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Hacker News is depressing

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Re: Hacker News is depressing

#361

Post by sirclueless »

raylu wrote: post #358
StavrosK wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be fair, they had no obligation to help you in the way you wanted Sure, but they didn't have to be dicks about it. They could have said "we don't want to tell you if it won't teach you anything" and I'd have left. Berating me wasn't very productive. > fact probably could not do so without sacrificing a great deal. It was a "you're using sprintf("%d") when you need sprintf("%u")" sort of thing. Not exactly that,…

I suspect that a lot of that context (or "buy-in") was missing, as it was when you explained it the first time here, which is why you got the response you did. A lot of people show up in programming communities asking for help with their intro programming homework. Once you see a few dozen of those, it's understandable if your knee-jerk reaction is at least somewhat insulting.

Agreed, context is everything. In the context of a poor guy with just this dead-simple programming question going to someone for help, being shut down hard is rude and unfair. In the context of a small community of programmers who are barraged constantly by novice questions, asking for evidence of significant amounts of effort on the part of the question-asker is the only way to avoid chaos.

I'm almost certain that this anecdote arises purely due to the structure of the forum in which the question was asked, and has very little bearing on the vitriol and malice (or lack thereof) present in the denizens of #C.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#362

Post by peterwwillis »

I believe this is the textbook definition of the word "flounce". The guy could have just banned referer URLs from HN, instead he blogs just to say goodbye. Funny stuff.

Also, what's with both his commenters and HN describing one another's commenters? There are shitty, stupid people everywhere, folks, and nobody is superior to anyone else. Except SomethingAwful goons, because, well... you know.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#363

Post by Tloewald »

zeteo wrote: post #84
simonsarris wrote: post #25

This is curious, maybe a little too reactionary[1], but I think we could use the introspection. On the one hand, being argued about is a problem a lot of people would like to have. I spent two years making a large canvas diagramming library and I would have loved for it to have frontpage'd on HN, even if everyone just told me it was terrible. On the other hand, I do think the meanness of programming communities is a…

>the meanness of programming communities is a the biggest problem we have Or maybe it's our biggest asset. In a world filled with bullshit (how many people you think really empathize with you - vs. just going through the motions?), it's refreshing to have a little corner where they honestly tell you why your ideas suck and your background is deficient. It kind of comes with the profession, yes. Only a relentlessly cr…

This might be credible if I noticed any correlation between this kind of bad behavior and actual talent, but I don't. It's the folks who cling to their sekrit knowledge who tend to be the dicks.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#364

Post by venus »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #51

I do not read the comments on HN of the pieces I write. I used to. I used to love hearing really smart people help out with whatever was puzzling me. Perhaps I can get back to that. But damn, this is a negative bunch. Whatever topic, whatever opinion you have, it's somebody's hot-button issue and somebody else doesn't understand what the fuck you are saying. Sometimes this is the same person. Most times this is dozen…

You're maybe the fourth person I've heard who is talking about MicroConf like it was the best conference ever. I'm beginning to really regret not attending. Was it all that?

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#365

Post by emmett »

abraxasz wrote: post #237
shadowfiend wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no fundamental incompatibility between being honest and being respectful and understanding. You can tell someone “you suck, go back to the corner of the Internet you came from, I don't have time for this”, or you can tell them “your skills don't seem to be quite at the level where we can accept your contributions; in particular, you don't understand X, Y, and Z very well and it shows in your code. I'm short…

I understand that this might be specific to me, but I'd actually rather have someone tell me: "You're useless. For god's sake stop contributing until you get your sh t together" rather than: “your skills don't seem to be quite at the level where we can accept your contributions; in particular, you don't understand X, Y, and Z very well and it shows in your code. I'm short on time, but if someone else has time to expl…

A good response here would probably look more like, "While we appreciate you making the effort to contribute to the project, the patches you've been submitting don't meet our quality standards because [reason - poorly structured? no tests? full of bugs?]. I recommend you [take an online learning course, write tests, read our coding guidelines] before you submit any more patches."

