Hacker News Reader

Comment by byteCoder | Hacker News Reader

And this article has been posted to Hacker News for what reasons?

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/ appears to be a better place. Don't upmod me. Please downmod TFA.

Hmmm, reading the HN guidelines I find that I am encouraged to post anything that piques my intellectual curiosity. I ignore almost all articles about US politics (I'm a Canadian), but this one was interesting because of the discussion about body language, and most especially interesting because of the implications of never admitting your political opponent is correct in a negative-style campaign.

That's an interesting aspect of game strategy, which seems to tickle the same part of my brain as many other things I associate with hacking. Well, now you have my explanation as to why I feel posting this complies with the HN guidelines.

Now, help me out: What's your explanation for posting a comment complaining that something isn't hacker news, something specifically discouraged in the guidelines???

Actually, the two points made by the article (body language and agreeing with opponent) have been gone over hundreds of times in dozens of blogs starting about a minute after the debate. I love Ebert - he's a treasure - but in this case he's saying nothing new, and the post isn't "evidence of [any] interesting new phenomenon".

Interesting and new to me, I admit that this is my fault for not paying very close attention to US politics. BTW, I would be delighted if we applied that standard to all posts about the iPhone/iPod Touch app store :-)

BTW, I upmodded you for reminding me of a very useful test for submit-worthiness.

Ehh... once again someone going on about "hackernews worthiness" of some article. When it comes to politics, humor, or anything that doesn't scream Tech. from or relating to the media, I would take their remarks with a grain salt.

Most telling is how so often these individuals remain silent when various other more respected members of the hackernews community post similar supposedly off-topic posts as well.

So what if Ebert is saying something that has been spammed over another over a number of other blogs? Do you have any idea how many "successful" and "on-topic" posts fit that bill? Give shoving your ideologies down various posters' throats a rest.

That's pretty funny, as I have frequently argued for keeping things more diverse on HN. Ad nauseum, I would have said.

I would take their remarks with a grain salt [...] Give shoving your ideologies down various posters' throats a rest.

Is that what you call "a grain salt"? I'm glad you don't go for a pound!

Hmm, I guess most developers never read documentations/guidelines, etc. And they continue to type in lines of code until compilers/interpreters spit out error messages....

Impressive rebuttal. There's been too much meta-commenting going on lately.

[/irony]

You can't downmod articles, can you?

no. Strange, I guess there is an inner sanctum of sanctimonious downmodders.

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