Svbtle is hiring to build the future of news and opinion on the web • Hacker News Board

Re: Svbtle is hiring to build the future of news and opinion on the web

#51

Post by lmm » Fri, Jul 20, 2012, 3:41 PM UTC

batista wrote: post #48

ericabiz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even worse, it's a curated collection of blogs... that all look the same! Dave McClure posted a really thoughtful post about late bloomers recently, and the general reaction was "Wait...Dave McClure wrote that?" Yeah, you can't tell, because his blog looks exactly like 20+ other ones! This is the same pet peeve I had with WPTouch...everything looks the same and it destroys branding. (Not hoity-toity Fortune 500 compa…

> Dave McClure posted a really thoughtful post about late bloomers recently, and the general reaction was "Wait...Dave McClure wrote that?" Yeah, you can't tell, because his blog looks exactly like 20+ other ones! You're supposed to id a successful blogger by his writing style, not by the looks of his blog. Did people have trouble reading Roger Ebert or H.L Mencken, because they wrote in a newspaper in the same type…

Newspapers do not look alike, for all that they're in the same type. And even then, many columnists have a photo at the top of their column.

Re: Svbtle is hiring to build the future of news and opinion on the web

#52

Post by lmm » Fri, Jul 20, 2012, 3:47 PM UTC

dorian-graph wrote: post #37

SCdF wrote: post #19

So I'm just a simple country lad who doesn't understand the big silicon valley city, but I really don't get svbtle. This is coming from someone who is (I imagine) part of 'the masses' who has been linked posts from there but otherwise has no involvement. It's.. a curated collection of blogs? Why can't you just have a blog? I've probably been linked a dozen or so blogs inside that network (always from HN, I've never n…

Why are there so many people here on HN to reflexively find Svtble pretentious and whatever similar adjectives they use?? When it was first shown, there was a common feeling in the posts of not being picked by a kid at school to play in the lunch time soccer team. :P The internet, and I guess I'll say life in general, needs more curation and less dumping. We speak of design and other wonderful things yet we encourage…

The whole notion of a "curated blogging platform" is inherently pretentious. It's an assertion that the curator has better taste than me.

(And don't worry, I'm not being inconsistent; I find designers pretentious too, and design fanboys more so)

Re: Svbtle is hiring to build the future of news and opinion on the web

#53

Post by dorian-graph » Sat, Jul 21, 2012, 6:43 AM UTC

lmm wrote: post #52

dorian-graph wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are there so many people here on HN to reflexively find Svtble pretentious and whatever similar adjectives they use?? When it was first shown, there was a common feeling in the posts of not being picked by a kid at school to play in the lunch time soccer team. :P The internet, and I guess I'll say life in general, needs more curation and less dumping. We speak of design and other wonderful things yet we encourage…

The whole notion of a "curated blogging platform" is inherently pretentious. It's an assertion that the curator has better taste than me. (And don't worry, I'm not being inconsistent; I find designers pretentious too, and design fanboys more so)

What do you think of museum and art curators? Do you find it pretentious and some dangerous assertion against you that they have better taste than you? Do you think all 'designers' are pretentious?

I'm thankful that there are people making concerted effort to improve or at least find some of the better ones. Maybe the person does have better taste than you in some regards? What's so wrong with that?

Admittedly, I find the notion of someone having better taste than someone else somewhat amusing and it's not something I particularly concern myself with and this perhaps explains some of the amazement I have with the knees of people around here. :)

Re: Svbtle is hiring to build the future of news and opinion on the web

#54

Post by lmm » Sat, Jul 21, 2012, 3:57 PM UTC

dorian-graph wrote: post #53

lmm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole notion of a "curated blogging platform" is inherently pretentious. It's an assertion that the curator has better taste than me. (And don't worry, I'm not being inconsistent; I find designers pretentious too, and design fanboys more so)

What do you think of museum and art curators? Do you find it pretentious and some dangerous assertion against you that they have better taste than you? Do you think all 'designers' are pretentious? I'm thankful that there are people making concerted effort to improve or at least find some of the better ones. Maybe the person does have better taste than you in some regards? What's so wrong with that? Admittedly, I fin…

>What do you think of museum and art curators?

I see curation as a necessary evil given that museums and galleries have limited space and funds. So I don't see the curators as pretentious; the job has to be done by someone, it wouldn't be feasible to let each viewer choose for themselves. And AIUI the curators are usually hired by a museum rather than self-appointed.

>Do you think all 'designers' are pretentious?

No, I exaggerated; there are good, humble designers out there. But a large proportion of both the HN crowd and designers in general seem to have a very inflated view of the importance of design, and their own abilities. If everything designers said here was true, amazon.com would have about 1/8th of a user.

> Maybe the person does have better taste than you in some regards? What's so wrong with that?

Something about this particular instance seems to cross my mental line between recommending me things to read (which I like) and telling me what to read. I think it's just that the policy seems unnecessarily exclusive; publishing a cool theme for anyone to use would be great, as would "here's a list of good blogs you might want to follow". But the undertone I'm picking up is "svbtle will contain everything worth reading". Maybe I'm reading too much into it.