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#366

Post by bennyg »

djKianoosh wrote: post #336
pg wrote: post #195

I'm not sure what he's proposing. If he means let site owners specify that people not be able to submit their sites to HN, I've actually daydreamed occasionally about doing that myself for paulgraham.com. But it might not work in practice, because determined submitters would just mirror the text elsewhere and submit that. He's right though that Twitter has a big advantage in that it's easy to ignore jerks. It might b…

More importantly, it would be nice to see the number of blocks a user has right next to their name, everywhere. Think of it as a type of public shaming. If I'm blocked by 10 different people, you see a skull and cross bones with the number 10 next to my name. That might degrade though... Or you can go a little more advanced and put some complex logic in there where I see the number of blocks by users I trust. So if I…

Dangerous groupthink my friend.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#367

Post by hobs »

sirclueless wrote: post #354
StavrosK wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh God, I have had a similar experience with #C. I know very little C, it was four in the morning and I was trying to get something finished, but it wouldn't work for some reason. I joined #C to ask for some help, but people were trying to get me to discover the solution on my own, which is well and fine if you want to learn, but at that point I just wanted the trivial fix (it was something about an incorrect type, i…

To be fair, they had no obligation to help you in the way you wanted, and in fact probably could not do so without sacrificing a great deal. It sounds like #C has chosen as its mission to teach people the C programming language. To that end, they see it as a derailment of their existential purpose to help people who "just want the trivial fix." To them, it's rather like going to a math tutor with your homework and sa…

I agree with all points, however, if your mission is to teach people, vitriol is the straightest way to not teaching them shit in 99.9999% of cases.

Refusing to provide direct answers is #programminglanguage in general, otherwise you can just be helping a stream of beggars.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#368

Post by krapp »

spc476 wrote: post #357
krapp wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And of course, it wouldn't censor dissent, it would just prevent new people from dissenting. Unless you follow it up with a constant shifting of the line in the sand between the "acceptable community" and "unacceptable community", perhaps by deleting the accounts of anyone as old as, or newer than, anyone within the circle who voices an unpopular enough opinion. Or have every thread be invite only, or set to only all…

Or do like alt.hackers (USENET group)---it's moderated, but there is no moderator. To post, you have to figure out how to post to a moderator-less moderated group.

That would make it so only a clever subset of hackers could get in.

But then I know a couple of clever hackers who can be real aholes so I don't know how that would map to more polite or civil discourse.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#369

Post by Gigablah »

peterwwillis wrote: post #362

I believe this is the textbook definition of the word "flounce". The guy could have just banned referer URLs from HN, instead he blogs just to say goodbye. Funny stuff. Also, what's with both his commenters and HN describing one another's commenters? There are shitty, stupid people everywhere, folks, and nobody is superior to anyone else. Except SomethingAwful goons, because, well... you know.

His comments section is basically an echo chamber. Sounds familiar...

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#370

Post by brymaster »

vxNsr wrote: post #310
krapp wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And of course, it wouldn't censor dissent, it would just prevent new people from dissenting. Unless you follow it up with a constant shifting of the line in the sand between the "acceptable community" and "unacceptable community", perhaps by deleting the accounts of anyone as old as, or newer than, anyone within the circle who voices an unpopular enough opinion. Or have every thread be invite only, or set to only all…

You're all missing the point, if you look a little further down I clarify what I mean by the internet in Ender's Game. But maybe we could have two levels one where all the spam and hate can happen and no one will care... and the other where only people who can show they have a track record of adding meaningfully to the discussion are allowed to post, while everyone can view. Or some other thing... but don't you guys…

Just because you might think what you're adding (or anyone for that matter) is meaningful doesn't mean everyone else does.

I don't know how long you've been lurking on HN before registering, but your account isn't very old and you're suggesting that everything has gone to shit, people should be hellbanned and the forum should be invite-only.

To be honest it's just a matter of perspective and these meta discussions aren't very interesting.

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