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Ask HN: How Many of You Are Like Me?

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121–130 of 139 posts

Re: Ask HN: How Many of You Are Like Me?

#122

Is an MBA really that raw of a deal??

If you don't put it to good use. I just graduated college myself and put off any thoughts of going back for a year or two to see what I can make of my free time. 4 months later and I'm almost a CISSP in the security field. Now I feel as though I need to get back in touch with the HN community and maybe start networking better.

Re: Ask HN: How Many of You Are Like Me?

#123

I almost never comment - it takes time and I am busy. I am doing another startup after having been on vacation for 8 years. How the world has changed! 8 years since I sold my last business and I am learning all over. HN is a faucet of knowledge on turned on full boar. I have been reading and learning like crazy!

Would be interesting to know what your last business was about. Must have had a happy ending for you to have spent the last 8 years vacationing?

Re: Ask HN: How Many of You Are Like Me?

#124
post #6

lol - you're not alone ;]. see, i'm here for 800 days now but stopped commenting on most of the threads long ago when I realized that my views are somewhat diametrically different and would not be accepted easily by those so more wise and better connected than my dumb self. they installed a nice feedback mechanism that effectively limits my input - whenever I post something I must fear ridiculous downvoting by those…

I just went through your history and concluded you've got a seriously skewed view of reality. Of your few dozen comments, only a handful has been downvoted, of which only one to -4, which was because you posted:

  YAWN! n00bz, you really bore me here.
Your assertion that your answers are not 'accepted easily' and suffer 'ridiculous downvoting' is completely unfounded.

Re: Ask HN: How Many of You Are Like Me?

#125
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd have better success if you showed some respect for your readers by capitalizing and writing your posts in a normal style. Starting off with "lol" and an emoticon marks you as somebody who hasn't thought about what he is about to write, and who doesn't care to present his thoughts to the reader in an organized manner. In your comment history, other posts have it worse, and your writing style and mannerisms make…

> You'd have better success if you showed some respect for your readers by capitalizing and writing your posts in a normal style. Starting off with "lol" and an emoticon marks you as somebody who hasn't thought about what he is about to write, and who doesn't care to present his thoughts to the reader in an organized manner. That is the biggest pile of bs I have ever read. Just because he starts his posts with a lol,…

  I've met plenty of very, very wealthy and successful
  individuals to know that how you type has absolutely no
  connection to how much respect you give readers, and how
  much they think about their responses.
I've read enough on the internet to know that how people type is strongly correlated to their respect for their readers, whether they take long enough to think about their response and, above all, their clarity of thought.

In other words: your personal experience and opinion isn't relevant or convincing, because others have other priors.

  The barrier to entry of participating on HN is not how you
  word, or begin your point - but the value you add.
The value you add is very much in how you choose your words. Every single one of our most interesting contributors could make any comment vicious and denigrating without losing a bit of the valuable content. That would seriously diminish the value of their posts.

You cannot clearly separate presentation and contents. The presentation always influences how the contents are perceived and rated. You could be the smartest guy in the world: if you type without using caps, nobody is going to realize, because your text gets harder to read and understand. You can probably think of many more examples yourself, where presentation detracts from content.

Re: Ask HN: How Many of You Are Like Me?

#127
I'm like you: I've been an active reader for the past couple years, but I rarely comment.

Sometimes I have stuff to say, but I'm afraid I'll spend the rest of the day coming back to HN and hope for acknowledgment and responses. This could be selfish, I know, especially when I really know something about a topic, but I can't help it.

Re: Ask HN: How Many of You Are Like Me?

#128
post #93
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As for speaking English as a second language: Stating up front "please forgive my English" seems to work pretty well to smooth things over for some members here." This isn't my discussion and so I apologize for potentially butting in, but being an ESL speaker myself it bothers me a bit to see ESL writers apologize for their English. I'm not sure if this is unique to those who are ESL themselves, but I find distingui…

... being an ESL speaker myself... I appreciate the "please forgive my English" notes, actually. I am a native English speaker, and I have no ability whatsoever to distinguish between ESL writers and sloppy natives. I certainly was not aware that frevd was not a native speaker until he mentioned it.

Well.. wow, I take that as a compliment. I should definitely read more HN comments though, to improve on my writing style (sorry, I got all my early English from coding and the rest from chats &c. (barely speaking a word even today), and those sources are undoubtedly not the best pool for poetry).

I must say that many people here are surely right what serious contribution is about, i.e. involving serious commitment, not sloppiness, which certainly improves on content quality.

However, if that scares away those of us who merely wanted to point out something without having the time for a proper pronounciation (especially non-natives), less a proof, it would be sad to lose their opinions.

Unproven Intuitions and fun statements must be allowed as well, otherwise you'd lose some important flow here, and who can say what might inspire others, effectively.

Prohibiting smileys and alike or limiting types of expressions through forced writing style can even mean worse, being contraproductive for the overall content submission. But surely there are better places for instant-talk.

Re: Ask HN: How Many of You Are Like Me?

#129
post #6

lol - you're not alone ;]. see, i'm here for 800 days now but stopped commenting on most of the threads long ago when I realized that my views are somewhat diametrically different and would not be accepted easily by those so more wise and better connected than my dumb self. they installed a nice feedback mechanism that effectively limits my input - whenever I post something I must fear ridiculous downvoting by those…

I just went through your history and concluded you've got a seriously skewed view of reality. Of your few dozen comments, only a handful has been downvoted, of which only one to -4, which was because you posted: YAWN! n00bz, you really bore me here. Your assertion that your answers are not 'accepted easily' and suffer 'ridiculous downvoting' is completely unfounded.

Sure, pick that one mistake of mine..

I remember that, and I wanted to directly express the low-quality of that particular post, which of course must have been of value for some people but me, nevertheless.

For my defence, I immediately regretted that comment, however I'm not deleting none of them.

Regarding the skewed view, it's not solely based on this forum and this account only ;].

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