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Rarely have I seen such concise and respectful way of describing the typical rants I see on HN way to often, bravo! I can only wish I had your writing skills.
by LeonM 7y ago
Rarely have I seen such concise and respectful way of describing the typical rants I see on HN way to often, bravo! I can only wish I had your writing skills.
> It's insulting to the folks that are pouring their time replying to what they think is a user in need of technical assistance, only to eventually stop replying when it becomes obvious that he only replies with questions of morality and treats most answers as if they were platitudes specifically attempting to dismiss his efforts to communicate.
Yes, I have been bitten by this many times. Every time I see a topic like this one I try to help that person by offering technical advice, basically doing my consulting job for free for everyone to read. And many times the post gets downvoted till its dead.
Slowly I learned that people don't want a solution to their problem, they just want to vent their (understandable) frustration about $BIGCORP. But it still hurts to get downvoted when you just try to help.
- pygy_ 7y agoThat can be annoying... Pro tip: start by briefly acknowledging the frustration, then offer the technical solution/workaround.
- falcolas 7y agoEven technical people are people. This tip can help defuse the frustration, making the recipient more willing to listen to the technical solution. People forget sometimes that the person on the other end of the screen isn’t a computer that is completely unmoved by silly things like emotion and frustration.
- dageshi 7y agoThis is essentially HN with every single Google related post nowadays. Good or bad, people hate Google, they hate it the way they used to hate Microsoft, they see everything it does as being nefarious. People ignore the email spammers, SEO spammers, automated password crackers and blame google for the solutions they put in place to combat those things. It's impossible to reason with them, honestly I think it's just best to ignore posts like this.
- mav3rick 7y agoAnd many of these people openly spite Google for failing their interviews.
- throwaway2048 7y agoI am not an email spammer, an SEO spammer, an automated password cracker, or a jaded failed Google canidate. I have my mailserver configured in pretty much an optimal way, with all the special bells and whistles, have never sent spam, and never will. Gmail refuses to deliver my mail, so please don't lump me in with malicious people and then say my concerns should just be ignored.
- mav3rick 7y ago"pretty much an optimal way".
- throwaway2048 7y agoBelieve it or not, its possible to carefully look into things and check them, but I understand its much easier to be smug and assume that its my fault.
- LeonM 7y agoJudging by your username I don't expect you to share the domain name here, but if you need a second opinion, send me a PM and I'll analyse the domain for you. There is usually some misconfiguration somewhere that goes overlooked. Happens to the best of us :-)
- aschismatic 7y agoI've thought about setting up a mail server on a DigitalOcean or Vultr VPS without any experience with mail servers (for person use). Whenever I read opinions about operating a private mail server, there's usually a few people that express great satisfaction in doing so, and say that it's not too difficult. However, there are also many more people that say it's not worth the effort since there's maintenance to consider, complex setup, and the cost of email providers is usually the same or less than running your own server. What is your opinion (or others' if they'd like to chime in)? If you enjoy running your own, are there any guides in particular that you'd recommend? Does the future of email look even more prohibitively complex for self-hosting?