Setting the story straight on quite a few issues
rachelbythebay.com
Setting the story straight on quite a few issues
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Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues
#2I do still hate JWZ for that. I hardly ever comment, and I'm punished for it.
He's like those teenaged IRC admins who only let you on their server so they can choose your nick for you. The web's not a dumb pipe, it's a pipe I can beat people up with, apparently.
Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues
#3[deleted]
Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues
#4«
I don't send out e-mails that are like this:
Please get on your phone, turn off your wifi, and then navigate to HN, then to new, then find the post, THEN upvote it. Don't upvote it from the post itself.
The company, however, does. A LOT. (Explains a few things, doesn't it?) »
Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues
#5>It's because of the unseemly element that comes out of the sewers on there sometimes.
Not only sometimes. It's very prevalent. It's in both the attitudes of the commentators and the moderators.
The commentary is very smug and given by people who have zero domain knowledge of the thing they are discussing, trotting it like they are experts on the thing.
The moderation and the downvoting brigade is something else entirely. I often come across posts that are in the oblivion that had very good but highly contrarian points in somewhat dicey threads to begin with (of the political or personally puncturing nature). Warning people about breaking flimsy guidelines because they said something to upset the status quo? Honestly dang, you can do better than that.
This has been going on for almost a decade now. It has caused HN to lose a lot of interesting people and interesting discussions. You don't see any more "Goodbye HN" posts - these people have long since left.
Not sure what happened to MichaelOChurch. I guess he was finally banned because the establishment didn't like what he was discussing and the dirty laundry he was airing.
And don't get me started on the person who would post the graph of people joining/leaving HN every time this kind of a thread came up.
So now you know why JWZ did what he did.
Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues
#6I do still hate JWZ for that. I hardly ever comment, and I'm punished for it. He's like those teenaged IRC admins who only let you on their server so they can choose your nick for you. The web's not a dumb pipe, it's a pipe I can beat people up with, apparently.
JWZ is a lot of things, but he's never claimed to be a nice person.
Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues
#7Original article: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/05/22/boarded/
HN comment thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23280610
Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues
#8Haha, the original story is straight out of The Daily WTF. I'm cracking up. I'm not really going to read the HN responses or the responses to the HN responses since the whole thing seems like Internet Drama™ but the original post is condensed comedy.
2 minute timers to finish tasks like naming a dog! Love it.
Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues
#9To OP: I wish you all the best. I didn't read or comment on the original article.
One thing to consider is to not engage with the critics. It's hard, I know -- really I know. An engineering mind set might make you not want to "flip the bozo bit", and to learn as much from your detractors as possible.
There may be strategic reasons to get your story out -- e.g. if your co-workers or potential clients are getting a distorted story, but the personal cost in time, annoyance, and loss of peace of mind is high.
So maybe, if possible, take a usefully arrogant / narcissistic view as a form of sanity-protection. Why do you need to respond to a bunch of internet nobodies? Why waste your time dealing with HN's mental illness?
Anyway, hope this doesn't poison your day.
EDIT> Everyone even moderately notable eventually learns that you don't read the comments.
Re: Setting the story straight on quite a few issues
#10It's weird how what I consider the same kind of story can seemingly trigger universal empathy or universal derision.
If the story is of the oft-posted, "My nightmare dealing with a legacy codebase" or "My nightmare delivering a project for an inept client" flavor, there's no shortage of people jumping in the comments to echo the sentiment and reinforce with their own stories.
You change a few details, however, to the "My nightmare onboarding with a new company", and suddenly the comments dogpile on "Wow, this person must be incompetent!" sentiment.
What's the secret sauce here? Age? Reputation? Subject matter?