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Your "principal-agent problem" seems to reduce to (emphasis mine) "But once it became a place to hang out, my goals and the site's goals diverged." The P_A pr

Your "principal-agent problem" seems to reduce to (emphasis mine) "But once it became a place to hang out, my goals and the site's goals diverged." The P_A problem is a little different. [wikipedia] "In political science and economics, the principal–agent problem or agency dilemma treats the difficulties that arise under conditions of incomplete and asymmetric information when a principal hires an agent, such as the problem that the two may not have the same interests, while the principal is, presumably, hiring the agent to pursue the interests of the former." The key word is "hire" or "employ". If you enjoy a site (or a book or a movie) at certain age say, and your outlook changes for whatever reason, that isn't really a "Principal Agent problem". Your tastes changed. That's all. Happens to all of us. So anyway, after your post got deleted, you asked HN if it was ok to post "cute nerds girls with T shirts with jokes printed thereon" and you specifically asked "what do you guys think?". Now you are getting an answer from various people including me. I (and I don't speak for anyone else) don't expect HN to change continuously to meet my changing expectations. If my tastes change so I value a life full of mystery and danger should HN follow suit and become more mysterious and dangerous? What about the other HN user whose tastes changed to valuing a life of extreme clarity and certainty? HN has a focus which is of value to me today. If it changes to some kind of lame humour, look-at-pretty-women site I will leave (and others will no doubt continue or join). If I suffer some brain damage/undergo a radical personality change etc and decide to give up on hacking startups and focus on butterfly collecting, say, I would not spend time on HN. Sure I can ask it to change I guess. Fwiw, I am not insulted by "Spock like". I was just amused with your interpolating it with someone setting a filter for lame jokes and calling it "irony".

DanielBMarkham 16y ago
Thanks for the answer. We have no disagreement. You are not sharing me with anything that I do not already know. I do not expect HN to change to meet my expectations, I understand the value of focus, and I appreciate the feedback. It's all good. As far as the Spock thing, happy to amuse you, if you are truly amused. For some reason, your comments sounded angry. It sounded like you were more interested in talking about what my goals or reasons were than in the question about humor, technology, and social sites in general. I don't mind explaining -- in fact I'm happy to especially if you thought I was slamming the readers here, which I most definitely wasn't doing. But I didn't get a counter-thesis, suggestions, or much of anything useful in our chat. Perhaps I missed something. I'm glad HN is topical and self-policing. I hope it stays that way. Long-term use may have unintentional side-effects. What's your opinion on that and suggestions for other readers? (repeating the topic)
- plinkplonk 16y ago
  Let me assure you, I bear you no ill will, I wish you well, I could care less about analyzing your intentions/goal/reasons etc are :-). I am not angry and I don't see where I "sound" that way. I do think your submission was a cheesy one, violating HN guidelines, and more importantly, hardly insightful. It is true that I don't think you have much of a "thesis" (beyond the inapplicable Principal Agent concept) to counter. "Long-term use may have unintentional side-effects. What's your opinion on that and suggestions for other readers? (repeating the topic)" I am happy with HN's focus on startups, tech and stuff of interest to hackers/of intellectual interest to them. Any unhappiness I have with HN is due to (perceived) deviations from that focus and I don't want HN to include "pictures of pretty girls in TShirts with lame jokes" or otherwise focus explicitly on "humour". I don't have any suggestions for "other readers" beyond "Stick with the HN guidelines. Please don't post such "humour" here. Please go elsewhere for such things. The Internet is a big place and there is a site for everyone" (repeating the answer) You asked a question and got an answer. Do with it what you will. Continuing this thread (it just triggered my thread depth tripwire) would be a disservice to other readers and so I am done with this thread. Thanks for reading and Have a great day!!

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

Thanks for the answer. We have no disagreement. You are not sharing me with anything that I do not already know. I do not expect HN to change to meet my expectations, I understand the value of focus, and I appreciate the feedback. It's all good. As far as the Spock thing, happy to amuse you, if you are truly amused. For some reason, your comments sounded angry. It sounded like you were more interested in talking about what my goals or reasons were than in the question about humor, technology, and social sites in general. I don't mind explaining -- in fact I'm happy to especially if you thought I was slamming the readers here, which I most definitely wasn't doing. But I didn't get a counter-thesis, suggestions, or much of anything useful in our chat. Perhaps I missed something. I'm glad HN is topical and self-policing. I hope it stays that way. Long-term use may have unintentional side-effects. What's your opinion on that and suggestions for other readers? (repeating the topic)

plinkplonk 16y ago
Let me assure you, I bear you no ill will, I wish you well, I could care less about analyzing your intentions/goal/reasons etc are :-). I am not angry and I don't see where I "sound" that way. I do think your submission was a cheesy one, violating HN guidelines, and more importantly, hardly insightful. It is true that I don't think you have much of a "thesis" (beyond the inapplicable Principal Agent concept) to counter. "Long-term use may have unintentional side-effects. What's your opinion on that and suggestions for other readers? (repeating the topic)" I am happy with HN's focus on startups, tech and stuff of interest to hackers/of intellectual interest to them. Any unhappiness I have with HN is due to (perceived) deviations from that focus and I don't want HN to include "pictures of pretty girls in TShirts with lame jokes" or otherwise focus explicitly on "humour". I don't have any suggestions for "other readers" beyond "Stick with the HN guidelines. Please don't post such "humour" here. Please go elsewhere for such things. The Internet is a big place and there is a site for everyone" (repeating the answer) You asked a question and got an answer. Do with it what you will. Continuing this thread (it just triggered my thread depth tripwire) would be a disservice to other readers and so I am done with this thread. Thanks for reading and Have a great day!!