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Comment by girk | Hacker News Reader

I'm still relatively new here, so I'm not sure if it's common to comment on one's own submission.

After reading the article about the 10-year-old kid, Moshe, and the essay Danielle Fong wrote in response, I wanted to share this essay by Stephanie S. Tolan with you all, because it largely addresses the "imposter's syndrome" that Danielle mentioned.

This article was enormously influential in my life, and I hope that you guys will appreciate it as well.

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As long as your comments contribute to the discussion about your submission, the community here is pretty reasonable. Also, they seem to be pretty good about downmodding comments that are unreasonable or otherwise unhelpful - so if you 'step out of line' someone is always happy to let you know.

I nearly spit out my pacifier and fell out of my high chair when I saw PG modded below zero several times in one thread -- about Arc of all things.

It seems to be seasonal. Around YC application deadlines, even his offhand comments get praised as fonts of celestial wisdom.

So the constituency of the community here tends to whip around randomly like a man in a nude suit riding a dangling firehose, spraying mud and rocks everywhere.

Yes, all bets are off when it comes to PG here. He has way too many fans that will mod him high simply because it says "by pg".

That being said though, the site is pretty consistent for every other user, although as it grows I've certainly noticed a relaxing in what is considered "off topic".

Any chance you've still got links to the other articles you mentioned? I seem to have missed those.

10-year-old Moshe: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/14/10-year-old-scholar...

Danielle Fong's essay: http://daniellefong.com/2008/05/15/advice-to-the-bright-and-...

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