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. :)
> 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.