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Dear Paul

zedshaw.com

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Re: Dear Paul

#141

Post by [deleted] »

SwellJoe wrote: post #107
icebraining wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's an example I came up with, don't hold it against him :)

I spent a little time browsing Zed's comment history (after seeing his reply to the comment you linked). It does seem to be representative of the kind of comment Zed calls "slanderous", at least in the past year or so. Perhaps there's something else, or perhaps there are comments that Zed did not respond to, that are actually problematic in some way. But, what I see is a polite but somewhat negative review of one of…

[deleted]

Re: Dear Paul

#143

Post by DanBC »

bootload wrote: post #135

"I would notice that about once every 6 months this video would get posted, and then the HN crowd would call me the worst shit ever." That's a problem. " I hate abusive fucks, and right now HN is so abusive and out of control that someone has to do something about it." also a problem. " I keep a low profile professionally, and personally because of HN." Another problem. "It’s now causing more damage than good, and a…

Don't contact me! I have nothing to do with HN. I just post a lot. Contact the other Dan, dang, who is a mod and can implement ideas.

Re: Dear Paul

#145

Post by Grue3 »

ghshephard wrote: post #12

I've read HN almost every day for the last 7 years. In that seven years, I don't recall ever reading a post that said something particularly slanderous about Zed. I have seen post after post about his Learning XXX the hard way, and, in fact, I've even purchased at least one as a result. The one thing different about HN is that if you even slightly start to get overly negative on a post, you are downvoted into oblivio…

Ditto, I have read HN for many years and have never seen the post in question. In fact, this has prompted me to look it up. I love programmers drama!

Re: Dear Paul

#146

Post by eddieroger »

icebraining wrote: post #75
hueving wrote: post #55

Does this guy understand that HN is user-submitted content? It's like reading complaints from an old-man the first time he uses the Internet and comes across something offensive.

Yes, I'm pretty sure that zedshaw, who has been an HN user for much longer than you have, understands how it works. Now why don't you try reading the piece under the assumption that he isn't a moron?

But it's so long. /s

Even on user-contributed sites, such as this one, there are admins who have the ability, and in many cases, have demonstrated the ability, to control the content. Besides that, the concept of the Hive Mind tends to keep the content that floats up consistent. I imagine an anti-YC piece that wasn't written by someone as prolific as Zed would have a lot of trouble getting to the top.

Re: Dear Paul

#147

Post by Grue3 »

icebraining wrote: post #75
hueving wrote: post #55

Does this guy understand that HN is user-submitted content? It's like reading complaints from an old-man the first time he uses the Internet and comes across something offensive.

Yes, I'm pretty sure that zedshaw, who has been an HN user for much longer than you have, understands how it works. Now why don't you try reading the piece under the assumption that he isn't a moron?

I read the piece with the assumption that he is smart (because I heard everyone praising his Learn X The Hard Way series). The end result made me revisit that assumption.

Re: Dear Paul

#148

Post by redox_ »

DanBC wrote: post #130
SwellJoe wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that is an example of the "slander" Zed speaks of, his response is way overboard. It has that "more hacker than thou" tone that I find annoying in anyone (and most annoying when I catch myself using it, which is often), but I can't imagine anyone would consider it slanderous. And, it is by a no-name account, which, I suspect, makes everyone somewhat less likely to pay it any mind. The idea that something like that…

Anon1385 has been here 1500 days and has over 8000 karma. Algolia has removed the comment scores from search so I don't know if that comment got any upvotes, but it's not grey.

We don't remove the comment scores actually :) For the first 10 days of a comment's life, HN's API always returns 0: so we index 0. After 10 days, comment scores are visible and should be updated in the index.

Re: Dear Paul

#149

Post by eropple »

zimpenfish wrote: post #104
bshimmin wrote: post #37

Do people really think HN's denizens are abusive? I remember usenet from the mid-nineties. It was really, really bad. People would routinely post very graphic messages about killing other people (and worse), and sometimes there'd be personally-identifiable information posted (like physical addresses), and all manner of other intensely awful stuff would happen. This was usually restricted to certain groups, but due to…

> Against all of that, anyway, HN seems incredibly tame to me. Comparitive badness of online forums is just a variant of Dawkin's "Dear Muslima" nonsense.

Agreed in full--because X is really bad, Y should not get a pass for being mostly bad. And if laundry's going to get aired, there's a ton of virulently racist, sexist, and anti-poor garbage that gets thrown around here, not even by green accounts, that actually gets voted up.

HN has a problem. I've discussed it offline with people, including dang. Nobody seems to have a solution for it, but a solution needs to exist. (I mean, the real solution is to fix the incentives that turn tech people into ravening shitweasels, but I think that's out of scope for a message board.)

Re: Dear Paul

#150

Post by eropple »

john2x wrote: post #46
aikah wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be surprised if that news doesn't get flagged and killed(not by me I have no stakes in this). This an old a complicated story about people with ego being a jerks to one another especially in the Rails world. Rails used to be the new shiny stuff everybody wanted a piece of it because loads of $$$ so everybody started to be mean and tried to kill other's consultancy for greed. But the internet doesn't forget so…

Man, that ThoughtWorks/big consulting companies stuff sounds horrible. Is there any truth to it? Is this a norm with these types of companies? Or are they outliers/extreme cases?

There's some truth to it. I am encumbered so I couldn't give specifics if I wanted to, but more than one of my clients in the past has hired me because they needed somebody to unscrew the devops/platform work done by one of those Real Big Consulting Companies.
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