you rephrase what you said in a way that takes out the nasty bits, it becomes less objectionable. When commenting on HN, though, that's what you should do in the first place.

Please rephrase my question in an HN appropriate way. I'm curious about how you can make "what kind of talent" and "cronyism" less nasty.

Here's my attempt: "Why did Ito get this job? His Wikipedia page makes it seems like connections rather than skill was important."

IMO this latter attempt is boring and will lead to decreased engagement on HN over time compared with my more provocative original comment.

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