Posting to HN is like exposing yourself to the eye of Mordor
I see great projects here on HN every day, but we are a species which loves cynicism. The comment threads can be especially hard on authors.
To all the creators out there, I salute you.
To all the creators out there, I salute you.
Lots of new users here don't understand that.
If you spend any time on the internet, you're quickly trained that discussion forums are places for combat. The goal is to look as smart as possible while tearing everybody else down. To have an unrefuted comment is to win, and nobody is going to let you do that so they'll tear your comment apart line by line. Naturally, that person is a moron and needs to be told so, preferably by turning his own trick against him and tearing his comment apart. Stop me if this sounds familiar.
That explains why the hardened slashdot veteran gets such a strange reception here. Have you ever been at a party where there was a guy who just didn't belong there? The belligerent know-it-all butting into conversations? The drunk guy in a room full of sober people? The uninvited casual racist? We've all seen what happens. People drift away from him wherever he goes, sometimes stranding some poor soul talking to him, but generally trying as best as possible to continue the party as normal and hoping he doesn't disrupt it further. Nobody wants to confront him and ask him to leave directly, but they all sure hope he'd get the hint on his own.
That's where we are here today. Except it's a big room and there are quite a few uninvited intruders behaving badly. You'll notice that that guy at the party often doesn't realize that he's out of place. Look through this very thread and you'll spot a few of him, justifying their belligerent behavior and complaining that the rest of us don't get it because this is The Internet and that's how we're supposed to behave.
But we don't behave that way. That's why it's so good here.
Removing all contrary points of view from a discussion makes it one-sided and turns it into smalltalk.
As hackers we should have an open mind and accept that there are opinions contrary to ours. We should embrace this fact and not stamp everyone who doesn't agree with our views as an 'intruder'.
At no point does the parent advocate for smalltalk on HN or stamping out contrary opinion en bloc. The point is purely about behaviour, respect and being considerate of others.
"I only claimed that 5 = 2 + 2, I never said anything about it being 4!"
Isn't that the conclusion to draw from HN being described as a cocktail party?
It's all about tone. Disagreement is central to conversation. Sadly, it's also central to being a dick, so you have to take care with how you come across. If you think of yourself standing with a beer in your hand looking a group of people in the eye, you'll probably do a lot better here than if you imagine you're on the Official Internet Review Board for Startup Execution pronouncing your verdict.
The problems facing HN today are not due to a few bad apples, to the contrary I think it's pretty clearly a function of size and there may be nothing to do about that short of pulling a Metafilter and charging for new accounts (something which brings its own form of elitism, but may be better than the alternatives).
HN has been often been likened to a mob, but that's not a good analogy either, because I believe 95% of HN is always in full-on critical thinking mode which is the opposite of mob mentality. It just feels like a mob because of the number of criticisms that you can be pelted with based purely on volume, each individual post tends not to be all that harsh, but the wall of text is overwhelming.
However, i wish to register the fact that i chuckled on seeing that the response to a comment arguing that shooting down someone's argument is not the HN way was a comment shooting it down!
Too easy to lose track, too hard to mantain a proper, nice conversation.
It's an amazing community, and we could be exchanging a lot of knowledge and experience, but usually we're just feeling hopelessly lost looking at the 70-something comments, most of them nested in all kinds of crazy levels.
You just described IRC perfectly.
"But we don't behave that way" – who is "we"?
There's only so long you can dismiss these people as mere "intruders" and declare that No True HNer would behave that way.
This is not a cocktail party. There is no guest list. In sufficient numbers, the "intruders" become the community.
These places will always be "noisy" but the noise ratio here is rather small. I don't know how HN managed this but I hope it is here to stay.
I'm mostly a lurker. I check HN maybe once a day to see what people are thinking about in web tech / entrepreneurship circles. I comment maybe once a month, which is to say I have to think someone's really missing something important, or feel really strongly that something needs to be considered.
The emergent behavior of this is polarized: either strong arguments or technical corrections. Imagine you're having a loud discussion at a conference, with a stream of developers walking by. Who's going to stop and talk to you? I think it'll mostly be:
1. Someone who hears a rare misconception they've figured out the answer to
2. Someone who hears you're talking about a fringe technology they are also passionate about
3. Someone who wants to sell you something
(depending on who you are: 4. someone who recognizes you, and is excited to meet you in person)
If you're commenting on every article, I can maybe see how it would feel like it's "a few bad apples"... but I encourage you to count the number of people you consider "bad apples" -- they probably outnumber the regular commenters 10:1 or more. I think the "bad apples" are just people who don't usually comment, deciding their perspective on whatever is sufficiently valuable to the community that it's worth their time.
("feels important" is of course != "important" -- #include stories about airbnb screwing up)
Which is to say, when you put something on the HN homepage you're going to learn about: a ton of rare misconceptions you accidentally relied on, and a bunch of fringe technologies you should have been using / should have known exist. I think I can see why that might feel like being under Sauron's gaze... I just don't think it's malicious, and don't think those commenters are doing it wrong.
