Argh There’s an asshole on my internet
medium.com
medium.com
Moreover, I would personally take abrasive factual criticism over superficial pats on the back and fake smiles in a heartbeat.
In fact, this -
Bookmark hell? What about click through stuff hell?
Needless to say, 5 clicks through, I gave up.
I'd love to see examples of other feedback - "oh my god you idiots what have you done?" etc.
Just because you should expect the internet to be full of douchebags does not mean you need to contribute to their number. It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Look.. if you are unable in this day and age, and this environment, to differentiate between honest criticism directed at your product, in this case "you wrecked my back history", "too much clicking", "too much animation" and insults directed at you (or your child.. what a shameful appeal to emotion), you are in the wrong line of work.
I honestly and truly mean that. If your criterion for "nasty" is a short message containing no insults, no foul language, simply a lack of social niceties book-ending the actual content, you're going to be very unpleasantly surprised when actual end users get ahold of your product and start voicing their annoyance with language that would make Linus Torvalds blush.
Being a labor of love certainly doesn't exempt you from criticism, even less so when you make a "Show HN" post about it!
If you don’t like my work because it is bad, tell me about it.
Here were three very concrete issues presented by random people. I don't know about you, but were I on the receiving end of those pretty reasonable comments, I'd have taken their advice to heart and made changes, not written what amounts to a tone argument in blog post form.
This post is made not in insult of the author or his work - it is made in honest critique of the blog post. Whatever tone is chosen to be read into this post is the reader's choice.
I agree with you that the jump from the quoted comments to my passionate statement ("If you don't like my work...") was extremely abrupt. It seems to indicate that I believed the criticisms to be ad hominems directed at me.
Refuting the ad hominem ad-hoc, without an example was childish behavior on my part and I would like to apologise for that bit unreservedly. I also realise that it is VERY ironic considering the nature and topic of my post but I hope the rest of the post still makes good points.
Nope, I am not ashamed about the 'appeal to emotion' because it wasn't an appeal to emotion. It is something I personally believe and I'd like to stand by it, please. I think that anyone who's created something deserves a bit of admiration/praise along with the criticism and in that regard the example fits perfectly, IMHO. Let us agree to disagree here?
I beg to differ about the 'honesty of the criticism' and the 'concreteness' of the three issues you mention - IMHO, they were disguised as insults. The same points have also been brought up by others in the same thread in ways that are far better at promoting a conversation and a learning experience, in general.
It'll please you to know that the original creator of the Show HN (TuringMachine) was a far better man than I and I was thoroughly impressed by his responses. I, OTOH, was quick to express my anguish in a public forum and I have received some very interesting criticism myself. Yours is definitely one of them, thank you.
As a programmer, it's worth keeping in mind that your work—with any luck—will touch the lives of tens of thousands of people. If your work is poor, you will make those lives worse. If your work is excellent, you will make those lives better. Everything you do, for good or ill, may be multiplied by a huge number. This is how programmers can change the world, and how they can make piles of money.
But with this power comes a responsibility: We have to listen to those users, and we have to give them the best we can. If we're unlucky, the users will say nice things while suffering in silence. If we're lucky, some of those users will gripe and moan about something specific. Many programmers spend a huge amount of effort trying to get users to vent their frustrations in detail. One of the most brutally effective things a programmer can do is watch a user through one-way glass from a sound-proof room. You will sit there cursing yourself, mutter, "How could I have been so stupid? I have to fix that immediately."
Now, if a novice programmer shows me their Rails app in person, I'm going to compliment some stuff, rip some other stuff apart (with instructions on how to fix it), and point them towards useful tools. But if a programmer releases software to a wide audience, and that software sucks, I'll gripe as much as any other user. (Of course, if the software is open source, I know the answer will be "Patches, please!", so I skip the griping and send patches along with enthusiastic thank yous for the code.)
If you don't think your work is ready to touch the lives of ten thousand people, and you don't want that responsibility, then I actually recommend against doing a "Show HN". Find a smaller, more personal group, where people will interact with you, and not just your code.
And I say all of this as somebody who has zero patience for nasty personal remarks. The feedback you quoted was brutal, but as a working professional, I've invested both time and money to elicit similar feedback.
Then again, call me crazy, but I rather like the acerbic and terse nature of hackerdom. Phatic communication is jettisoned in favor of information density.. not something I'd want to live in as a society, but nice in this one slice of life. I can definitely see how that would bother some people and begin to eat at others, though.
