what's up with all the swearing? this trend of swearing as linkbait is getting pretty lame.
I think the title is inspired by the children book "Go the f* to sleep".
Working Too Much is Hurting Your Productivity
51–55 of 55 posts
Re: Working Too Much is Hurting Your Productivity
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Innocuous perhaps, but the real time net-nanny filters installed by IT don't know or care. I can't read the article because of the proliferation of blacklisted words. I can't even read the Hacker News comments about it because of all the discussion using the opportunity to use such blacklisted words. Had to switch to my own personal system & ISP just to make this comment. Whatever the quality of the article, however…
So instead of complaining about a fascist employer, you make the effort to complain about someone using common language, ignoring the utter insanity of a company filtering access to words on the internet. I can think of certain phrase to describe that that wouldn't make it through those filters.
Reality check: LOTS of businesses use such filters. It's normal practice, especially in this litigious "sensitivity" age where one stray "objectionable" page could cost a company a whole lot o' money from which one "offended" person could get rich. Ergo, if you're trying to reach out to a broad professional technical audience, don't use terms which widespread common-usage lawsuit-avoidance filters will block. You may not like it on principle, but that's the reality out here in the business world.
Re: Working Too Much is Hurting Your Productivity
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the contrary, it's unreasonable to make a broad claim based on one or two examples. When people say "I keep seeing people do this," it's based on a memory of repeatedly seeing similar things, not any one specific example they have in mind. Similarly, I noticed today that a lot of people around here have silver cars, but I couldn't name for you any specific silver car I saw on my commute today.
Well sure. But at the same time, it would be setting a bit too high a standard for me to expect people to do a scientific study for every silly little comment they leave on HN, don't you think? If someone claims that something happens "all the time", don't you think it's reasonable to expect that person to have observed it at least once or twice recently? Or at least be able to provide a reason why they don't have on…
My point is that there's a difference between passively observing something multiple times and remembering precise secondary details about the instances when you observed the thing. I remember seeing lots of silver cars quite well, but I don't remember any specific details about the cars — and remembering the make and model of a car is a lot easier than remembering the URL of a Hacker News posting.
At any rate, I just don't see why it would be useful for him to have specific examples in mind. What is the point in asking for that?
Re: Working Too Much is Hurting Your Productivity
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well sure. But at the same time, it would be setting a bit too high a standard for me to expect people to do a scientific study for every silly little comment they leave on HN, don't you think? If someone claims that something happens "all the time", don't you think it's reasonable to expect that person to have observed it at least once or twice recently? Or at least be able to provide a reason why they don't have on…
My point is that there's a difference between passively observing something multiple times and remembering precise secondary details about the instances when you observed the thing. I remember seeing lots of silver cars quite well, but I don't remember any specific details about the cars — and remembering the make and model of a car is a lot easier than remembering the URL of a Hacker News posting. At any rate, I jus…
It's important to verify your intuitions, and it doesn't have to be a grand science experiment or a research project. If your intuition is that there are a lot of silver cars, a good place to start would be remembering the last time you saw silver cars. Or you could pay attention to the silver cars you see and take notes about the details that you feel are relevant. If it's worth it, then you can do a more in-depth analysis.
Now that said, there's not really much wrong with making broad assertions about the number of silver cars you're seeing without a more in-depth analysis. Chances are, nobody will care if you're wrong. There is something wrong with making a broad claim about things other people are doing without at least a little bit of evidence to support what you're doing. Just giving a list of search results and expecting others to find their own evidence isn't the best way to go about doing that.
Re: Working Too Much is Hurting Your Productivity
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that's debatable. I don't see anything blatantly wrong with any of those, but I could see how someone might find titles like that inappropriate. I personally don't have a problem with it.
Everything is debatable! :) Whether it is or isn't appropriate is the topic of a separate discussion altogether. That would have to touch upon personal and community etiquette, professionalism, audience, and so forth. I'm purely focused on the link-bait aspect. Using swear words in a title is in a way like gaming the attention economy by subconsciously tricking peoples' minds into thinking that a piece of content "gr…
Whether it is or isn't appropriate is the topic of a separate discussion altogether. That would have to touch upon personal and community etiquette, professionalism, audience, and so forth.
You don't think that's important? If you had put a lot of time into this presentation, were proud of it, and submitted it to Hacker News to share it with others (without realizing that some people would take the profanity as a linkbait attempt), wouldn't you be at least a bit upset if someone said:
"Why do you people keep linkbaiting by putting profanity in the title?"
If it were me, I'd probably tune them out and their (valid) complaints would go unheeded. But if someone said something like:
"That was a great presentation! I think it would be even better if you excluded the profanity though. To be honest, it's a bit offensive. But that's just me. What do you think?"
...then I'd be more likely to listen, and might change the title just because I couldn't fathom offending someone so nice. Wouldn't you?