Comment by electrograv | Hacker News Reader

Comment by electrograv | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> Don't immediately react and reply that this isn't scalable.

I agree that positivity is important. Certainly, let us take a moment to genuinely appreciate what they’ve done here to help 100 people!

Now, since this is such a good thing they’ve done on a small scale, let’s scale this kind of help to EVERYONE who is in need! That would be truly awesome.

Oh wait, sorry — it looks like we can’t actually have that problem-solving discussion here, because you shut down the dialog by banning the topic. What you did there — see, that is “objectively a bad thing”.

Seriously though, you cannot really expect people to shut down productive problem-solving discussion, on a forum meant for exactly that. In fact, I believe inspiring discussion and problem solving towards scaling this concept is exactly what Cards Against Humanity wants to happen as a result of this!

Hi! Thanks for responding!

I'll admit I was dismissive in my attempt at brevity so thank you for challenging me.

I didn't intend to shut down discussion. I was countering the flood of commentary around what I perceived as issues ancillary to the actual topic.

On the topic of scalability, I might been too dismissive, but I'd rather focus on the positivity of the topic as a whole, lamoon its impact, even if localized, and then secondarily bring up the topic of scalability.

I was intentionally stark because I recognize HN as being highly volatile. Top-level commentary often controls the conversation and I'd rather validate the topic than waste nuance in pessimistic challenges.

> I didn't intend to shut down discussion. I was countering the flood of commentary around what I perceived as issues ancillary to the actual topic.

I interpreted GPs comment as an indictment of NH's policy of banning political news items, not as blaming you for shutting down the current discussion.

I interpreted it as "don't shut down discussion with low effort comments like 'it doesn't scale'".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com