4 ms·

What do you mean 'we', white man? user: petewailes created: 65 days ago karma: 33 about: "" Did you even read the guidelines you reference?: "

by blasdel 17y ago

What do you mean 'we', white man? user: petewailes created: 65 days ago karma: 33 about: "" Did you even read the guidelines you reference?: "If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)"

eru 17y ago
His post was quite constructive, so I guess we can be lax here.
- blasdel 17y ago
  It's no more constructive than the last few dozen times this exact sentiment was posted in this manner.
  - petewailes 17y ago
    Edited with a clarification
    - blasdel 17y ago
      Wow, your first edit makes it even more clichéd than usual. Also, the edit revision history only makes your post all the more reddit-like.
      - petewailes 17y ago
        Could you suggest a better method of tracking updates?
        blasdel 17y ago
        1) If you're not being abusive, you don't need to track changes. 2) You shouldn't respond to or quote children from the parent. That's why we have threads! 3) You'll be locked out from editing the post pretty imminently (see point 1)
      - pingswept 17y ago
        You're right, but rude. Please stop.
  - mechanical_fish 17y ago
    It does serve to mark the passage of time. Thanks to submissions like this one, we don't really need calendars around here; we mark time by the periodic occurrence of RedditFear. What's surprising to me is that Reddit has made it to the ripe old age of five, yet despite a highly competitive market it still appears to be the gold standard for "news sites that HN doesn't want to be like". Congratulations, Reddit folks, you're obviously doing something right! ;)
    - eru 17y ago
      I guess it's because most of the old timers around here where active on reddit some time, ago. (Paul Graham put up a link to reddit from his site when reddit was started as one of the first yc funded companies was started. (Back in the day I even contributed a bug report to the reddit guys.))
petewailes 17y ago
As I said above, "I'm not saying I'm an old-timer. But I've still noticed it, even in the two months that I've been around" It's not that I think it's becoming Reddit, it's that some people seem to think it should be. I'd rather they didn't try. Subtle difference.
- blasdel 17y ago
  If you'd been paying attention in those two months you'd know better than to refer to comments spatially instead of by familial relationship.
- Xichekolas 17y ago
  You just have to understand, for those of us that have been here for three years, this kind of thing gets old. It happens every month or so, and it's always the same plea. You know, HN has changed... but everything changes as it grows. The original sense of tight community is hard to maintain with so many users, but c'est la vie. And the submissions go in waves. I pretty much stopped coming here for two months because I got tired of a certain type of submission that seemed to be trending... but I came back one day and found we were in a technical submission era again, which, along with the insightful discussion, is the reason I come to begin with. So really, it's better to demonstrate the standards through your contributions than spend timing talking about the standards. The welcome guide and FAQ talk about them plenty, and the point of the karma/flagging system is to allow the existing community to enforce those norms and traditions.
greyman 17y ago
In my opinion his post was constructive and it doesn't really matter that his account is 65 days old. He could be in read-only mode before, or just developed the understanding he presents in those 65 days.
adnam 17y ago
FYI: it's possible to use HN without being a member.
- blasdel 17y ago
  But it's not possible to contribute to HN without being a member. If you haven't done so and gotten feedback via voting and replies you aren't a member of the community qua community.
  - thibaut_barrere 17y ago
    It's possible to contribute to HN without being a member. For instance, you can talk about it around you, share links with people outside of HN, either via mail, twitter etc. I've been doing this for months before being more active, submission/commenting-wise.
    - blasdel 17y ago
      Sure you can contribute tertially in the same way that happy users of open source projects contribute by attracting more happy users — except for the fact that more happy users is not an unqualified improvement — which happens to be the subject of petewailes' complaint! My main point is that if you're not posting and getting feedback, your conception of the community is completely untested conjecture.
    - mdg 17y ago
      oh cool, so I can tell my friends about OSS and suddenly I am a contributer to OSS!
      - zaphar 17y ago
        I know your probably being sarcastic but I would argue that evangelizing OSS is one way of contributing.
      - dkimball 17y ago
        I think the counterpart to telling your friends about a news service would be getting them to change operating systems and start contributing patches to the new one: both the "userbase" and the "development" of a submission-driven news site are functions of the number (and activity level, and, certainly, quality) of its users.
froo 17y ago
If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit My account is close to 700 days old and I still wouldn't submit comments regarding that. I consider myself fairly new with respect to HN
- wlievens 17y ago
  Ditto, at over a thousand days. But I'm not a terribly active poster.
  - jasonlotito 17y ago
    You're not missing much. I've learned that karma is not about the quality of the post, but about how much time you're willing to commit to posting. People with high karma merely post a lot. That doesn't mean they aren't saying interesting things, but it doesn't mean they are saying interesting things either. Also, I see far too many people repeating the same thing without anything new. It's far to easy to take the popular way out, preach to the choir, and get the karma votes. Finally, when I do stumble on something and consider sharing it, I usually find it was submitted. In this case, I don't bother resubmitting. It's always amusing when I see the article resubmitted and on the front page days later, with a wittier/more intelligent headline, but oh well.
    - duck 17y ago
      I don't think a new headline will make it re-submit, it is based on the URL.
      - jasonlotito 17y ago
        Sorry, I should have been more clear. It's not just the headline. It's also putting a blog post in front of the actual article. Their is a term for that I can't think of at the moment. Hopefully you're smarter then me and understand what I'm saying. =)
    - ErrantX 17y ago
paulgb 17y ago
I think a better metric of community involvement should be submission quality, not longevity. petewailes has one non-dead submission: this one. Sorry, but if you're going to complain about declining submission quality, submit something of higher quality!

