Ask HN: My article link got flagged | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: My article link got flagged

Hi all, I recently posted https://medium.com/@pradeep_io/7-fucking-lessons-for-designers-8bd559f078bf on hacker news. But someone flagged this stating following reason "The swearing adds nothing, absolutely nothing, and for me it massively detracts from any message that might be there. Others may disagree, but I don't care. I'm flagging this. There's a time and place for language like this, and this is neither. "

Well, I do not understand the point of the user who flagged this. I did not have any intention of disrespecting someone, neither the article has any such content/implied meaning at all. I have following questions 1. Does flagging affects reach of my future content I share here? 2. Is it ok to add the word "fucking" to emphasize a point? 3. What am I missing here?

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> 3. What am I missing here?

You're missing what's called "nuance". The term "Fucking" can be perfect if you use it in just the right context to accentuate what you're trying to say (but in most cases it doesn't work).

But in your case, you didn't use it for that purpose. You just used "fucking" for no reason. There is no other adjective it's supporting. It's just a curse (not an accent). Like how teenagers use the term to sound cool.

So I agree with whoever flagged you that it doesn't add anything to the article. I actually may have read your article if it didn't have "fucking" on the title, but i don't want to read something from someone who just curses at me with no reason. Just a feedback.

@cocktailpeanuts Although I have different perspective on usage of curse words in an article but I do acknowledge and respect your opinion. I have learned here that the curse word here can be taken for a different meaning(disrespect of the reader, childish, comedic) while it was intended to emphasize the points and making key takeaway memorable for the readers(e.g. "fucking talk to the users"). People have confirmed to my point of view as well as your POV.

Considering your feedback I have written the article again and removed the words like "fucking" and "kick-ass". To emphasize the keywords I have marked them bold. New link: https://medium.com/@pradeep_io/7-important-lessons-for-a-des...

I appreciate your time giving me feedback. My guess on why we have different opinions is the cultural differences we have. Slang probably is a lot affected by the same. Would love to hear your further views.

This is not a cultural thing, it's a language thing. And it's not an opinion. You're just using English wrong. And like I said this is all about nuance. If you disagree with me it's your loss, because you'll keep using it wrong and keep wondering why people get pissed off.

"Fucking talk to the users" works because "fucking" is used to embellish "talk to the users". It's emphasizing how important the author feels it is to talk to the users.

"Fucking advice" doesn't work because "Fucking" does not embellish advice. You're not emphasizing any important point you're trying to make. You're just adding "Fucking" in front of "advice". it can at best be taken as a piece of advice on how to fuck. I don't think I need advice on how to fuck. I think I'm good enough.

Be humble when someone points out your error when you're not good at something. Also another rule of thumb is: good content will stand out if it's to stand out, regardless of click-fucking-baity headlines. Just write a fucking good content with a real substance and you're set to go.

You may want to read this to learn more about the difference: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fucking#Adjective and https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fucking#Adverb

I acknowledge and respect your point of view. I have revised the article, here's the link: https://medium.com/@pradeep_io/7-important-lessons-for-a-des.... Do read it and let me know your feedback.

Do watch this video as well http://www.misskyra.com/lifestyle/osho-defines-fck-its-hilar...

There many other reasons for writing: general readership, personal branding, advertising, stream of consciousness, etc. If the purpose behind writing the piece was to engage the Hacker News community, it was ineffective. One way to take that is as editorial feedback on the writing in terms how it met the expectations of the intended audience.

Collin is a very experienced and respected member of the Hacker News community. It is worth listening to him most of the time. This is almost certainly one of those times if the intended audience was Hacker News.

Finally, it is useful to experiment with different writing techniques because sometimes the results can vastly exceed expectations. Experiments sometimes don't produce the hoped for results, and that's the risk.

Good luck.

Thanks @brudgers, this puts things in perspective. I have revised the article. I'm pretty much new to hacker news and have received valuable feedback. Will keep experimenting more.

You're not emphasizing a point using unnecessary profanity. You are using a swear for attempted comedic value. (and if every point is emphasized, no point is emphasized)

Removing the profanity just makes the article a listicle which isn't good for HN anyways.

To clarify a bit: When the parent comment says "isn't good for HN", he's saying that it doesn't meet the basic criteria in the HN Guidelines of something "that good hackers would find interesting".[1] Writing a list of terse statements without any explanation or examples (like "the navigation and actions should match the target user’s mental models") isn't very useful or convincing to the reader.

Also, at the bottom of the article you say you're trying to recruit a designer. You may want to consider what kind of message this article sends to prospective employees.

To answer the question "does flagging affects reach of my future content I share here?" - No, flagging just affects a single submission (by decreasing its prominence or killing it).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Thanks @greenyoda for pitching in, I have published another one after removing the objectionable words. https://medium.com/@pradeep_io/7-important-lessons-for-a-des... Does it make a better submission?

About not writing explanation, I did had the urge to write in the explanations in the article itself. But I believe making it concise and open ended is better for a discussion to listen to different perspectives. Please do let me know your point of view on the same, would love to discuss more.

According to the Guidelines, the article itself needs to be interesting, independent of any discussion. If the article is not interesting, people probably won't upvote it and there will be no discussion because nobody will see it.

Right. That's why the number of tweets that make the front page of Hacker News closely approximates zero.

That's not a good counterexample; Tweets are sometimes the canonical source of news (which HN prefers), and news articles are just verbose blogspam of the tweet. (I believe twitter.com is a penalized domain, which I disagree with.)

If Twitter is penalized on Hacker News, then it might be a relevant example in this context, i.e. the nature of Hacker News as implemented.

Yes, thanks for the clarification.

@minimaxir Although I have different perspective on usage of curse words in an article but I do acknowledge and respect your opinion. I have learned here that the curse word here can be taken for a different meaning(disrespect of the reader, childish, comedic) while it was intended to emphasize the points and making key takeaway memorable for the readers(e.g. "fucking talk to the users"). People have confirmed to my point of view as well as your POV.

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