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Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

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Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#81

Post by kabuks »

kevinskii wrote: post #63
revorad wrote: post #28

One question I ask myself now before commenting is: Will this comment significantly improve this conversation? I try not to comment if the comment is merely: 1. clever and amusing 2. expressing anger/disagreement 3. disproving a wrong but unimportant claim made by another commenter. Besides these, submitting, upvoting, downvoting, not voting and flagging are enough to make HN more interesting for myself.

I also try to stop myself from saying the same things that others have already said--i.e. "piling on."

Isn't that a pile on comment itself?

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#82

Post by jacquesm »

sabat wrote: post #31
mapleoin wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you need the URL shortener for? I find it very annoying to have to click in order to see who the author of the content is when I can just look at the domain name at the end of the HN submission.

What do you need the URL shortener for? Actually I don't use them here; never have. I just noticed a post having been killed, and saw a followup from HN staff explaining that using a URL shortener will cause a post to be autokilled. I don't care about URL shorteners. I am concerned about what the rules are, and particularly the rules that are not explictly stated in the HN Guidelines.

That's fairly logical though, a url shortener would allow re-submission of the same link over and over again and drops the hint of where the link goes to from the 'new' and 'news' pages as well as the ability to hover on the link for the full url.

All of which are useful. Url shorteners are ok for twitter or IRC elsewhere they're just unnecessary complications.

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#83

Post by jacquesm »

philwelch wrote: post #57
elblanco wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be an interesting day when forum degeneration can be solved via circular migration around ring of sites vs. Linear migration like today. "everybody barrel shift!"

That's the current approach to antibiotic drug resistance, actually. Antibiotic resistant drugs are supposedly treated with antibiotics that are too old for those drugs to retain a resistance to.

Let's hope pathogens don't figure out how to do heap allocation. That would be a lot of trouble. After all it wouldn't take too much extra storage for them to collect 'data' on enough antibiotics that we'd lose the race.

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#84

Post by jacquesm »

petercooper wrote: post #66

Everyone seems to be focusing on the voting of comments, but I think the tips on what to submit (and vote up) are the most violated, as seen by the now almost daily post about men vs women.

Not to mention a morbid fascination with death.

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#86

Post by blahblahblah »

My main annoyance with HN posts lately is the use of profanity in post titles and occasional posts that are, in general, NSFW. For those of you in startup land this probably isn't an issue, but on behalf of those of us who are still "workin' for the man" please take a moment before hitting the submit button to imagine that you still have a boss and consider whether your imaginary boss who just walked into your office and saw this post title on your screen would be A) pleased that you are taking a moment to keep up with industry trends while you're waiting for your code to compile or B) wondering why you would waste your time reading such trash. If it's the latter, consider whether this is because the topic of your post is really inappropriate for a professional forum (if so, please don't bother posting it) or if it is an appropriate topic but you're using profanity as a crutch because you're too damn lazy to write an articulate, descriptive title (if so, stop being lazy and rewrite your title).

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#87

Post by spoondan »

jacquesm wrote: post #82
sabat wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you need the URL shortener for? Actually I don't use them here; never have. I just noticed a post having been killed, and saw a followup from HN staff explaining that using a URL shortener will cause a post to be autokilled. I don't care about URL shorteners. I am concerned about what the rules are, and particularly the rules that are not explictly stated in the HN Guidelines.

That's fairly logical though, a url shortener would allow re-submission of the same link over and over again and drops the hint of where the link goes to from the 'new' and 'news' pages as well as the ability to hover on the link for the full url. All of which are useful. Url shorteners are ok for twitter or IRC elsewhere they're just unnecessary complications.

He's not arguing for URL shorteners to be permitted. He's arguing that the prohibition should be made upfront.

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#88

Post by Alex3917 »

jacquesm wrote: post #80
robfitz wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because interested parties can google it and in the reasonably likely case that the question goes unanswered, it's just noise.

Google is not always going to turn up the reference a parent post refers to though. The 'citation needed' ones are another matter.

Far too often comments asking for a cite are voted up and comments that don't provide cites are voted down, even when the cite is trivially findable via Google. Take this thread for instance:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1552233

Regardless of whether I deserved to be downvoted, there is zero reason for the person asking for a cite to get upvoted considering the the relevant article is literally the first Google result for "old spice" "hormone disruptor".

I think it's bullshit that people regularly get downmodded for posting comments quoting basic facts that everyone should know, or at least know how to verify, without citing a source. If you don't know how to, say, look up the GDP of a foreign country yourself then you really have no business being on this site to begin with.

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#89

Post by jacquesm »

spoondan wrote: post #87
jacquesm wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fairly logical though, a url shortener would allow re-submission of the same link over and over again and drops the hint of where the link goes to from the 'new' and 'news' pages as well as the ability to hover on the link for the full url. All of which are useful. Url shorteners are ok for twitter or IRC elsewhere they're just unnecessary complications.

He's not arguing for URL shorteners to be permitted. He's arguing that the prohibition should be made upfront.

How much more up-front than seeing your link go 'dead' could it be?

After all it's not like anybody reads the guidelines linked above anyway before submitting a link, especially not if they're old hands (and most likely not even if they're not). Maybe a message could be added to the submission process that said: "You've used a URL shortener, bang, you're dead", but that's pretty obviously the reason why. After all, all your other links will get through just fine.

Re: Kind reminder: please (re)read the HN guidelines

#90

Post by dkennedy »

I just can't believe the volume of new posts. I posted a link to my own python blog 23 hours ago and since then there have been 470 other postings. Perhaps an idea is that people should only post their own work or even it HN was limited to programming related posts only. I come here for insights into different languages and the programming profession. I'm not that interested in the politics of another country or parenting tips for New Yorkers.
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