8 ms·

Jacquesm, what exactly would constitute a poseur around here? Are members expected to be a level n programmer or startup founder? What behavior have you witness

Jacquesm, what exactly would constitute a poseur around here? Are members expected to be a level n programmer or startup founder? What behavior have you witnessed that would be thwarted by calling someone a poseur after the fact? Doesn't that lead to more personal attacks? Personally I don't know who you are and I really don't care. I care if what you write is insightful and helpful to me (and hopefully I do the same for some other people). I'm sure I've been attacked a few times by people that might be run out of town under the no cowards policy, but I'd rather deal with ankle biters than have this place turn into a cult of personality for a handful of celebrity posters. Btw if anyone downvotes this without a bio I'm calling you out. That's ironic humor if you're wondering. Am I qualified? Yes, I'm a startup founder with a degree in literature.

jacquesm 16y ago
Armchair founders and lawyers would be one group, cowardly attacks are a problem but less so, I've so far had exactly two directed at me, one through mail and one here on the site. I've seen a few others and for the most part the attackers find themselves at -4 or banned pretty swiftly. The only real 'celebrity posters' I can think of are PG, patio11, cperciva, tptacek and jgrahamc and their reputations are well established and deserved in the fields they write most about, for the most part their votes seem to reflect the quality of what they write on a case-by-case basis. For example, it's rare to see PG downvoted because most of the time what he writes makes very good sense (and I've been on the receiving end of a couple of 'you disagreed with PG downvotes' but it does happen, and that, as far as I'm concerned proves that the problem if it exists is not that large. So inspite of the research referenced above and personal experience, even if it does happen we don't have a cult of celebrity worship here as far as I can see, but at the same time we're talking about a bunch of counters in a disk file somewhere, so assuming that we do it still isn't a problem. Maybe ask the posters I mentioned above if they feel 'worshipped' in any way? > Btw if anyone downvotes this without a bio I'm calling you out. Hehe, that was funny :) And I'm just a startup founder with a typing diploma and a driving license.
- mbenjaminsmith 16y ago
  You've got me coming around a bit on that. But I haven't yet seen a comment where I felt I was getting bad legal advice or an insincere 'fail early, often' or anything similar. I could see it useful in say a discussion of operating a site at massive scale when the poster's sys admin skills were limited to a WP blog. But usually in those cases people qualify what they're saying with, 'I worked on x and we did y'. I think you have to qualify what you're saying in that way. It's presumptuous to assume people know who you are. My background is marketing and PR (as an entrepreneur) so I usually qualify PR-related advice with a note of my experience. If people don't I usually assume they're regurgitating what someone else told them. Anyway it's moot for me because I never check people's bios. I don't know who any of those people are other than pg. I'm ok with that because again I'm really only interested in what they have to say. If Mr Z is on his 11th startup and is worth 23 gazillion dollars I would expect that will come through in his perspective on the industry. I hope it would at least. Don't worry, if I could do it over again I would skip college. I wish I would have raised 1/5 of the money I had to for college and started a business. I would have learned more, faster and would probably be retired already.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    > But I haven't yet seen a comment where I felt I was getting bad legal advice or an insincere 'fail early, often' or anything similar. I've seen more than a few, but truth be told they were usually identified as such. > Don't worry, if I could do it over again I would skip college. I wish I would have raised 1/5 of the money I had to for college and started a business. I would have learned more, faster and would probably be retired already. I still have contact with a few of the people from 'the old days', and I wouldn't trade with them for any amount of money, but every now and then I wished I'd gotten the benefits of at least high school calculus. I tend to spend too much time approaching mathematical problems in a way that I can fudge my basic knowledge, in stead of for instance a direct approach using an analytical method I might code up a brute force search or a hill climbing algorithm (and pray I'm not stuck on a local maximum :) ). The network would have come in handy as well in the beginning, but I've long ago made up for lack of that.

jacquesm 16y ago

Armchair founders and lawyers would be one group, cowardly attacks are a problem but less so, I've so far had exactly two directed at me, one through mail and one here on the site. I've seen a few others and for the most part the attackers find themselves at -4 or banned pretty swiftly. The only real 'celebrity posters' I can think of are PG, patio11, cperciva, tptacek and jgrahamc and their reputations are well established and deserved in the fields they write most about, for the most part their votes seem to reflect the quality of what they write on a case-by-case basis. For example, it's rare to see PG downvoted because most of the time what he writes makes very good sense (and I've been on the receiving end of a couple of 'you disagreed with PG downvotes' but it does happen, and that, as far as I'm concerned proves that the problem if it exists is not that large. So inspite of the research referenced above and personal experience, even if it does happen we don't have a cult of celebrity worship here as far as I can see, but at the same time we're talking about a bunch of counters in a disk file somewhere, so assuming that we do it still isn't a problem. Maybe ask the posters I mentioned above if they feel 'worshipped' in any way? > Btw if anyone downvotes this without a bio I'm calling you out. Hehe, that was funny :) And I'm just a startup founder with a typing diploma and a driving license.

mbenjaminsmith 16y ago
You've got me coming around a bit on that. But I haven't yet seen a comment where I felt I was getting bad legal advice or an insincere 'fail early, often' or anything similar. I could see it useful in say a discussion of operating a site at massive scale when the poster's sys admin skills were limited to a WP blog. But usually in those cases people qualify what they're saying with, 'I worked on x and we did y'. I think you have to qualify what you're saying in that way. It's presumptuous to assume people know who you are. My background is marketing and PR (as an entrepreneur) so I usually qualify PR-related advice with a note of my experience. If people don't I usually assume they're regurgitating what someone else told them. Anyway it's moot for me because I never check people's bios. I don't know who any of those people are other than pg. I'm ok with that because again I'm really only interested in what they have to say. If Mr Z is on his 11th startup and is worth 23 gazillion dollars I would expect that will come through in his perspective on the industry. I hope it would at least. Don't worry, if I could do it over again I would skip college. I wish I would have raised 1/5 of the money I had to for college and started a business. I would have learned more, faster and would probably be retired already.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  > But I haven't yet seen a comment where I felt I was getting bad legal advice or an insincere 'fail early, often' or anything similar. I've seen more than a few, but truth be told they were usually identified as such. > Don't worry, if I could do it over again I would skip college. I wish I would have raised 1/5 of the money I had to for college and started a business. I would have learned more, faster and would probably be retired already. I still have contact with a few of the people from 'the old days', and I wouldn't trade with them for any amount of money, but every now and then I wished I'd gotten the benefits of at least high school calculus. I tend to spend too much time approaching mathematical problems in a way that I can fudge my basic knowledge, in stead of for instance a direct approach using an analytical method I might code up a brute force search or a hill climbing algorithm (and pray I'm not stuck on a local maximum :) ). The network would have come in handy as well in the beginning, but I've long ago made up for lack of that.