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Comment by iamshs | Hacker News Reader

Brudgers comment is at top because community thought it was worthy. Brudgers comment garnered 120 posts, meaning it sparked interest and posters contributed to that discussion. This is the underlying message of HN. Discussing.

"But why not focus on the underlying idea – if we could make eating and nutrition easier, how? If we could make phones more customisable and modular, how? Where could this lead? The possibilities, once you start thinking along these lines, are endless."

To me, that brudgers discussion does directly and tangentially hint at making things better and benefits of existing solutions. And moreover, some people are good at fine combing ideas and not propose some new. Criticising people because they are being "negative" amounts to living in a bubble.

Btw ironic, considering OP's comments on this article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6464120

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What you say here is true. But it also lacks context - Hacker News is not intended to be a pure democracy. Combative discussion fostered by an incendiary comment shouldn't be acceptable just because it features factually accurate content upvoted en masse by the community.

If that were the case, Hacker News would not have guidelines or moderators. You could allow Hacker News to operate like a pure free-market economy, excusing this as long as it's democratically supported - but that is detrimental to the community's purpose in the long term. Online communities require involved government because the participants (demonstrably) cannot govern themselves when in a group. At worst, discussion devolves to chaos; at best, it becomes inefficient and bothersome. Like anything else, there are pros and cons to combative discussion, and the negatives outweigh the positives.

Examples like the Touch ID discussion and the Nest alarm discussion are particularly informative in this regard, because combative, rehashed meta-discussion took up an entire page in each instance.

Hi there, thanks for doing due diligence and checking out my record. But I don't accept that my criticism of Microsoft's business moves are hypocritical. It would have been hypocritical if my reaction to Surface was "pfft, just a glorified iPad, and who wants a stylus and a kickstand? ipad already has styli" and so on.

Instead my criticism was, boiled down, that I like a lot of what Microsoft is doing but I don't think they've addressed certain basic problems with their communication style and general corporate culture. I feel especially frustrated because I like so much of what Microsoft is doing and want them to succeed, I think the world will be a better place if they are genuinely competitive against Google, Apple and Amazon. I didn't hesitate to express that frustration but in my opinion frustration is far from narrow-minded dismissiveness.

I see my comments on that article as constructive. If I let my frustration override my sense of balance then I apologise.

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