111–120 of 173 posts
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> hate I suspect that a good chunk of hate comes from that Kudos widget not having an Undo. It comes across as cocky, hence the backlash.
Hacker News doesn't have an undo button for upvotes and no one seems to care.
When people suggest this is a stupid idea, I think there's a profound misunderstanding of how enticing exclusivity is. Not everyone gets to send a piece in to the NYTimes, the WSJ, the National Review and get it published as an op-ed. But for someone in political science or macroeconomics it's definitely a status symbol. Note that anyone could just as easily put something on their own blog. In fact, many people who r…
That's the problem with Svbtle. You can't just "be" that. You have to earn it.
Svbtle is probably one of the most misunderstood companies we've funded. Partly because what they're doing is hard to understand, and partly because Dustin has alienated a few people along the way, who now in the usual way with haters want to misunderstand what Svbtle is. One of the reasons Svbtle is hard to understand is that it's a work in progress. At its current fairly fuzzy resolution, it's what I'd guess a trad…
I am curious as to what their business plan is, especially for a blog network that strives to minimalism, having an ad presence would seem anathema.
And to that end, I am curious why anyone would fund them -- what is it that they offer in terms of being able to generate income that makes them more viable than say, any old "webring" that uses the same CSS?
Or makes them different from various other focused blogging sites: science 2.0, freethoughtblogs, pjmedia, etc., none of which seem to be doing especially well as far as I know.
My problem with svbtle is that unlike Salon/The Atlantic/ArsTechnica/JUST ABOUT EVERYONE ELSE/ since there is no masthead, or links from one svtble writer to another, so at this moment, I don't see a real difference between svbtle the company, and svtble the CSS design sheet. So I don't see how they build up brand, or how they build on top of network effects since they don't link from one author to another. (And should ads be added and mastheads and footers added well will social toolbars and unother unsubtle widgets be far behind?)
And while I read svbtle when I come across it, I find their content not much better, not much worse than anyone elses.
(I will say, I am much less put off by svtble writers once I had adblock plus block their 0-click kudos.)
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Then isn't the word "haters" misapplied here? What I've seen in this thread is that people have reasons for disliking Dustin, some of which directly relate to Svbtle. To the extent that they don't directly relate, though, people are quite explicitly saying they evaluate Svbtle separate from Dustin. And by far the most common reaction expressed is a lack of understanding any valid business model for the network, which…
HN users are sophisticated enough not to simply post comments saying "I hate Dustin Curtis." Here they resort to something more akin to concern trolling. The way you can tell something is amiss is the volume of commenters who seem worried about e.g. how Dustin is going to make money. If most startups issued such a bland funding announcement, it would sink beneath the surface of HN with barely a ripple of comment.
I worry that moderating this community has jaded you. (That's concern trolling.) It's a valid question, and one I'd ask of any blogazine that received funding; do you stick ads on it? Charge a subscription fee? Sell user data?
When people suggest this is a stupid idea, I think there's a profound misunderstanding of how enticing exclusivity is. Not everyone gets to send a piece in to the NYTimes, the WSJ, the National Review and get it published as an op-ed. But for someone in political science or macroeconomics it's definitely a status symbol. Note that anyone could just as easily put something on their own blog. In fact, many people who r…
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> hate I suspect that a good chunk of hate comes from that Kudos widget not having an Undo. It comes across as cocky, hence the backlash.
Hacker News doesn't have an undo button for upvotes and no one seems to care.
1) there's no down-kudo, and 2) kudos are mysterious, what's a kudo, and then SURPRISE, it's a 0-click rollover vote.
I find kudos deceptive for both those reasons. That's not what subtle should mean.
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Can we all agree to stop calling critics "haters"?
I think not. Haters are distinctive enough that it would make the language less expressive to discard the word and merge it into "critic." I'm slow to adopt new words, but I think "hater" is a useful addition to the language, and not simply a pejorative version of "critic." The difference is that a critic is what you're called as a byproduct of being critical in a particular instance, whereas being a hater is an ongo…
So earlier, I posted how I would like to know more about their business plan, because well, it seems hard to understand how they plan to make money. Now I have to worry my comments will be seen as critical and I will be lumped in as a "hater".
Because that's the behavior at other sites. "Hater" allows and encourages polarization.
(Also, I am not sure if on the spectrum hater is related to fan so much as it is related to fanboy.)
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The idea that anyone on HN is innocent of making statements similar to those he did are laughable, and posts just like them make the front page and are the most-upvoted every day. Are people not allowed to have opinions anymore? It isn't like they hired him to clean up house and that was his approach; he saw a terrible user experience and he gave his advice on how to fix it. Often times, starting fresh is the best wa…
I have no opinion of Sᴧbtle, but I can't fault Curtis's conduct in this episode. He offered a completely valid critique of the antiquated web presence of a large and poorly-managed company. When he received a response from someone involved in the production process, he republished it w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶r̶e̶s̶p̶e̶c̶t̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶c̶o̶r̶d̶i̶a̶l̶i̶t̶y̶ [edit: OK that was a bit strong] cordially. It is unfortunate that someone lost…
And I don't think that registering that Dustin was "astounded" that the designer he received the email from had a good portfolio or only admitting to having been "partially wrong" with respect to the firing comment was particularly cordial or respectful, either.
I agree that the whole debacle reflects -much- more poorly on AA than on Curtis, but his conduct wasn't beyond fault by any means either.
I don't know much about Svbtle but there's something so un-exciting and unapproachable about the way they describe their objectives: >Svbtle is a curated, invite-only collection of great people who have things to say. ... >Our goal is to make it easier and more natural for interesting people to write down their thoughts. ... >Think you should be a part of the network? Apply for membership below. The most exciting thi…
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ITT: You neglect to read the two blog posts about the topic you're debating and cast a blanket statement about a guy who was just trying to help the brand and didn't understand the internal conflicts going on at the company. The designer was fired for sharing internal information relevant to the initial blog post he made (letting him know there were competent designers in-house, but not much they could do about typic…
Do you have a source saying the designer was actually fired because of sharing internal information?