Cheers, and thanks for being awesome :)
> Constructive, no. Especially to someone who didn't understand enough not to do this in the first place
In general it's not good or useful to present comments in a negative way, because negative comments cause a negative reaction from the intended recipient. But they're still getting the information that there was something specific they need to improve upon. So it's still constructive, it's just also rude.
> What is this? Sorry, but I’m not going to watch shapes flying around my screen to find out.
However, then he goes on to imply that the things being said are personal attacks, not critiques of the work itself.
> If you don’t like my work because it is bad, tell me about it. If you don’t like my work because you don’t like me, talk to the fucking hand.
The messages he quoted, while they could have been phrased better, were not personal attacks. They were comments on things that people found wrong with the product, not the person.
It is like the bible phrase about judging while still having a post on your eyes.
The post was written as a single-draft rant and published in a hurry. In retrospect, I should have taken care to draft it better. Should I edit the post and structure it better? Is it right to edit your post once it has been published and commented upon? In any case, thanks for the criticism.
As for the irony, I would like to politely disagree with you on that one: I am not attacking people of HN in the post at all!
In fact attacking is the wrong word, IMHO. I am ranting against/criticizing HN-ers criticizing skills. I personally believe that, in the context of HN, your posts, comments & critiques are defined as "your work". So essentially, I am criticizing "your work", don't you think?
Also, I apologised for the rant going slightly off-topic in my last paragraph. I would like to believe that I did not stray too far off-topic but do tell me if I did: I'll take care to construct my future posts better.
Thanks for reading!
If you want constructive criticism, here is some: don't do that. Particularly not if you are basically complaining about other people doing that. And even more particularly not if it isn't just a quick comment on HN, but a separate post on your own blog; blog posts are expected to have more thought and care behind them than comments.
However, now that it is out there in the wild, I am taking notes for what to do (and what NOT to do) the next time I post something. The 'published in a hurry' bit happened because I accidentally clicked the publish button instead of the save draft button. I am not entirely sure how to unpublish on Medium - or if such a thing was even possible. So I went ahead and posted it to HN expecting - very literally - nothing.
One way or the other, I'm getting to learn quite a few things now! :)
[Edit: I see from comments elsewhere in this thread that you were not the author of the original presentation; but I still think the above is a good general rule to follow.]
Not really.
If you make it clear which bits are insertions and edits, or if you only add a section at the end you should be okay.
Not only are you attacking the "people of HN", you are grossly misrepresenting to do so. Aside from the absolutely ridiculous veer into claiming that it had anything whatsoever to do with ageism or punchcards or anyone attacking anyone (that whole non-sequitur was surreal, leaving me thinking that I must be missing something. The only explanation I can come up with is that you ply your own bigotry, and this was your way of categorizing and dismissing a segment of the population), you pull nonsense such as quoting alan_cx and then skipping where they continued with "How about a normal link to a normal page explaining your offer?"
That is extremely constructive commentary: Like probably 99% of opportunities the author got, I clicked back a few slides in, as the presentation was absolutely atrocious.
Your post was bitter irony as it was absolutely worlds worse than the worst of HN. Personal attacks, misrepresentations, strawmen....amazing.
The ageism bit wasn't a non-sequitur in any way but it was definitely under-explained and I am at fault on that one. I have been at the receiving end a few times ("Why do you want to know that? That's how it has always been done!" and "What would you know? You have barely written your first fizzbuzz!" are just a few examples) and the anguish just happened to pour out. Apologies for not explaining that better in the post but it does not invalidate the existence of the point in any way.
Ply my own bigotry? I am sorry if my post seemed to raise those questions/sentiments but I'd genuinely believe that I was trying to point out something that has troubled me. You, OTOH, without any knowledge of me or my intentions accused me of bigotry. Should I take that as an example of an ad hominem?
As for alan_cx's comment, yes, I am guilty of cherry-picking a part of it. I believe I made that clear in the lead-up but that's no excuse. I'll make amends and edit in the rest of the comment right away. It doesn't make the original comment any better in terms of its jeering nature, IMHO.
Personal attacks? Misrepresentations? Strawmen? I sincerely and unreservedly apologise for for any personal attacks or misrepresentations. I think I just chose to put in some (rather badly) cherry-picked but nonetheless valid examples. However, I know I am not perfect and am definitely prone to mistakes and the occasional exaggeration. If you could please point them out, I will make the necessary corrections immediately.
I repeat, I am not attacking the people of HN at any point in the post. I am ranting against the jeering disguised as criticism. Since all dark clouds have a silver lining, all jeering must have an inherent critical point, too. Should I take it to mean that jeering is now acceptable since it is criticism?