This makes me feel so fancy online at 8AM in my pajamas.
My various attempts to post an Ask or Show HN have mostly gone unnoticed. I think it would be great if there were a place that Ask / Show / Tell / etc. posts could get more traction in general.
I normally never visit it, but it is available.
Therein lies the problem :) It doesn't matter if the parent visits it, if no one else does.
I try to make it a point to visit the /newest page, and find that I have disproportionate influence on the content of Hacker News as a result. At slow times, it only takes about 3-4 votes in quick succession for a story to crack the top 30 on the front page. If a story is sitting on /newest with 3 votes, you can be the one that starts a voting cascade that brings it to the top. And as an added bonus, if you add an insightful comment, you can rake in hundreds of karma points as your comment is the first thing that thousands of readers see.
1 = http://nathanael.hevenet.com/the-best-time-to-post-on-hacker...
If you continue reading, it also states that to maximize time on the front page, submitting between 8-9 PM EST is optimal.
It concludes with an overall optimal posting time of 9-10 AM EST, or 7AM - noon more generally.
My guess is that luck as a great deal to do with it.
HN has become pretty useless for posting projects since the site has become so large. It's a shame, because this my favorite part of the site.
Simply posting with the "Show HN: " prefix puts you on a couple of twitter feeds/meta-sites. Reddit is normally a better option, because you can post to the niche subreddits and get a bit of interest, even if you don't hit the front page of the whole site (good luck with that, if it's not an image).
Might be an idea to add an option to separate out the journeys into bus/tube/OG lines since the TfL Route Planner sometimes give strange routes when all mixed together?
Edit: Silly typo's
I'll have a look at adding some options for customising journey types.
Very true. I announced a new javascript storefront the other month with Show HN. It got four upvotes and 1400 unique visitors in the first few hours, almost all from automatic Show HN aggregators.
I normally do a quick scan of the front page, and then go the "New" page. I find stories there that are quite interested but failed to show up on front page due to the lack of upvotes.
edit: better context.
Just watching a feel-good cartoon flick with the kids (Ratatouille) and there's this little gem at the end. I'd like to meet the guy who wrote that in. It sums it all up right there.
Ratatouille was the first Pixar movie I saw that was an utter disappointment (no, I haven't seen them all, but I've seen a fair number of them). It was so far from "feel-good" cartoon flick for me. Much more "I'll never get that two hours of my life back" movie. Not sure how close to two hours it actually was, but it felt like about 10 hours.
Not sure what they were smoking when they made that one. I realize that tastes in movies vary widely, but I still find it hard to believe that people actually like that movie.
To each his own, I guess.
I do this for a living, and having been on the creative side I'm always very careful to concentrate on giving positive feedback rather than negative feedback. I notice that lots of times the people in my line of work that have never actually created much can be picked out easily by the way in which they relentlessly try to tear everything down, often quite successfully.
It is almost as if they don't realize that to criticize is 100 times easier than to create and they don't give a rat's ass (pun intended) about the consequences.
HN has a lot of that, de-constructive criticism, just to tear everything down that's new to prove the critic is better than the ones that built whatever it is that is on display. And I think that's where the eye of Mordor reference comes from above, it certainly looks like that at times.
Creation, any kind of creation is hard. And to create something perfect the first time out is impossible. So constructive criticism is worth gold, demotivation is lethal.
If a work is particularly bad, I'll generally just leave it alone, unless the artist has presented something that is obviously cynical and pandering, or otherwise obviously derivative and parasitic on the work of better artists. In those cases I might get slightly snarky. I try to control this and tone it down, because even derivative works are risks, and usually somewhat naive.
If the artists' ambitious goals weren't met, and I think I understand them, I try to lay this out in as constructive a manner as I can.
I can usually only accomplish good criticism by immersion -- repeated (dozens of) listens to a record for instance, over a period of days, writing/typing out lyrics by hand, listening to all the artist's previous records, reading as many interviews as I can and just trying to get my head in the "space" of the record. At some point I get to a place of sympathy where I get into the "soul" of the record and I really have something to say, that isn't just a first impression, nor a knee-jerk reaction, but as close to deep understanding as I can get. It's really hard work, even for just a 150 word review (which is one reason I don't do it often any more).
It's rare to get that kind of perspective on a HN comment, "Show HN", or some blog post linked here. But even with the noise that's emerged over the last few years as HN has grown, I can still find the really constructive comments and learn as much as I always have. I just have to look past the frustrating drive-by comments, the throw-away accounts and the axes-to-grind. The signal-to-noise isn't what it used to be, but in general there's just as much signal, but a lot more noise to have to overlook.
