Hacker News comments I'm tired of seeing • Hacker News Board

Re: Hacker News comments I'm tired of seeing

#101

Post by DanBC » Mon, Sep 02, 2013, 9:49 AM UTC

kybernetyk wrote: post #45

citricsquid wrote: post #13

The biggest problem with Hacker News comments -- actually, make that all comments -- is fundamental: the sort of people that leave comments are (more often than not) people that want something, ANYTHING, to say, not people that have something to say.

a) the internet (and HN) can't get full b) there are downvote arrows To me it's OK if people just leave anything as a comment here because it will be modded down if it's irrelevant to the discussion.

> it's OK if people just leave anything as a comment here because it will be modded down if it's irrelevant to the discussion.

It would be great if down voting was more prevalent. Many people don't down vote for anything but the absolute worst comment. Some people downvote for disagreement and not poor comment.

Re: Hacker News comments I'm tired of seeing

#102

Post by DanBC » Mon, Sep 02, 2013, 9:51 AM UTC

jasonkester wrote: post #66

My personal favorite is "The plural of anecdote is not data". Correct. The plural of anecdote is conversation , which is exactly the reason we're here. I think this one comes down to people misunderstanding the reason we're here in the first place. If you start to notice that the discussion here resembles the sort of conversation you'd have around the watercooler, that's probably has to do with the fact that Hacker N…

It's immensely frustrating when someone is discussing a well conducted study showing an interesting result to have another person say "This feels wrong. I had $ANECDOTE, so maybe they researchers are missing $CONCLUSION_FROM_ANECDOTE?", which has been covered in the study and in the HN comments and is just a weird point anyway.

Re: Hacker News comments I'm tired of seeing

#103

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 02, 2013, 9:52 AM UTC

RivieraKid wrote: post #51

sker wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally call it Pwnage Culture. Karma-based sites love it when a user debunks an article or another user's comment. You get extra points if you start your reply with a cold remark such as "No." "Wrong." "False." And then you put some random citations to Pubmed or Wikipedia at the bottom of your comment.

"You get extra points if you start your reply with a cold remark such as "No." "Wrong." "False." Exactly, I automatically downvote comments like that.

[deleted]

Re: Hacker News comments I'm tired of seeing

#104

Post by paulnechifor » Mon, Sep 02, 2013, 9:52 AM UTC

basicallydan wrote: post #54

What comments am I tired of seeing, you ask? This one: "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." If you want to argue against surveillance, please do it with your words instead of just going "Well Benjamin Franklin said..." I'm not saying don't quote him or use his arguments in yours, but simply quoting a man who has been dead for hundreds i…

I think that's perfectly valid. Sometimes a dead guy can make an argument better than I can and it's better to quote him than rephrase it in my own words and pretend I'm insightful. This does however mean that I'm supposed to respond to criticism of the content of the quote since I agree with it.

Re: Hacker News comments I'm tired of seeing

#105

Post by crazytony » Mon, Sep 02, 2013, 10:01 AM UTC

zainny wrote: post #100

One thing that really annoys me about HN is how damn contrarian everyone always tries to be. Responses typically take the most absolute narrow and unforgiving interpretation of any point you are trying to make and subsequently use that to spin a counterpoint. Drives me batty.

I don't know. You seem to be agreeing in tone with the post so it can't be everyone who is contrarian.

Sorry. :)

Re: Hacker News comments I'm tired of seeing

#106

Post by olalonde » Mon, Sep 02, 2013, 10:03 AM UTC

Comments that annoy me most (mostly because they are blatant attempts at fishing for karma):

"I would use this but it's in Javascript, there are better languages like X and Y."

"The web is utterly broken, when are people going to realize this?"

"For all these years I ignored RMS/Assange/etc. but now I know he was right."

Comments with the words "nail" and "hammer".

Re: Hacker News comments I'm tired of seeing

#107

Post by DanBC » Mon, Sep 02, 2013, 10:03 AM UTC

shurcooL wrote: post #98

I have _never_ seen the 7 of 9 of those comments here. "FTFY" stuff is from reddit.

Wait, what?

You're the product (https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22you're+the+...)

Betteridge (https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22betteridge%...)

Correlation is not causation (https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22correlation...)

Maximise shareholder value is trickier, but here are three (and there are many mnay more) (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5001366) (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4262187) (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6045044)

Citation needed (scroll through the list a bit) (https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22citation+ne...)

Dunning Kruger (https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=dunning+k...)

FTFY (https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=ftfy&star...)

Re: Hacker News comments I'm tired of seeing

#108

Post by MichaelMoser123 » Mon, Sep 02, 2013, 10:04 AM UTC

'Leaky abstractions': I think its the wrong question if an abstraction leaks or not; any abstraction is leaky by definition, an abstraction is created by omitting details that are not relevant to the analysis, with the wish to extract the essence; The right question is if the abstraction is relevant or not.

Wikipedia says:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction "Abstraction in mathematics is the process of extracting the underlying essence of a mathematical concept, removing any dependence on real world objects with which it might originally have been connected, and generalizing it so that it has wider applications or matching among other abstract descriptions of equivalent phenomena."

Re: Hacker News comments I'm tired of seeing

#109

Post by microtonal » Mon, Sep 02, 2013, 10:07 AM UTC

bane wrote: post #63

I was expecting this to contain the inevitable "why didn't you do this in Haskell?" that seems to come and go in waves. I've come to think that there's a non-trivial percentage of HN users that are simply bots (written in Haskell) that insert this into a random percentage of threads. If they're responded to it then brings in a human to continue the conversation. More seriously, these aren't just gripes, most of these…

Given that this comment is also about Haskell, can we assume that one of the bots became sentient?

Re: Hacker News comments I'm tired of seeing

#110

Post by lotsofcows » Mon, Sep 02, 2013, 10:09 AM UTC

RivieraKid wrote: post #51

sker wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally call it Pwnage Culture. Karma-based sites love it when a user debunks an article or another user's comment. You get extra points if you start your reply with a cold remark such as "No." "Wrong." "False." And then you put some random citations to Pubmed or Wikipedia at the bottom of your comment.

"You get extra points if you start your reply with a cold remark such as "No." "Wrong." "False." Exactly, I automatically downvote comments like that.

That'll teach them! It's fortunate that nerds are psychic.

It's ok, you can downvote this, I know it'll make you feel better about yourself.