In that case, may I request you to please consider my jeering of HN's snobbish behavior as honest criticism?
As a bit more constructive criticism from someone who's coded on punchcards (you may get a lot of this): stop digging. Decide which bits of your post you want to stand by and which bits you want to apologise for and do so.
Personally, I think the point about not supporting newbies was worth raising but the content and tone got in the way.
Thank you for pointing out the title. While I am guilty of sensationalizing the title, I have not referred to HN users specifically - neither in the title, nor in the post. Nowhere have I made the correlation between the two, nor do I intend to. I still believe the title fits the post and does not slander HN users specifically but please correct me if I am wrong.
I would like to stand by all my points in the post. I just seem to have expressed some of them a little inadequately. But you are right. I should have done better in the first place, no excuses.
There's just one part I will definitely be changing, and that's the part where I talk about the punchcards. Somehow, I seem to have missed the extra 'since' at the beginning of the line and it has changed the entire paragragh to something horrible. I am ashamed and I apologize to you personally for this mistake.
I'll be writing an errata/update based on some of the comments I have received in this discussion thread.
We are discussing a blog post that attempts to invent a caricature of those you disagree with based upon, it seems, age, despite that having literally nothing to do with the discussion in question (futher, I have no reason to believe the submitter of the item discussed was inexperienced, or that they themselves weren't one of those reviled card punchers. I'm not sure why you drew this divide that didn't actually exist at all, leading to further nonsense of castes, as if everyone wasn't discussing the poor execution of the presentation. I mention your own possible bigotry because it is similar to racists imagining every disagreement or situation must somehow involve race).
In that case, may I request you to please consider my jeering of HN's snobbish behavior as honest criticism?
Your jeering criticism was nonsense, however, manufacturing a strawman that didn't exist. People expressing frustration with the discussed submission, however, were making a very cogent point.
> ...attempts to invent a caricature of those you disagree with based upon age, despite that having literally nothing to do with the discussion in question...
By classifying my concerns as an 'attempt to invent a caricature' are you trying to claim that the issue I am trying to raise does not exist?
Also, you seem to be reducing my entire opinion to just the age-ist point. So I went and re-read my post. Turns out there is an additional 'since' in the line that changes the entire meaning of the paragraph:
> The ones that believe that ~~since~~ they have been writing software since the time that programs had to be punched on to cards and fed to a machine that was usually the size of three rooms, they believe that it gives them the right to look down upon any and all attempts by those who haven’t done the same.
This is clearly my fault and I should have been more careful. Age-ism isn't the divide I am talking about in the post and not even remotely the point I am trying to make! Therefore, I propose the following changes to the offending paragraph:
> Their asshole-ry (can't think of another word) comes from a self-belief so strong that you wonder if they have been writing software since the time it was fed to computers via punch-cards. Worse, their sense of entitlement is so strong that it leads them to believe that they have the divine right to look down upon any and all attempts by those who haven’t done the same.
> Your jeering criticism was nonsense, however, manufacturing a strawman that didn't exist.
What strawman did I manufacture?
> People expressing frustration with the discussed submission, however, were making a very cogent point.
When did I reject the notion that the people expressing frustration weren't making a cogent point? My entire opinion was based around the thought that they needed to be a little more positive/constructive with their criticism.
It seems we have differing opinions on what counts as positive/constructive and even on what counts as criticism itself, in which case, let's just agree to disagree?
> Bookmark hell? What about click through stuff hell? Needless to say, 5 clicks through, I gave up.
"Users have short attention spans. They will not click through many pages to get to the content. Avoid splash pages if you can, and certainly don't make the user click X times to get the content" - that's very bland.
"Ha ha, oh wow, that was a lot of clicking. I gave up, and I think most users would too"?
Or what?
While I agree with you that showHN is often a bit rougher than it needs to be I agree with others that you've chosen sub-optimal examples.
My first few months of lurking on HN, I saw a lot of positive, encouraging posts & comments. Only when I started commenting did I begin to notice a few acerbic ones popping up here and there. I suspect I was looking at things with rose-tinted glasses and never quite readied myself for the 'darker' moments.
Ah well, I learn something new everyday. As an aside, I have been working on something on the 'create a spot' bit you mentioned - as part of my self-learning process - but it is still along way from being an HN or anything like it. :)
I agree people should be more polite but there are some that are just incapable of wrapping their criticism up to be nice.
