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Name It, and They Will Come

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Re: Name It, and They Will Come

#81

Post by Simple_Guy »

danmaz74 wrote: post #43
coldtea wrote: post #16

Even if you don't understand the point the author is trying to make, this part you should be able to understand perfectly, and I find it a perfectly accurate description of what happens 90% of the time: = = = = The top comment thread picks on the coding style in a README example. It turns into an argument about indentation with over a hundred replies and a brief history of how different programming languages approach…

The internet has always had more noise than signal. HN used to have an incredibly good noise reduction mechanism, mostly thanks to self-policing in the community and the occasional intervention of the moderators. Thanks to this mechanism, most of the time, the top comments were really interesting ones. The noise usually ended towards the bottom of the page. I'm pretty sure that the expectation that this would happen…

One man's noise is another man's signal.

The reason the internet has more noise than signal is because there are many people, and they don' all want to talk about the same thing as you.

Re: Name It, and They Will Come

#82

Post by Simple_Guy »

coldtea wrote: post #16

Even if you don't understand the point the author is trying to make, this part you should be able to understand perfectly, and I find it a perfectly accurate description of what happens 90% of the time: = = = = The top comment thread picks on the coding style in a README example. It turns into an argument about indentation with over a hundred replies and a brief history of how different programming languages approach…

I think it's called bikeshedding.

Re: Name It, and They Will Come

#83

Post by aliswe »

ValleyOfTheMtns wrote: post #70
coldtea wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I honestly don't understand what this post is trying to say. It says that most users wont try hard enough to understand a post, and instead comment like people are doing in this thread. (It also suggests to try and give name to what you've built, and and try and weave it into an explicit narrative, to help people understand it and give more focused responses).

So he should've named the naming problem. Wait, is that what it's called? The Naming Problem?

In all fairness, at least he told the story!

Re: Name It, and They Will Come

#84

Post by aliswe »

flwralex wrote: post #45

"By now, you’re convinced: This idea deserves to be heard." This week my first public project got 7 git stars. The feeling is fantastic. I don't have homepage or story, but I have a nice diagram :) The question for me is why I'm releasing this, to feed the ego monster or because I really beleive it's worth it? I hope it's not the first, but not sure, tbh.

As a side note, I think you'll get a whole lot more stars with a screenshot and a one line description in the readme (before the mobile github fold for readmes)

Re: Name It, and They Will Come

#85

Post by aliswe »

asadlionpk wrote: post #37

This is very accurate as of my recent experience on doing a Show HN here[1][2]. I did get very good feedback but many of the comments were just stupid. Still, posting here did help the project as the broader audience doesn't care about a random's HN opinion. 1. https://zeroserver.io/ 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19254828

Agreed, the comments in your thread were deplorable (to a large extent). Be aware that most people on HN simply appeal to high profile personalities and don't really have the judgment to deem something usable or not. IMNSHO, that is.

Re: Name It, and They Will Come

#86

Post by aliswe »

ilaksh wrote: post #39

I would love for my project to get on the home page and be filled up with irrelevant comments. Normally anything I try to share is completely ignored.

I can see why. HN is not for very divergent submissions, they rarely take off here. Your submissions are kinda not-so-familiar to the great masses so they don't fly. People just being curious without being familiar with the subject won't check them out because the number of upvotes haven't reached a critical level.

Try something more populistic, and especially deriving from an established trend, and I think you'll appeal to the mob. How about: "ReactJS rewritten in Go in 24hrs"

That was a jest, by the way...

Re: Name It, and They Will Come

#88

Post by DarkWiiPlayer »

Simple_Guy wrote: post #81
danmaz74 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet has always had more noise than signal. HN used to have an incredibly good noise reduction mechanism, mostly thanks to self-policing in the community and the occasional intervention of the moderators. Thanks to this mechanism, most of the time, the top comments were really interesting ones. The noise usually ended towards the bottom of the page. I'm pretty sure that the expectation that this would happen…

One man's noise is another man's signal. The reason the internet has more noise than signal is because there are many people, and they don' all want to talk about the same thing as you.

Comment sections are like a bus without addressing. Everyone needs to scan the content of a message and decide if it's for them.

Re: Name It, and They Will Come

#89

Post by Theodores »

petercooper wrote: post #60

We tend to discuss things that are easy to talk about. AJAX (as it was at the time) is a prime example of what Dan's talking about, I think. As a term that enveloped the whole idea of having JavaScript dynamically load content from a server, it really brought developers together in discussing and experimenting, and even resulted in naming a publication on the topic (Ajaxian). Did it matter that almost no-one was real…

Ajaxian - I can remember that. For a while it was a must read. Like 'Byte' in a generation before or 'Scientific American' a generation before that, 'Ajaxian' enabled you to learn about the future in a way where you felt quite privileged to be in on the story.

HTML5 also came with some publications that made you feel inspired. HTML5Rocks existed once. HTML5Doctor limps on with no content and someone paying the hosting much like Ajaxian does.

As per the model railway example given in this thread these are the leftovers from the original geeks that created the scene.

HTML5 became all about how you could embed video without a Flash player. The geeks thought it was all about semantic markup. But for the people that see words as just shapes on a page the 'video without Flash' bit was all they could relate to.

Absolutely nobody apart from a few HN people are using HTML5. That is no exaggeration. Go to any of those billion dollar web companies, check out the code and it is just Div Soup.

Go onto Wordpress. It is all Div Soup. There are no themes that use HTML5 beyond chucking in a 'header' and 'footer' tag here and there. Yet a third of the web is supposed to be powered by Wordpress.

Go onto a website builder service like Wix. Same story, yet more Div Soup.

We never got the XML bit of AJAX. It ended up 'AJAJ' if anything as it is just some JSON object that is what gets worked with.

With HTML5 we never got the semantic elements apart from the 'video' one. We got rounded buttons from CSS3 though.

I think the whole semantic thing was a mistake. The likes of Google have AI robots that can see pages and work out what is going on. So if you have a visually well designed page their robot is fine with that. Unless you are writing a page for the government's site on special needs then to hell with accessibility. That is how it seems.

The geeks that enthused about semantic HTML5 elements left the party a long time ago. The people who think HTML5 means you don't need flash took over and thought that was all there was to it.

The denial is an important thing though. People can keep working as they were before but believe they have new skills, adapted and changed.

Re: Name It, and They Will Come

#90

Post by coldtea »

baddox wrote: post #36
coldtea wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I honestly don't understand what this post is trying to say. It says that most users wont try hard enough to understand a post, and instead comment like people are doing in this thread. (It also suggests to try and give name to what you've built, and and try and weave it into an explicit narrative, to help people understand it and give more focused responses).

Dan doesn't say this, and I don't want to put words in his mouth, but the point I take away from this isn't that people are lazy and don't want to dive deep on a new idea , but instead that people are not obligated to discuss and give you exactly the type of feedback you want . Even if your idea makes it to the top of HN, people are completely free to discuss ancillary topics or give feedback on areas you aren't inte…

>but instead that people are not obligated to discuss and give you exactly the type of feedback you want.

That we knew already though. It's a free country, and everything.

And I'm not sure his examples with the comments diverting into "landing pages" and such are meant in a good light of those making such comments.

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