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Dear Paul

zedshaw.com

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Re: Dear Paul

#171

Post by dang »

myhf wrote: post #134
hueving wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there proof of this happening? It sort of sounds like conspiracies a paranoid person would come up with.

No one doubts that it's happening. But the reasoning and the mechanisms are opaque, which leads people to speculate.

Not sure what you mean by "no one doubts that it's happening", but we don't take down negative posts about YC startups. It's a perennial accusation, doubtless because it's so easy to make, but it's false. We try to be as careful as we can about this. I've written about it many times; a recent example is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9635659.

Re: Dear Paul

#172

Post by dang »

throwawaw2031 wrote: post #163

Lets look at some of Zed Shaw's comments. I hate abusive fucks, and right now HN is so abusive and out of control that someone has to do something about it. I've just looked at his blog and it is full of insults and slurs about other people. He's a hypocrite. Currently the most popular way to slander someone on HN is to create a “throwaway” or “anon” account, say what you want, then slink off into the shadows like a…

This post actually does cross the line into being a personal attack. We don't need character assassination attempts in this thread or any other.

Re: Dear Paul

#173

Post by HiroshiSan »

Zed, after reading this (and reading a few of your other posts) I can't help but be drawn to the honesty you put into your writing and the honesty you put out into the world. I really value that in a person. Though conversely, I can't help but feel that I'd take your advice with a grain of salt (which I think is healthy for almost EVERY piece of advice...but more-so with yours).

Re: Dear Paul

#174

Post by thaumaturgy »

DanBC wrote: post #98
thaumaturgy wrote: post #44

Disappointing to see this at 139 points in under an hour (and still going...). It's just a lot of bile. I like Zed when he's talking about software development. I like tptacek when he's talking about cryptography or money or cooking or any of the other several subjects he's reasonably skilled in. I like pg when he's talking about startups. All of them are capable of getting their hackles up, getting in fights, saying…

But the bile is mostly correct. HN has a severe problem of a lack of civility between people actually here, and that problems gets worse the further away the person being talked about is. HN is a really unpleasant place to be sometimes. (I know I'm guilty of this sometimes, and I welcome downvotes to steer me)

You're active in a lot of threads, and the more time you spend on HN, the more toxic it will seem. There are a lot of argumentative personalities here and communication in the modern forum format isn't very good (where everyone always has to rush to write replies before a thread becomes inactive and is replaced by the next active thread). So it can lead to friction and people's nerves get frayed.

It sounds like a silly thing to say at first glance, but the less actively you participate on HN (or Reddit, or Slashdot, or probably most places), the better the community seems.

Otherwise it's too easy to make the mistake of getting really invested in the small dramas, like this one.

Re: Dear Paul

#175

Post by rosser »

dragonwriter wrote: post #162
DanBC wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He has nearly 9000 karma which you don't get by being completely disconnected from how this community works.

> He has nearly 9000 karma which you don't get by being completely disconnected from how this community works. Sure you can. Karma is mostly an indicator of tending to post things that are popular, and there's a pretty big bonus to that if you happen to have name recognition as a popular figure. If you're a popular figure and your natural inclination in writing is in a direction which would be generally well-received…

...and how is any of that being "disconnected from the community"?

Re: Dear Paul

#176

Post by csirac2 »

jacquesm wrote: post #77
icebraining wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are direct and there are underhanded attacks. Unfortunately, only the former are really condemned.

Try directly criticizing anything Zed has written and see what you reap. For instance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1570694

To be fair I just trawled through that thread and found your posts most obsessive, and Zed seemingly sticking to technical discussion with (for him) not all that much profanity. Now, not that I disagree with your assertions (epoll/poll overhead So it seems a bit weird that somebody posts zed's adventure to HN and then suddenly he has to defend this experiment like it's a billion dollar company.

Perhaps I've missed the egregious thing you were referring to in that thread, but many of his responses to your (numerous!) replies asked for specific stats behind your assertions, and I think it's telling for our industry that you had none (I also have none, yet believe I'll never have to care), which for a person trying to write a fast server by deliberately doing things differently, you can see why he wouldn't be so quick to drop the question and defer to your unsolicited wisdom.

Re: Dear Paul

#177

Post by bootload »

PopeOfNope wrote: post #157
bootload wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Is HN a thing that can be abusive?" Absolutely. In the past I've watched karma burn as much as 30/40 points drop because I made some point that isn't what was expected. That's not the real problem. The real problem is the stream of stupid non helpful and nasty comments. "HN would be a very different place if it was trying to behave in a "role model" fashion toward the tech community." Suggested this but what I've re…

The real abuse is what happens beyond the walls of this forum. HN has an outsized influence on the startup culture in San Francisco and the tech community across the world. People read things here and it affects how they view the technology they use and the people they interact with.

"HN has an outsized influence on the startup culture in San Francisco and the tech community across the world."

Difficult to tease apart HN and YC. From the outside HN may look like YC but isn't. Agree though. Didn't use to be like this. Nobody cared.

Re: Dear Paul

#178

Post by zimpenfish »

eropple wrote: post #149
zimpenfish wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

Given the popularity of my comparison, I think you've already lost that battle.

Re: Dear Paul

#179

Post by eropple »

zimpenfish wrote: post #178
eropple wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Given the popularity of my comparison, I think you've already lost that battle.

I think you're right, and it makes me sad. The reflexive urge to downvote cultural criticism is a pretty bad one--we as people (not "tech people", but people) need to be forever vigilant against making the world a worse place. We do it a lot. But that responsibility is not terribly fashionable.

Re: Dear Paul

#180

Post by jacquesm »

bootload wrote: post #177
PopeOfNope wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real abuse is what happens beyond the walls of this forum. HN has an outsized influence on the startup culture in San Francisco and the tech community across the world. People read things here and it affects how they view the technology they use and the people they interact with.

"HN has an outsized influence on the startup culture in San Francisco and the tech community across the world." Difficult to tease apart HN and YC. From the outside HN may look like YC but isn't. Agree though. Didn't use to be like this. Nobody cared.

I'd argue that HN and YC used to be a lot more fused in the past than they are today.
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