3 ms·

It adds 0 to the conversation. It is very weird, almost borderline autistic behaviour... 90% of links, have some kind of: "doesn't work on my mobile... format

It adds 0 to the conversation. It is very weird, almost borderline autistic behaviour... 90% of links, have some kind of: "doesn't work on my mobile... format sucks, i don't like the colors, etc... etc.." comment. It is pure infantile/juvenile bikesheding and distracting from the point of the conversation/link that has nothing to do with formatting.

dang 6y ago
We could consider adding a guideline asking people not to post such things. The problem is that sometimes such comments are helpful for the owner of a site, who either shared their own work or happened to be on here when someone else did.
- tptacek 6y ago
  My guess is that's pretty unusual, and that if you looked at a sample of, like, 20 of them, in at least 19 cases whatever was being complained about would remain the case on the website in question, indicating that the site owner did not get value from them. Meanwhile: those comments really are a pox on the threads; it'd be better if users were in the habit of downvoting them to keep the top of the thread clear, which a guideline would accomplish.
  - dang 6y ago
    Care to suggest a wording for it?
    - tptacek 6y ago
      Discuss substance, not presentation, unless presentation is the topic of the story. Comments about web design and readability are off-topic. Advice for authors is best delivered through a polite private email.
      - dang 6y ago
        Just to calibrate: would you say "this site breaks the back button fuck I fucking hate that" should be under this umbrella?
        tptacek 6y ago
        Extremely yes. Sites that break the back button aren't going to stop doing that because HN complains about it, right?
        dang 6y ago
        Ok, I added it. A brand new guideline is a rarity. We should have a ceremony. I worded it more concretely: "Please don't complain about website formatting, back-button breakage, and similar annoyances [etc]" I find that giving concrete examples and inviting the mind to generalize them works better than giving an abstract rule and inviting the mind to instantiate it. I learned this trick from spreadsheet development. I was about to complain bitterly that the guidelines are now too long and there isn't a single one that can be taken out...but then I saw one that could be taken out, and I took it out. That was "Please submit the canonical URL. Avoid link shorteners." It's covered by "Please submit the original source." We added it a few years ago to try to convey that link shorteners are banned on HN, but it can be pushed out of the constitution and down into case law. It's the ones that aren't derivable from other guidelines that are hard to remove. The list still feels too long to me. The longer it gets, the less people will take in, and I really want to avoid the mistake of accruing a big list of rules over time. They've grown like tree rings (and about as slowly) as we've learned about what feedback helps regulate the system. But the longer the list becomes, the more it starts to feel like a bureaucratic artifact rather than, let's say, a philosophical one, and that is out of sync with the intended spirit. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20spirit%20letter%20law&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dang 6y ago

We could consider adding a guideline asking people not to post such things. The problem is that sometimes such comments are helpful for the owner of a site, who either shared their own work or happened to be on here when someone else did.

tptacek 6y ago
My guess is that's pretty unusual, and that if you looked at a sample of, like, 20 of them, in at least 19 cases whatever was being complained about would remain the case on the website in question, indicating that the site owner did not get value from them. Meanwhile: those comments really are a pox on the threads; it'd be better if users were in the habit of downvoting them to keep the top of the thread clear, which a guideline would accomplish.
- dang 6y ago
  Care to suggest a wording for it?
  - tptacek 6y ago
    Discuss substance, not presentation, unless presentation is the topic of the story. Comments about web design and readability are off-topic. Advice for authors is best delivered through a polite private email.
    - dang 6y ago
      Just to calibrate: would you say "this site breaks the back button fuck I fucking hate that" should be under this umbrella?
      - tptacek 6y ago
        Extremely yes. Sites that break the back button aren't going to stop doing that because HN complains about it, right?
        dang 6y ago
        Ok, I added it. A brand new guideline is a rarity. We should have a ceremony. I worded it more concretely: "Please don't complain about website formatting, back-button breakage, and similar annoyances [etc]" I find that giving concrete examples and inviting the mind to generalize them works better than giving an abstract rule and inviting the mind to instantiate it. I learned this trick from spreadsheet development. I was about to complain bitterly that the guidelines are now too long and there isn't a single one that can be taken out...but then I saw one that could be taken out, and I took it out. That was "Please submit the canonical URL. Avoid link shorteners." It's covered by "Please submit the original source." We added it a few years ago to try to convey that link shorteners are banned on HN, but it can be pushed out of the constitution and down into case law. It's the ones that aren't derivable from other guidelines that are hard to remove. The list still feels too long to me. The longer it gets, the less people will take in, and I really want to avoid the mistake of accruing a big list of rules over time. They've grown like tree rings (and about as slowly) as we've learned about what feedback helps regulate the system. But the longer the list becomes, the more it starts to feel like a bureaucratic artifact rather than, let's say, a philosophical one, and that is out of sync with the intended spirit. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20spirit%20letter%20law&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html