Speaking on the mentor portion of the article as a Junior Dev I worked under an older Senior Programmer who would flat out say the code I just finished and was proud of sucked, after asking a few questions I'd get to the root of it and learn something. Under the crude insults he was a smart guy who knew his stuff. The way he reviewed code was just part of his personality, he actively tried to be nice but it never came out to others as nice as he thought it was. In the end I'm glad he gave me criticism even if it wasn't pretty, it really helped me to hone my skills.
Welp, I'd not considered that at all! Thank you so much for that perspective. I'll keep that in mind the next time I meet someone like that! :)
Oh no, that's such a terrible criticism.
Yup, you are right. I picked some poor examples to showcase my experiences and I should have drafted/edited my post better. I have nobody to blame but myself. Thanks for pointing that out, I'll keep this in mind for the future.
As for the lack of self-confidence, I am working my way through that. I kept thinking it was merely a manifestation of the impostor syndrome. Reading your comment, it seems I have over-estimated myself and I am actually suffering from a lack of self-confidence more than anything else.
To tell you the truth, as an utter newbie, I am never entirely sure if I am doing the right thing so I am cautious with almost everything. Unfortunately for me, the same does not seem to apply with my rants. I really should edit my posts better. My escapist brain tells me to excuse myself by saying, I never expected to get on to the front-page of HN. It is definitely a slow news day, I guess.
Also, the project that I chose as an example in the post isn't mine. I should have made that clear in the beginning itself. It just caused my anguish to bubble over.
Also, I thought it had nothing to do with experience and was strictly about 'internalizing accomplishments' - at least that's what Wikipedia said.
Maybe I am over-assuming. Maybe you are right and I just suffer from low self-esteem. :(
Social networking on a grand scale has been around for almost 30 years, and in that time the Internet has remained skeptical, critical, and slightly negative.
Lets think about why that is for a second. The Internet is built on ads. Not content, not content creators, and not Google. Advertising drives the machinations of the Internet and there are very few large sites out there that aren't advertizing driven.
When the underlying pulse of the Internet is marketing, it's no wonder that people take a reserved and slightly negative approach - they don't know whether they're experiencing something genuine or being fed bullshit, and sometimes the answer is both.
So please, be a bit less of an anti-asshole and a bit more understanding about why people take this tack in their online personas - it isn't about an inherent negativity of their personality, but rather a defensive mechanism that they've subconsciously developed due to the reality of what the Internet is - a marketing platform.
I'm sure there are studies that explain it, etc. but I still find it interesting, and sometimes it's actually completely unproductive. Hell, adults goading teenagers to kill themselves -- that HAPPENS online. I still don't understand it.
I'm a bit of an asshole in real life. I'm a bit of one on the internet at times; being blunt is necessary at times. But people just seem to forget that there are people behind the screen-name, after all.
I disagree with your thesis here, just by the way. Plenty of sites have nothing to do with marketing, and yet it has remained. Usenet had no advertising either to begin with, but was even WORSE than the 'net at times. I think it's more primal than that, something to do with being "faceless in a crowd" -- the sort of things that cause mobs and riots. *shrugs
Very many other online fora with no advertising have had similar problems with vigorous discussion. See, eg, Wikipedia, where people often have personality clashes.
Also, Wikipedia does not exist in a void. I would posit that more than half of Wikipedia's traffic comes from Google, the poster child for ad driven business in the Internet age.
In real life it's even harder. To be blatantly honest I nearly cried once when a client ripped the shit out of two weeks of backbreaking work I did for them. Instead of crawling off and whinging I fixed it and the client was happy. This was in 1998 and they're still a client now.
Now try again :)
"I get knocked down But I get up again You're never gonna keep me down."
Right? ;)
Oh and no twirking or whatever it is.
My mother was studying to be a nurses assistant. She was learning to draw blood. Her first real human patient was a frail, elderly lady. My mom was apologetically poking this woman's arm. "Don't worry, dear," the lady told my mother. "We all have to learn somehow."
Whenever I get poked by a newcomer to the field, I try to help as best I can. We all have to learn somehow.
> What is this? Sorry, but I’m not going to watch shapes flying around my screen to find out.
It's tempting to reply to this with a "well, fuck off then." but it's valid critique - some people don't want a presentation, they just want text. Look at man pages - it's possible to improve the typography and the presentation, and include some graphics and CSS, but the information is what people want.
(http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=afterboot&sekti...)
As a contrast, look at the mostly positive comments on the 180 days of whatever it was posts - some of the more negative posts got downvotes, and most of the comments seemed positive.
