Hacker News Reader

Comment by _slyo | Hacker News Reader

I once posted a nascent open-source project to reddit and it got shredded, but someone pointed me to some prior art. I studied the suggested materials, and thanks to that feedback my project was eventually successful. Now even CERN uses it in some LHCb software.

ShowHN needs comments like Paul's. Tact and expertise never come equally in the same package. We should appreciate this and grow some thicker skin in the meantime.

View on HN

> Tact and expertise never come equally in the same package.

There is no reason at all for an expert to act like an asshole, and being an expert should not mean that bad behaviour should be tolerated from them. In fact, experts should be held to a higher standard, because they are examples people look up to.

But their feedback can still be useful even if it wasn’t delivered tactfully. It’s not wise to outright dismiss expert feedback simply because they were a little mean.

That begs the question, doesn't it? If someone visits your project and says "shame you're so ignorant of this topic, maybe read a textbook", it doesn't matter whether that person is the world's foremost expert or the town drunk, it's useless feedback either way.

Whereas, if the feedback was rude but also pinpoint-accurate and incredibly actionable, I don't think there'd be a big subthread about it.

Well the example you gave is bad feedback, and would be bad feedback from anyone. But that's not really the point of the discussion at hand, as I understood it. The discussion is about useful feedback that is delivered in a manner that may not be the most kind, but being unkind doesn't make useful feedback and less useful. After all, the feedback that sparked this discussion does seem like useful feedback even if it came across as a bit dismissive.

> Well the example you gave is bad feedback

> the feedback that sparked this discussion does seem like useful feedback

The former was a summary of the latter. The "feedback" we're talking about gave no actual information about what the person thinks is wrong with TFA, it just said that TFA's author is ignorant and maybe look at XYZ.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com