141–150 of 229 posts
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.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The inevitable comments about Bettridge's law of headlines every time a title ends in a question mark are not helpful. They don't make an argument, as the article is hardly ever arguing for the question. It is just indicating "look at me, I know of this exotic jargon term, and it happens to apply to this article title". Like, this article could have been "would hacker news improve if we stopped posting certain kinds…
Sensationalized, misleading titles are not helpful.
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.
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…
A watercooler in a very passive aggressive, argumentative office perhaps. HN should be more like a watercooler, IMO, with more common courtesy and less flamewars (and less devil's-advocate-for-the-sake-of-devil's-advocate). But at the end of the day, the internet is the internet. (Just a side note: I'll still come on HN every day despite this :) )
It would be nice to have a sort of an "argument" database, so instead of putting the argument in the comment again, you could just link to the database. Then computers could filter these arguments automatically for the people who already know it. Maybe the arguments could be parametrized, to make the connection to the problem at hand more obvious. Ah well.. a man can only dream.
A lot of arguments are repeated endlessly on the Internet, and elsewhere. I've often thought that someone should build a graph database for this. Then maybe we could move past the basic argument and go a little deeper.
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Shrug. Most of the "citation needed" posts I've seen are in response to comments like "almost all recipients of welfare spend it on smokes and alcohol." There probably doesn't exist any studies that disproves that vague claim. Yet whoever posts it shouldn't be allowed to get away with it, hence "citation needed."
"Shrug. Most of the "citation needed" posts I've seen are in response to comments like "almost all recipients of welfare spend it on smokes and alcohol." [citation needed] Personally, I don't feel that you need to back your assertion up with facts. If I wish to take issue with it, the onus is on me to go and scrape HN to produce the definitive validation or refutation of your claim. Which was Saurik's point, I think.
Sure, when you leave a comment asserting something, you don't need to provide a full bibliography of references, but if someone asks for it (ie, someone follows up with [citation needed]) then the onus is on you to show that your facts have a basis in reality. I don't see anything wrong with that.
You can't really disprove something which doesn't have any factual basis.
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.
Thought that's rarely the case. What usually happens is someone will read a clever article, get upset that they didn't come up with it and choose a narrow interpretation or a minor nitpick to attack the piece, thereby making themselves feel better.