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Yes, but prepare yourself. Our community as a whole doesn't reward anything that doesn't fit with the current trends. If you're seen deviating from the social

Yes, but prepare yourself. Our community as a whole doesn't reward anything that doesn't fit with the current trends. If you're seen deviating from the social norms, you will get push back, and it's seldom kind or constructive. For example, I wrote this some time ago: http://dave.fayr.am/posts/2011-10-4-rubyists-already-use-monadic-patterns.html http://dave.fayr.am/posts/2011-10-4-rubyists-already-use-mon... I received a lot of hate for this post, both on this site and in other ruby circles. When I wrote this post: http://dave.fayr.am/posts/2007-06-07-Multicore-And-Ruby.html http://dave.fayr.am/posts/2007-06-07-Multicore-And-Ruby.html I was banned from multiple ruby communities and called "the joe lieberman of ruby" by a prominent rubyist. I don't mean to pick on the ruby community here specifically, these are just the oldest so it's least likely to re-open an old argument. I could point to other examples. I'm considering going back to blogging myself, but my experience is that negative feedback overwhelms positive feedback 3:1.

jstanley 9y ago
Getting hate isn't bad. At least people care. Getting ignored is worse. When you've spent hours of your time writing something up that you think is super interesting, and people can't even be bothered to read it and send you some snarky abuse. That's the worst.
- KirinDave 9y ago
  No. I'm sorry, but to me this seems like such a childlike mentality: "Any attention is good attention." Being ignored is preferable to being ostracized by the community at large. Or so I thought, anyways. Now I realize that my mistake was publishing in the first place. There's only negative outcomes, in general. You'll meet a few good people along the way, and you have to decide if that is worth the trouble or not, it's a scale of personal experience.
  - brthan 9y ago
    But this is not about attention by itself; It's about feedback. At least you learned that your opinions were considered controversial. You made someone move out of their comfort zone and reach out to you, if only to send hatemail. You have impact on other people. That's something. But those who are writing posts but get no response whatsoever, are stumbling in the dark. Is the topic boring? Is the post not detailed enough? Too long? Too pompous? Is there a spelling error half-way through, so horrible, that no one manages to read the article to the end? Those people will never know. Of course, you can hone your writing skills by writing for yourself, but without critique from others, it can only get you so far.
    - KirinDave 9y ago
      You can call this success. I don't. Success is writing great code or educating people. Not provoking bullshit responses. So like, i wrote an article about learning to code. It was wrong. I was using outdated research. But none of my critique of it was about that. I had to discover that later. My crituque was that it was stupid, or unfair, or anti-blue-collar, or whatever. I got 0 value, 0 education, 0 fun, and only regret out o the experience. And it was strictly my diligence on the subject that lead to a correction. What exactly did I get other than harassment for this process? Maybe you feel differently, but honestly? I don't care how folks feel. Either we have a constructive dialogue, or we don't. I don't want non-constructive dialogues. I can find no consolation in the later kind. You might look at my content history on HN and say, "But you argue with people a lot." I do, because I feel obligated to do so. I do not like it or enjoy it. It is something I have promised to do; not something I want to.
mwcampbell 9y ago
FWIW, you're one of a short list of HN participants whose comments I frequently read. If you start blogging again, I'll read your posts with great interest and provide only constructive feedback.

jstanley 9y ago

Getting hate isn't bad. At least people care. Getting ignored is worse. When you've spent hours of your time writing something up that you think is super interesting, and people can't even be bothered to read it and send you some snarky abuse. That's the worst.

KirinDave 9y ago
No. I'm sorry, but to me this seems like such a childlike mentality: "Any attention is good attention." Being ignored is preferable to being ostracized by the community at large. Or so I thought, anyways. Now I realize that my mistake was publishing in the first place. There's only negative outcomes, in general. You'll meet a few good people along the way, and you have to decide if that is worth the trouble or not, it's a scale of personal experience.
- brthan 9y ago
  But this is not about attention by itself; It's about feedback. At least you learned that your opinions were considered controversial. You made someone move out of their comfort zone and reach out to you, if only to send hatemail. You have impact on other people. That's something. But those who are writing posts but get no response whatsoever, are stumbling in the dark. Is the topic boring? Is the post not detailed enough? Too long? Too pompous? Is there a spelling error half-way through, so horrible, that no one manages to read the article to the end? Those people will never know. Of course, you can hone your writing skills by writing for yourself, but without critique from others, it can only get you so far.
  - KirinDave 9y ago
    You can call this success. I don't. Success is writing great code or educating people. Not provoking bullshit responses. So like, i wrote an article about learning to code. It was wrong. I was using outdated research. But none of my critique of it was about that. I had to discover that later. My crituque was that it was stupid, or unfair, or anti-blue-collar, or whatever. I got 0 value, 0 education, 0 fun, and only regret out o the experience. And it was strictly my diligence on the subject that lead to a correction. What exactly did I get other than harassment for this process? Maybe you feel differently, but honestly? I don't care how folks feel. Either we have a constructive dialogue, or we don't. I don't want non-constructive dialogues. I can find no consolation in the later kind. You might look at my content history on HN and say, "But you argue with people a lot." I do, because I feel obligated to do so. I do not like it or enjoy it. It is something I have promised to do; not something I want to.

mwcampbell 9y ago

FWIW, you're one of a short list of HN participants whose comments I frequently read. If you start blogging again, I'll read your posts with great interest and provide only constructive feedback.