by blasdel 17y ago

eru 17y ago

His post was quite constructive, so I guess we can be lax here.

blasdel 17y ago
It's no more constructive than the last few dozen times this exact sentiment was posted in this manner.
- petewailes 17y ago
  Edited with a clarification
  - blasdel 17y ago
    Wow, your first edit makes it even more clichéd than usual. Also, the edit revision history only makes your post all the more reddit-like.
    - petewailes 17y ago
      Could you suggest a better method of tracking updates?
      - blasdel 17y ago
        1) If you're not being abusive, you don't need to track changes. 2) You shouldn't respond to or quote children from the parent. That's why we have threads! 3) You'll be locked out from editing the post pretty imminently (see point 1)
    - pingswept 17y ago
      You're right, but rude. Please stop.
- mechanical_fish 17y ago
  It does serve to mark the passage of time. Thanks to submissions like this one, we don't really need calendars around here; we mark time by the periodic occurrence of RedditFear. What's surprising to me is that Reddit has made it to the ripe old age of five, yet despite a highly competitive market it still appears to be the gold standard for "news sites that HN doesn't want to be like". Congratulations, Reddit folks, you're obviously doing something right! ;)
  - eru 17y ago
    I guess it's because most of the old timers around here where active on reddit some time, ago. (Paul Graham put up a link to reddit from his site when reddit was started as one of the first yc funded companies was started. (Back in the day I even contributed a bug report to the reddit guys.))

petewailes 17y ago

As I said above, "I'm not saying I'm an old-timer. But I've still noticed it, even in the two months that I've been around" It's not that I think it's becoming Reddit, it's that some people seem to think it should be. I'd rather they didn't try. Subtle difference.

blasdel 17y ago
If you'd been paying attention in those two months you'd know better than to refer to comments spatially instead of by familial relationship.
Xichekolas 17y ago
You just have to understand, for those of us that have been here for three years, this kind of thing gets old. It happens every month or so, and it's always the same plea. You know, HN has changed... but everything changes as it grows. The original sense of tight community is hard to maintain with so many users, but c'est la vie. And the submissions go in waves. I pretty much stopped coming here for two months because I got tired of a certain type of submission that seemed to be trending... but I came back one day and found we were in a technical submission era again, which, along with the insightful discussion, is the reason I come to begin with. So really, it's better to demonstrate the standards through your contributions than spend timing talking about the standards. The welcome guide and FAQ talk about them plenty, and the point of the karma/flagging system is to allow the existing community to enforce those norms and traditions.

greyman 17y ago

In my opinion his post was constructive and it doesn't really matter that his account is 65 days old. He could be in read-only mode before, or just developed the understanding he presents in those 65 days.

adnam 17y ago

FYI: it's possible to use HN without being a member.

blasdel 17y ago
But it's not possible to contribute to HN without being a member. If you haven't done so and gotten feedback via voting and replies you aren't a member of the community qua community.
- thibaut_barrere 17y ago
  It's possible to contribute to HN without being a member. For instance, you can talk about it around you, share links with people outside of HN, either via mail, twitter etc. I've been doing this for months before being more active, submission/commenting-wise.
  - blasdel 17y ago
    Sure you can contribute tertially in the same way that happy users of open source projects contribute by attracting more happy users — except for the fact that more happy users is not an unqualified improvement — which happens to be the subject of petewailes' complaint! My main point is that if you're not posting and getting feedback, your conception of the community is completely untested conjecture.
  - mdg 17y ago
    oh cool, so I can tell my friends about OSS and suddenly I am a contributer to OSS!
    - zaphar 17y ago
      I know your probably being sarcastic but I would argue that evangelizing OSS is one way of contributing.
    - dkimball 17y ago
      I think the counterpart to telling your friends about a news service would be getting them to change operating systems and start contributing patches to the new one: both the "userbase" and the "development" of a submission-driven news site are functions of the number (and activity level, and, certainly, quality) of its users.

froo 17y ago

If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit My account is close to 700 days old and I still wouldn't submit comments regarding that. I consider myself fairly new with respect to HN

wlievens 17y ago
Ditto, at over a thousand days. But I'm not a terribly active poster.
- jasonlotito 17y ago
  You're not missing much. I've learned that karma is not about the quality of the post, but about how much time you're willing to commit to posting. People with high karma merely post a lot. That doesn't mean they aren't saying interesting things, but it doesn't mean they are saying interesting things either. Also, I see far too many people repeating the same thing without anything new. It's far to easy to take the popular way out, preach to the choir, and get the karma votes. Finally, when I do stumble on something and consider sharing it, I usually find it was submitted. In this case, I don't bother resubmitting. It's always amusing when I see the article resubmitted and on the front page days later, with a wittier/more intelligent headline, but oh well.
  - duck 17y ago
    I don't think a new headline will make it re-submit, it is based on the URL.
    - jasonlotito 17y ago
      Sorry, I should have been more clear. It's not just the headline. It's also putting a blog post in front of the actual article. Their is a term for that I can't think of at the moment. Hopefully you're smarter then me and understand what I'm saying. =)
  - ErrantX 17y ago

paulgb 17y ago

I think a better metric of community involvement should be submission quality, not longevity. petewailes has one non-dead submission: this one. Sorry, but if you're going to complain about declining submission quality, submit something of higher quality!