The Hacker News effect

11–12 of 12 posts

Re: The Hacker News effect

#11

Post by pessimism » Fri, Nov 23, 2012, 3:31 PM UTC

shrikant wrote: post #9

pessimism wrote: post #3

As my first open source project, I would have been happy if it got ten watchers. Now it got 439 which meant a great responsibility. This part really rang true to me. I’m working on a hobby project on GitHub I think is going to be great, important, and well-liked some day (as everyone does with their own, I’m sure), but I really like that I can fly under the radar for the moment. At least until some asshole links to i…

Why not use Bitbucket or someplace else that offers free private repos?

It was private at first, but frankly, as I am sure bloggers with an effective audience of zero like I can attest, the chance of serendipitous fame and popularity is so infinitesimal in this digital age that I consider public repos for obscure GitHub accounts tantamount to private. Private repos for people like I are mainly for commercial, license-encumbered, and sensitive projects.

If you’re some sort of wizard like Kenneth Reitz, it is obviously a different matter. I am not Kenneth Reitz.

It is also tremendously helpful to be able to link to my code directly for help, and believe it or not, doing this has yet to launch me into inadvertent open-source stardom. :)

The same can be said for my Twitter, Pinterest, GitHub, Tumblr accounts, my blog, and so on. It’s more of a general principle at hand, I think.

Re: The Hacker News effect

#12

Post by npsimons » Sat, Nov 24, 2012, 7:11 AM UTC

kmfrk wrote: post #10

npsimons wrote: post #6

Just to go a little meta-meta (I never meta I didn't like ;), I find it interesting to contrast this response to others who have experienced the Hacker News Effect, especially those who come on HN and respond directly to critics. This response was level-headed, humble, and above all, professional. And all that for an (unpaid?) open source project. Whereas there have been some people who show up with attitudes that, f…

There was a time where stories like "Something completely inane happened, here is the break-down" peaked, which rendered a lot of people practically allergic to post-game analyses like this. That doesn't mean that all of them are bad, and I really liked this article, and hope to see more.

I could see that; geeks/engineers can be prone to over-analysis. That being said, I liked this article and comments too; clear, concise and refreshingly transparent. Some of the worst post-game analyses I've seen seem to be where details are few (bad on the OP), then speculation occurs (bad on the commenters), and worst is when the OP comes and throws a tantrum (or similar) dragging the speculation down to a flamewar (although usually a moderate one by my standards).

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