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Comment by minimaxir | Hacker News Reader

It appears that Sequoia's new Grove system doesn't allow user commenting. Which is somewhat of a shame, as it makes the posts very one-sided and unopen to debate, which is what appears to be happening here in the HN comments.

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Most likely Sequoia wants debate on its pages as much as Disney wants protests in its theme parks. Hosting constructive debate takes additional effort, so it is a valid choice. Those looking for places to debate VC fundraising and other topics have other places to go, like Fred Wilson's blog avc.com, Union Square Ventures (usv.com), and of course here, among other places.

What about the comments here do you think is useful to them? The orignal post was about how to deliver a useful presentation, presumably to them but probably to a more general audience, but the comments here appear to go off on a tangent about selection bias.

I'm the editor of Grove. First, thanks for checking it out and for talking about it here. Our initial goal was to create some compelling pieces that the entrepreneur community would find helpful. To that end, we took the advice we got from the founders we worked with to build the site, which is launch and improve over time. The ability to comment is certainly one of the things we'd like to add going forward, but we feel we have to earn the right to be a community site first. We're hosting a drinkup next month, which hopefully will be a start. In the meantime, forums like HN where there is already a big community are a great place to discuss the site.

FYI here's a link to the drinkup: https://sequoia.co1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_dpzD7CVJ0DtTwgd

Aw c'mon, it's the internet! You don't need to "earn the right to be a community site". You just swagger on in, set up comments, filter the spam, and see if enough others show up to make a flamewar. :) Sink or swim, just like a startup!

(That said, I totally understand getting content rolling before adding comments)

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