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Samsung agency is buying off StackOverflow users

delyan.me

21–30 of 161 posts

Re: Samsung agency is buying off StackOverflow users

#21
post #11
post #7

I try to refrain from being a spelling nazi here, but "So, I shot back this brisque email" made me laugh. It's like a portmanteau of "brusque" and "brisk."

For a more daring approach, try sending a brisqué email.

brisqué | adjective abrupt or offhand in speech or manner which is showing a wish to deal with things quickly and slightly indecent and liable to shock

Re: Samsung agency is buying off StackOverflow users

#23

This is, in my mind, evidence that companies like this are out of touch. They want to treat Stack Overflow like a search engine and marketing tool to be optimized, and, in their ignorance, don't see it as something different than what it actually is: a community of people passionate about their craft and helping others with it. Eventually people are going to learn that the way you leverage a community like that towar…

Samsung is a big (really big) company. Of course some people, especially in the marketing dept, are bound to be out of touch. It does not necessarily means no one at Samsung knows what he's doing (even marketing-wise).

Re: Samsung agency is buying off StackOverflow users

#24
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Merely discussing something is not promoting it. The GLBT community has fought this battle again and again, when various parties sought to suppress any mention of homosexuality in public schools, because that would be "promoting the homosexual lifestyle". This discussion may make more people aware of the Samsung contest, but it is in no way a promotion of it.

> Merely discussing something is not promoting it. But in this particular case it is. There will be people who are interested in the contest, and doesn't mind that dishonest promotional tactics was used.

So would you have preferred that the original poster not bring it up on HN at all? I could just as easily claim that someone who was planning to enter the contest before learning about Samsung's practices will now choose not to. We have no data. In the absence of data, I think the OP did the right thing by letting us know about this.

Re: Samsung agency is buying off StackOverflow users

#25
"Need some feedback on the app I am about to enter for the Samsung Smart App Challenge."

I guess that one could have worked. A real question on some programming problem having this as a side note...

They didn't really understand SO, but they could have done worse.

Re: Samsung agency is buying off StackOverflow users

#28
post #21
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a more daring approach, try sending a brisqué email.

brisqué | adjective abrupt or offhand in speech or manner which is showing a wish to deal with things quickly and slightly indecent and liable to shock

also tastes faintly of crab.

Re: Samsung agency is buying off StackOverflow users

#30

This is, in my mind, evidence that companies like this are out of touch. They want to treat Stack Overflow like a search engine and marketing tool to be optimized, and, in their ignorance, don't see it as something different than what it actually is: a community of people passionate about their craft and helping others with it. Eventually people are going to learn that the way you leverage a community like that towar…

Out of touch? This guy maybe, but I would be surprised if SO, like most other communities, wasn't already successfully being gamed by marketeers a hell of a lot smarter than this clown. And let's not have the illusion that HN an pg are too smart to be manipulated by people that are at least as clever as we are but who have specialized themselves in manipulating people instead of bits and bytes. No place where human b…

I'll bite.

"And let's not have the illusion that HN an pg are too smart to be manipulated by people..."

You're vastly underestimating how many people are interconnected in this hodgepodge of gray matter we call HN.

Blind allegiance (or antipathy) is not how things work here.

Part of the reason this community is different from others is that the best way to respect people like pg or tptacek or anyone else who's been around is to call them on something when you disagree. I think that's how they'd like it as well.

It has nothing to do with being "smarter". It's got everything to do with being genuine.

In that regard SO is at a marked disadvantage because it's such a tempting target for drive-by dropping of bait for marketing. With the exception of a handful of long time contributors, the vast number of accounts there have no discussion between each other (since that itself leads to the question getting closed) and so they have no means to get to know each other really. That's not what happens here.

You can follow people, you can read their past threads. You can even go back and watch people evolve in their thought process with the kinds of discussions we've had. Try that on SO.

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