How to Participate in Hacker News • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Participate in Hacker News

#121

Post by zem » Wed, Jan 04, 2012, 5:18 PM UTC

mhartl wrote: post #120

zem wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the lack of a "red envelope" is offputting too - i very definitely find myself participating more in fora with comment reply notifications. unless i've just missed it altogether, all hn has is the rather clunky process of scanning your comment page to see if anything has garnered a new reply.

That's probably by design; it helps keep old conversations from going on forever.

yeah, I figured as much, but it still provides a barrier to having conversations at all, and hence reduces my engagement with the site.

Re: How to Participate in Hacker News

#122

Post by zackzackzack » Wed, Jan 04, 2012, 8:38 PM UTC

kaybe wrote: post #110

zackzackzack wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a really valid point. I am not a creditable source when posting from this accoutn. The words coming from here can only be trusted as words without weight. No more, no less. As an aside, I was not the person I was three months ago. Neither was anybody else on here. Part of my world view is that nobody is ever the same person as I remember them as. Rationale: a.) my impression of a person on the internet is inh…

To b.) Developement of skills is mostly unidirectional. If you're a master of Python 12 today and you're not having an accident you won't be a total novice next year. Experiences you have made will (hopefully) be remembered next year (and I may want to question you about them), and maybe you will remember the people you had a conversation with. Yes, people change, but more than traces of the past remain nevertheless.

Very true. The only exception I could think of to that is when we are working with new technologies. As an example, node js and clojure are changing rapidly enough that the year to year difference is not insignificant. As we deal with technologies that are progressing more and more rapidly with time, it would probably be a good idea to keep in mind that some people who used to know what they were talking about may no longer have any idea of what is actually going on. But this is more a particular exception to places like Hacker News.

If I had a facebook, I would never do this sort of thing there. That would really really suck.

Re: How to Participate in Hacker News

#123

Post by yason » Thu, Jan 05, 2012, 7:20 AM UTC

mhartl wrote: post #68

2. Participate! I often participate, but when I don't it's usually for a simple reason: downvotes sting. This is so important that I would add it as a corollary to "9. Be nice": 9a. Use downvotes sparingly. I and my poor primate brain will thank you.

I've learned to ignore the whole karma thing when writing a comment. It's part of the "be yourself": you can't write anything original in fear of being downvoted.

I do sometimes check back which comments were voted up (or down) for the sake of curiosity. I then wonder what was it that made one of my comments get many times more points than my average, but often it must simply be that I happened to comment early. I don't really care that much where my karma is going, it's more like a reflection of the community than a reflection of me.

Re: How to Participate in Hacker News

#124

Post by yason » Thu, Jan 05, 2012, 7:33 AM UTC

shasta wrote: post #37

Am I the only one who gets tired of the first sentence of so many replies being along the lines of "I understand where you're coming from and I respect you as a person, but..."? Be respectful, but if you disagree, just disagree. Don't patronize.

I could propose a complement approach: when inserting comments to the page, pg could automatically prefix all paragraphs with "I think that..."

That would remind people of the true nature of their words and help them remember that the commenter is just stating what he thinks is right and not an attack against the reader's personal state of world. That where I think all useless arguments start from. There's a difference in reading "Water is dry" vs "I think that water is dry". I try to implicitly "hear" that prefix myself each time I'm listening to someone talking.

Re: How to Participate in Hacker News

#125

Post by Confusion » Thu, Jan 05, 2012, 12:49 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #55

blantonl wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been on HackerNews for a little over 2 years, and in that time I don't believe I've ever flagged any submission. I guess I've always thought that the voting process would always take it's course. Curious, if pg is reading this, how often does the flag link generate real actions on submissions?

I believe the flags are acted upon automatically if enough people flag the same item.

Definitely: I've seen an article turn 'dead' the instant I flagged it. This was on the 'new' page, mind you.

Re: How to Participate in Hacker News

#126

Post by pbhjpbhj » Thu, Jan 05, 2012, 2:02 PM UTC

dwynings wrote: post #10

Put your contact info in the "about" section of your profile (the "email" is private). Just wanted to emphasize this as it seems to confuse a lot of people.

Also you have to add the email obfuscated in assembler or brainfuck or with some suitably esoteric algorithm; that's the rule!