Really, the best thing you can get from HN is probably refining your skill at being able to separate useful criticism from non-useful. And a thick skin and confidence in your idea and execution, which is a pre-requisite for being able to digest constructive criticism and perceive who are just being Comic Book Guy haters.
But what about: "Why do I have to login to Facebook to see this?", "There are too many typos for this to be taken seriously?", "The font/colors are really hard to read", "It's broken in Firefox", "Facebook tried this in 2009 and they had [such and such] kinds of problems, what are you doing differently?"
I dunno...Maybe people have different expectations when doing a "Show HN?" If you've worked hard on something, of course you should be encouraged ...but if you're pitching it as a viable startup idea...then you, IMO, shouldn't just want "atta boy/girl" comments...constructive criticism now could save you a lot of pain later on.
Change the colors, my eyes are bleeding.
Ugh, another Bootstrap site?
Doesn't work in Firefox
There's nothing worse than throwing good at a bad idea only to one day realize you've wasted your time, money, and effort.
If one cynical comment is enough to derail your ambitions, you shouldn't be doing a startup.
The problem I see is that OPs tend to receive a reliable and sustained torrent of cynicism, and little else. Sure, there is value in those comments, and often super enlightening exchanges, but the default attitude of being the smartest-guy-in-the-room can get exhausting and counter-productive. Oftentimes would-be worthwhile discussion get buried or passed up for a bitter exchange with both parties just trying to prove their intellectual worth and cleverness.
- I don't think it's fair to call people out publicly (or necessary). Especially as they are unlikely to see my comment and have the opportunity to defend themselves.
- I don't tell myself anything of the sort.
The fact is, building something is hard. Criticizing something is easy. There's no special skill involved in picking apart somebody's project, making a big deal out of what is otherwise a minor flaw, and using that to dismiss that guy's work. That was a great way to make myself feel better about the fact that someone else built something, and I didn't.
There are also a lot of people who are just giving their honest reply.
Key is to tell who is who. Someone who just rants and rants about how bad it is, versus someone who's giving some useful criticism.
The problem is that people such as yourself make the world a worse place to live in and to experience. There's more to life than technology and business.
congratulations on accomplishing writing the comment, have a cookie.
why am i so lonely.
Constructive criticism, preferably actionable feedback, is one thing. Saying "you suck" is quite another.
I'm reminded of an old saying, which goes something like (paraphrasing here): "Everyone has their own battles to fight. Be kind to everyone, for you know not what battle they are fighting".
Besides, it doesn't cost any extra to be polite and reasonable, versus being inflammatory and attacking.
you shouldn't care if someone is a dick, what you should care is if he's right.
And yet, when someone offends you or attacks you, people are unlikely to take them seriously.
I feel that if you want to have your ego stroked and have some exposure for your project, the best place to post it would be somewhere like Reddit. If you want to show some good minds in the field and get valuable advice, then post it here.
The first most disappointing thing was that I failed to capitalize on the attention to the extent that I had hoped.
As someone who goes out of his way to comment on every Show HN thread he sees, I believe most users are not cynical. I can see why most people could be considered harsh; this is why I try to specifically say I'm being constructive.
I think the best way to go about giving feedback is to start with the negatives (the most glaring, preferably) and then end on a positive note with what the developer is doing properly. This tells the creators that they're doing good work and that they shouldn't abandon their babies (yet), they might just need to tweak things here and there.
Conversely, tearing someone to pieces is mean and not productive, even if the points are valid. There are arguments for this that generally go along the lines of some Darwinian thinking where they shouldn't even be trying if they can't take criticism - that's unrealistic and unfair to expect of people. We all need to start somewhere. Help out fellow members.
Hacker News is not a trial by fire - nor is it meant to encourage a death march. Those are two extremes. A comfortable middle ground where both criticism and praise are given is optimum. And I find there is rarely a submission so bad there's nothing good to be said about if at all.
To make it less unfair regarding valuable submission, check /news frequently and upvote submission you consider of value.
Discuss here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5831504
Its hard when you've worked on something and then your post gets trolled to death by a 12 yr old who has a strong opinion.
As much as I hate how direct they are, the comments are often true. I just wished the criticisms were more constructive at times.
That's a common belief, but I've noticed that Reddit has recently been giving higher-quality comments than HN. Take a look:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5745707
vs
http://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1es4pf/soylent_t...
The Reddit comments are either positive, or they're skeptical in a way that doesn't try to force their opinion on you. They say things like "Hey, I noticed no one at Soylent seems to have a background in nutrition" rather than "I beg you, don't fund these guys! What they're doing is inherently dangerous." (The latter was actually a very common theme in the comments here about Soylent.)
"fair and balanced"?
Ok, so I'm snarking a bit, but I always say that resorting to "human nature" in conversation means you've given up on actually finding out.
AND USUALLY IT IS NOT GOOD.
(end quote)
Truly hilarious jokes, on the other hand, are highly upvoted.