4 ms·
This comment would go from "unreadable" to "interesting" if you had phrased it as: "Vaguely similar to a joke from _the movie_ Ninotchka that _the Slovenian ph
by aerovistae 7y ago
This comment would go from "unreadable" to "interesting" if you had phrased it as:
"Vaguely similar to a joke from _the movie_ Ninotchka that _the Slovenian philosopher_ Zizek often uses...."
Give people context. Don't assume people know what you know.
- stuartaxelowen 7y agoThis feels like a perfect example of how contextual natural language is!
- ForHackernews 7y agoSomebody someone will developer a hipster AI capable of deciphering lefty twitter.
- throwlaplace 7y agoMan you couldn't be more condescending if you tried. 1. Capital letters indicate proper nouns so syntactically it's clear Ninotchka is the name of something and Zizek is someone's name. 2. You contributed this wholly worthless comment using a device that has access to more information than any other in the history of the world. Are you also one of those people that asks people define words for you instead of looking them up when chatting with that person? Give people the benefit of the doubt. Don't assume ill-intentioned motives when there's no evidence for them.
- derivagral 7y agoThe GP didn't come across as ill-intended to me; it outlined an issue, gave a solution, and hopefully everyone who viewed it thought about context for half a second. I do agree with it that adding context to the comment is better than assuming random readers are going to actually look up capitalized names. Your comment, on the other hand, comes off as the one that's disparaging and includes a personal attack.
- throwlaplace 7y ago>GP didn't come across as ill-intended to me oh really? so this bit implying OP is presumptuous isn't a personal attack? >Give people context. Don't assume people know what you know.
- paganel 7y agoPeople on an website like this should at least have a general idea of who Zizek is. I've never yet read any of his books but as a guy living in the Balkans this short clip [1] of Zizek explaining the geography that separates Central Europe from the Balkans is one of the best things on YT. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwDrHqNZ9lo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwDrHqNZ9lo
- oh_sigh 7y agoHow is the comment more or less readable if you know that Ninotchka is a movie and Zizek is a Slovenian philosopher? The difference between coffee without cream and coffee without milk is the same whether Ninotchka and Zizek are the things described above, or if they are a city and a taxi driver.
- baddash 7y agoSaying this is unreadable is untrue. Also, I agree clear communication is important, but in this case it is highly trivial; if you don't know something that someone is referencing, a quick Google search immediately clarifies it. This is much like the fight couples have over keeping a toilet seat up or down: it doesn't really matter what you do or who does it. Because of that, you come across as querulous. As an aside, I think that there are much more important factors to consider in regard to clarity and readability. I believe some of those are accurate articulation and logical tractability of ideas communicated.
- dang 7y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22925490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22925490 and marked it off topic.