So, maybe it's useful to (avoiding age[1]) say "I'm learning $X and this is what I made? Any useful critique?" You'll still get arseholes but I think you'll have not as many.
[1] Because no matter what you've achieved as a 15 year old there'll be someone on HN to say "Yeah? SO WHAT? That's nothing special."
I didn't expect this post to polarise people so much but, in a way, I am glad it did. I have found some interesting conversation behaviors and patterns that will surely stand me in good stead when I post my very own "Show HN" in the (hopefully) near future.
As a quick thought, I'd like to leave you with this:
> What is this? Sorry, but I’m not going to watch shapes flying around my screen to find out.
OR
> [...]some people don't want a presentation, they just want text. Look at man pages - it's possible to improve the typography and the presentation, and include some graphics and CSS, but the information is what people want.
I'll stretch my neck out here and claim that both posts are offering the same criticism (somewhat). However, different people react differently to the two statements quoted above. For me, it is the second one.
Which one eggs you on more?
Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Remove the noise from the signal and use it to improve your product. I like HN and I think it is useful and I haven't found a forum that does it better. I can't comment about Reddit because I have never used or read any articles or threads on it and I have no plan to.
I sort of see what you are trying to say but I don't think this is an apt analogy. Yes, when you start you might tend to get a RTFM from more experienced developers (often rightfully so) but no one is holding you to a class. Asking the right questions and trying to see what the commenter/user is really trying to say might be more helpful in the long run.
> You never know, your vitriol might just end up killing the next-big-thing on the internet.
Who knows? You just might uncover a really big pain point the same way.
Maybe it would be worth to consider whether your attempts should be as public as they are. Why does everything has to be made public immediately? Continuous delivery does not mean pushing out sub optimal work just because you can and because nobody has to pay for it.
> I don’t see you guys taking up cudgels with Pascal because he wrote treatises in Physics and Philosophy both, do I?
Comparing yourself with a genius is probably not the most humble way of discussing the issue.
The presentation for the Bookmark was at best horrible. Just by forcing the reader to repeatedly click on a specific point of the screen just to get a progressive sentence or two, just isn't a way to do it, especially if you don't even give an indicative of where you are at. I gave up at 20th click or so.
Second, let's examine how the link was titled:
Show HN: Escape from Bookmark Hell
Of course, perhaps the author has found and solved a problem which none of us knew we had, but if it were a constructive progress, I'm fine with it. But when you have to click seven to eight times, past the buzzwords, just to see exactly what the author is claiming to be such inefficient system, and ten or so clicks furthermore for the proposed solution, it just reeks of arrogance.
At this point I simply pressed a 'back' button, got annoyed, and simply closed the tab, not averting my attention to it ever again.
Apart from a personal experience from the example, here are the takeaways:
I didn't like what I saw. I didn't like the presentation. Which is fine, you can't please everyone. But I did not leave a feedback. To the author of the Bookmark, I didn't exist, or in a way more relevant to a developer, the disgruntled user whose opinion is valuable in improving the product never reached the developer.
That's how unconcerned people usually react.
Instead, you have a group of passionate people who took their time to criticize and comment on the product and the presentation. You should really take it with a grain of salt.
Of course, there should be some assholes, but it's the internet, or even, a group of people. If you had thought somehow that academic developers were all nice and respectful, you would be very sorrily disappointed.
I have no idea if the OP is the author of the Bookmark thing, but normally, when people don't like what they see, they leave, lest leave a comment. Some of the examples the OP listed are actually pretty helpful comments, of this point has already been discussed.
A criticism is better than negligence. Almost always.
I am, however, someone who unintentionally empathized with the author of the bookmark thing and posted my anguish. I am now learning a lot from this discussion.
I thanks you for your detailed comment and I particularly liked two statements you made:
1. To the author of the Bookmark, I didn't exist, or in a way more relevant to a developer, the disgruntled user whose opinion is valuable in improving the product never reached the developer.
2. A criticism is better than negligence. Almost always.
I'll keep these in mind forever when evaluating something for someone else from now on. No matter how small, a single line of feedback can lead to some powerful changes, sometimes. Personally, I'll ensure that I'll always craft this constructively but if I'm on the receiving end I won't take it personally if someone chooses not to. :)
As for the original author of the bookmark thing, he is a far better man than I. He has responded very calmly and respectfully to all the jeering/criticism and I continue to remain in awe of him.
I still have a lot to learn, I guess.