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Dear Paul

zedshaw.com

11–20 of 184 posts

Re: Dear Paul

#11
post #3

Who's Paul?

Sad to see this downvoted, because Paul's full name is never mentioned in the article and someone who is using HN mainly as a news aggregator and doesn't know the full extent of YC probably never heard of Paul Graham in the first place. Get your shit together HN people.

Re: Dear Paul

#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 oblivion, and nobody sees what you've written.

So I'm really confused, Zed is upset that things that are negative are written about him (and I can appreciate that, who wouldn't be upset when negative things are written about them) - but the one place he criticizes, happens to be the one place on the internet (that I'm familiar with), where slanderous, objectionable, heck, off tone comments are censored by the community.

Because that's what I love about HN - the community keeps the tone civil, reasonably polite, and holds commentators accountable for their contributions, to the point of hell banning anybody who does draw too much ire.

I think Zed's criticism is a little off base this time.

Re: Dear Paul

#13
post #11
post #3

Who's Paul?

Sad to see this downvoted, because Paul's full name is never mentioned in the article and someone who is using HN mainly as a news aggregator and doesn't know the full extent of YC probably never heard of Paul Graham in the first place. Get your shit together HN people.

It fits the rant perfectly of course.

"How dare you not know who Paul is you pleeb. Accept our rain of downvotes, it'll make me feel better about myself"

Re: Dear Paul

#14
post #10

I'm pretty sure I'm here for reasons other than to slander people and it's working out pretty well for me so far, so I don't think the claim that this is a place 'only' for slandering people really holds up. Drawing comparison between HN and some abortion protestors is not really a good way to make a point, either - that's just immature and insensitive. The whole rambling post seems rather crazy and the OP probably n…

Yeah... you'll find people being jerks everywhere. Most often, you'll find people being jerks without knowing they're being jerks.

But if it happens to you, then the source is "the cesspool of the internet". I hope Zed knows he's being hyperbolic here, otherwise he's got another thing coming.

Re: Dear Paul

#16
post #9

I randomly found this after clicking on that other C link today (Don't learn C the wrong way or something), only to realize that I had no idea what I was reading but to note that it had just been posted. A quick overview made me realize this would reach the top of HN and that I no longer cared about the argument within. As an industry of people at the forefront of technology, why do we try to hurt each other?

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…

> I’ll add one more thing to the people reading this: I mean business when I say I’ll take anyone on who wants to fight me. You think you can take me, I’ll pay to rent a boxing ring and beat your fucking ass legally. Remember that I’ve studied enough martial arts to be deadly

Re: Dear Paul

#17
What does Zed actually want to happen here? For HN moderators to remove comments critical of him or his work? This entire post and the attitude behind it seem really childish. I'm confused why anyone is voting it up.

Re: Dear Paul

#18
The core point of this (people are jerks, especially on HN) has been a recurring theme ever since the new mods have showed up on HN, trying to clean up our act. Things seem a lot better than a year ago, and I try extremely hard to assume good faith from people on the other side of the screen when replying to comments (helps my mood a lot).

But this suffers from the same thing everything I read from Shaw: such strong language. I can't comment for him (I think I've seen him post before, would be interested), but my impression is that he's genuinely hurt by these people. Is he trying to change anything, or just venting?

> I’d like to point out that one of the reasons most of your moronic baby penis followers hate me is because I wiped out epic amounts of Ruby on Rails with one blog post full of truth.

This doesn't make me want to agree at all. I like HN and don't give 2 shits about RoR. I care deeply about making the internet slightly better by convincing people to stop being assholes. But hey, this is pretty rude! I won't quote the entire thing, but it's a lot of crass imagery.

Maybe this is satire, but I don't think so. I don't have a witty conclusion to reading this, just a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach

Re: Dear Paul

#19
Judging from his previous rants, Zed tends to overreact to things and blow out of proportion. Idiot commentors are everywhere, you don't just shutdown the community because of that. Other than that seems like a great guy.

Re: Dear Paul

#20
Does pg run HN or even YC at this point?

Either way, this post applies just as much to any website which allows user content. There were Wordpress blogs calling for false police reports, tumblr and twitter feuds where posters tried to get someone fired (and occasionally succeeded), etc.

HN isn't even particularly bad in this regard or set to personally go after Zed Shaw. He has an account here and is often upvoted through the roof when he posts.

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