Hacker News Reader

Comment by ad404b8a372f2b9 | Hacker News Reader

It's every Ask HN thread, every time I want to ask a question here I give up because I find myself listing the obvious, requirement-breaking answers that I know will come but that I don't want to see.

It's not like stack-overflow where often the users are beginners and don't know what they want and it's sometimes helpful to point out XY problems. Here people are technically literate and know what they want yet the requirements are still ignored.

View on HN

IMO it goes beyond Ask HN. If you make a post and you know people are going to make a particular reply, it doesn't matter if you preemptively address that reply right in your post; you're going to get that reply anyway. People skim, they don't read, and they don't think deeply about posts. They're just pattern matching on a couple words and slamming out a reply. The reply is practically locked and loaded before you even made the post.

People are in such a hurry to talk, they don’t listen.

A better Ask HN title would've been "of these 4 Linux-based laptops, what are your experiences"

The current title gets way more eyeballs and engagement. I say that only one-quarter jokingly.

sadly ... you're probably right :|

Agree. Also I feel like most ask hn are just questions and that’s it. No need to sift through the asker’s specifications on how they’d like everyone to answer. So I feel like when an asker expects that, it’s not likely to be respected by all. It’s just a quirk of hn.

I guess that if someone can’t articulate why they do or don’t want something, someone who is passionate about that thing sees their chance to help someone see the light. I then guess that the solution to giving requirements like “not a mac” is to also articulate why at a level that the audience will respect.

OP has already made the mistake of asking for something very broad in the title, then asking for something very specific in the body. If the title read “Linux laptop” I doubt they would have as many people in the comments suggesting anything else.

If the title read “Linux laptop” I doubt they would have as many people in the comments suggesting anything else.

Sorry, but that's a cop-out. As others have point out, the real problem is "people just don't read these days". Not even the top few lines of a post. If they did, they would have had no problem finding this important qualifier:

    I have no intention of using Windows/MacOS

I don't agree - I think if the original poster adhered to something like "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way: Use meaningful, specific subject headers" [0] then we would not even be having this conversation because the original poster would have found their target audience of Linux Laptop Recommenders rather than a bunch of people that arrived to comment their favorite laptop and found that they were cut off by the original poster with no real explanation for WHY Windows/MacOS are not acceptable.

It would be similar to "Ask HN: Which text editor should I use for software development" with a body that contains "I have no intention of using an IDE or mouse". It's a poorly formed request if your intent is to ask for recommendations amongst the keyboard driven tiled editors.

[0] http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#bespecifi...

Like all the "just use Org-Mode" comments. God, if I see one more Org Mode recomendation I might just burst!

Didja know you can use org-mode to handle this as a todo? For example:

** TODO: Install NixOs and learn how to use declarative configuration. ** TODO: Burst from hearing about the power of org-mode.

Then you can use C-c C-t to rotate the TODO's as you carry them out!

(All comments tongue in cheek from a vim amateur user)

I suspect its because a shamefully large percentage of Ask HN and Show HN are stupid or lazy

"Guys how do I learn math?"

"Are there any apps that let you type in numbers and add them together?"

"Is there any way I can ask questions to strangers on the web so I dont have to type the equivalent into the Google search bar or look it up on Wikipedia, YouTube, Amazon, library etc etc etc etc?"

granted my most generous interpretation of this phenomenon is that many of these cases are "kids at keyboard" phenomenon. but its frustrating at times seeing it repeat endlessly here.

Because there is no answer to this question.

Failure rates are pretty much the same given normalized manufacturing and part sourcing.

And the fit and finish debate have been semantically mined to death.

User knows constraints, just pick one!

This is not the sort of choice that needs a support group.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com