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Ask HN: Please stop "This."

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Re: Ask HN: Please stop "This."

#31

Post by sp332 »

wickedchicken wrote: post #29
sp332 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're sorted by a weird combo of recentness, upvotes, and lack of downvotes. There's no way to tell if a 1-hour-old comment has more upvotes than a 30-second-old comment positioned above it on the page. There's no way to tell if a single comment in a subthread has 0 upvotes or 100. This is the biggest problem, IMHO. Factual statements have no visible score for correctness. There's no way to tell if a comment was up…

Why are you relying on a bunch of random people from the internet to vet factual accuracy? I'm cool with them finding me interesting things, but that's about all I'd trust them for. For example: I use yelp to see when stores are open/closed and if a coffee shop has wifi. I could care less about the reviews, unless one of them happens to position a specific deal I'd be interested in.

How do you vet factual accuracy?

Re: Ask HN: Please stop "This."

#32

Post by neutronicus »

I consider it significantly less pernicious than "fanboy" and all its bastardizations and misspellings. I always feel a little warm and fuzzy inside when someone starts a reply to one of my comments with "This.".

I think its use indicates someone who maybe spends more time arguing on the internet than writing code or starting businesses or whatever other incredibly-value-generating things the Platonic Form of Hacker spends his or her time doing. At steady state, most of the content in any online community is going to come from that sort of person. Not much use pretending that ain't what's starting to happen now.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop "This."

#33

Post by wickedchicken »

sp332 wrote: post #31
wickedchicken wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you relying on a bunch of random people from the internet to vet factual accuracy? I'm cool with them finding me interesting things, but that's about all I'd trust them for. For example: I use yelp to see when stores are open/closed and if a coffee shop has wifi. I could care less about the reviews, unless one of them happens to position a specific deal I'd be interested in.

How do you vet factual accuracy?

Investigating original sources when I can.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop "This."

#34

Post by trustfundbaby »

I don't mind it ... and I do think its a very silly thing to be bothered by.

The entirety of your content matters here, so a singular "This" will get downvoted very quickly. But if you say "This" and follow it up with something thoughtful, then what exactly is the problem?

The colloquialisms that we'll use over the course of our time on (especially on the internet) will change frequently, new ones will pop up that require some getting used to, but that's just it ... just buckle up and adjust to it.

How people choose to communicate should be up to them, not some arbitrary lingo police.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop "This."

#37

Post by peterwwillis »

Nobody should be replying to a thread simply to say they agree/disagree with it without adding to the discussion - that's what the upvote/downvote buttons are for. Perhaps a community rule should be added and mods can enforce it.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop "This."

#38

Post by pasbesoin »

Mixed feelings when it is the precursor to a cogent, interesting comment. Agree completely to stopping it when it forms the entire content of a comment.

Not displaying points was a careful, considered decision. Live with it.

As an aside, if pg decides he doesn't like comments that consist of (or begin with) "This.", they would be pretty easy to penalize. ;-)

Re: Ask HN: Please stop "This."

#40

Post by dholowiski »

Do we really need to waste our time discussing "This."? That's what down-voting is for.

Ok, my $0.02 - Agreeing with someone isn't contributing to the conversation and if you can't take the time to think of something original to say, don't say it (or face the down-vote). It would be nice to have this added to the "comments" section of the Guidelines.

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