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What happens when you're #1 on Hacker News for a day

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Re: What happens when you're #1 on Hacker News for a day

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a struggling writer, I value some amount of vitriolic/venom/sarcasm as color that can make an otherwise dry post read better; pure bland information alone is hard to digest without sugar or even grapefruit bitterness. I'm not able to do it very well, so I don't try, but I see value in those that can. The commenter's post was informative, colorful, and tasteful in my opinion, but I understand there are also people…

Yeah, I can understand that perspective, and I'm really conflicted about that kind of thing. I try to ascribe to a pragmatists view of it. I should say that I'm also not someone who has done a lot of formal study of communication and education, but I tend to think that abrasive language tends to stifle discourse to a point. I'm amenable to the idea that it's got its place and that it can be useful. I just wonder how…

Fair enough. I could not pull off this style very tastefully myself, so I would avoid it. Also, the lines between bland, colorful, abrasive, and abusive are not clear and are drawn differently for different people.

I'm not sure if it is fair to say the commenter was "attacking someone" unless they were spewing out ad hominems, of which I didn't see any.

Re: What happens when you're #1 on Hacker News for a day

#82

Dear Pete's Mom, You really have no idea how much of a time sink HN really is. If I said it took a fair portion of my day, it would be the biggest understatement of the year. Love from everyone who reads Hacker News

I was going to post the same thing but since you've beaten me to it I'll simply say I couldn't agree more.

Re: What happens when you're #1 on Hacker News for a day

#83
I know I'm not the only one to find it hilarious that for every single top-HN post you make, you can double the traffic by simply posting the status of each one.

As much flak as HN gets, I have found that it's the best source of traffic. My post yesterday about building a desk stayed at #2 for half a day and I got about 20,000 views with an average time of 40 seconds. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6566643

Re: What happens when you're #1 on Hacker News for a day

#85
post #3

Really interesting read on how much interaction HN brings. There is a lot to be said for quality over quantity when it comes to page views. I believe you are wrong about dismissing that top comment in the other post as snarky, negative and useless. That comment has a lot of very useful information from someone who appears to have been doing the Thailand thing longer than you have. 1) Thai law was brought up a number…

There is some irony in this now being the top comment...

Re: What happens when you're #1 on Hacker News for a day

#89
The quality > quantity of responses is something I experienced too. Being on the front page of HN gave me about 20,000 hits that day... which I've gotten before from writing about local politics. So I was comfortable with the hits and the comments.

But what I wasn't prepared for were the emails- I got about 30 thoughtful, intelligent emails from people who had great input and perspective.

Re: What happens when you're #1 on Hacker News for a day

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe you are wrong about dismissing that top comment in the other post as snarky, negative and useless. Point of order here: he never used the word "useless". He also didn't dismiss the post for being negative (he said "I’m not against negative top comments per se but they should at least be factual"). > 1) Thai law was brought up a number of times and you do appear to be violating it. This is probably somethi…

Snark is one of the defenses we expats develop to deal with culture shock and/or adverse situations in our host country. I predict that the OP is an idealistic new comer while the top commenter is a grizzled old timer who is and will continue to be in Thailand for the long run (idealists barely last the year, at best two). I observe this happen in my host city (Beijing) often, I can tell who will last and who will ju…

Snark is merely a sign of one's inability to cope.
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