4 ms·

Hmm, ok, I can totally understand where you are coming from with your comment and I do believe that these things happen in a negative form, which is what you ar

by LeonW 16y ago

Hmm, ok, I can totally understand where you are coming from with your comment and I do believe that these things happen in a negative form, which is what you are hinting at I think. I think this is also not a bad approach though. If you sign up for a service because you wanted to comment somewhere, than yes it is for the first time and starting out somewhere always happens like that. If it is done in a spammy manner I agree it's not cool, the above comment seems fine to me as a first time comment on a platform you just discovered. No? Would love to hear what you think about that :).

mattmanser 16y ago
I've also met Joel irl, great, honest guy. I've no doubt this is a genuine comment from someone who lurks but appreciates Joel's posts (which appear in HN pretty much every Sunday about this time).
patrickyeon 16y ago
IMHO, the original comment doesn't add to the discussion, and discouraging such comments is a good move to lower the "background noise" and keep the signal to noise ratio high on a site like this. The parent may be a bit harsh to a first-timer, but it's not much different from many other forums where replies of the form "me too", "neat", "I like" are discouraged.
JoachimSchipper 16y ago
I intentionally gave only the facts earlier, but I'll expand a bit here. Note that this has nothing to do with the particular comment(er) I replied to. (So if I'm wrong, please don't feel too insulted!) New members really are welcome; however, HN frowns on content-less comments (including "you rock, great article"), and someone interested in HN would soon discover that. On the other hand, the article author Tweeted "My latest blog post is live - "Work and rest in a startup". I'd love your thoughts! - http://t.co/pdE3cpy http://t.co/pdE3cpy (HN: http://t.co/lYEbjnI) http://t.co/lYEbjnI). Suppose some Twitter follower decided to help the HN submission out a little. Doesn't that seem more likely to produce the comment I replied to? I'm not accusing anyone of being evil: I just think the commenter almost certainly cares more for the article author than for HN, and that pointing this out - on HN - may help keep the comment section clean. Note that, given the apparent importance of Twitter etc in getting the first few upvotes quickly, informally asking authors not to Tweet HN links may well result in most of the compliant ones never getting anything to the front page again.

by LeonW 16y ago

mattmanser 16y ago

I've also met Joel irl, great, honest guy. I've no doubt this is a genuine comment from someone who lurks but appreciates Joel's posts (which appear in HN pretty much every Sunday about this time).

patrickyeon 16y ago

IMHO, the original comment doesn't add to the discussion, and discouraging such comments is a good move to lower the "background noise" and keep the signal to noise ratio high on a site like this. The parent may be a bit harsh to a first-timer, but it's not much different from many other forums where replies of the form "me too", "neat", "I like" are discouraged.

JoachimSchipper 16y ago

I intentionally gave only the facts earlier, but I'll expand a bit here. Note that this has nothing to do with the particular comment(er) I replied to. (So if I'm wrong, please don't feel too insulted!) New members really are welcome; however, HN frowns on content-less comments (including "you rock, great article"), and someone interested in HN would soon discover that. On the other hand, the article author Tweeted "My latest blog post is live - "Work and rest in a startup". I'd love your thoughts! - http://t.co/pdE3cpy http://t.co/pdE3cpy (HN: http://t.co/lYEbjnI) http://t.co/lYEbjnI). Suppose some Twitter follower decided to help the HN submission out a little. Doesn't that seem more likely to produce the comment I replied to? I'm not accusing anyone of being evil: I just think the commenter almost certainly cares more for the article author than for HN, and that pointing this out - on HN - may help keep the comment section clean. Note that, given the apparent importance of Twitter etc in getting the first few upvotes quickly, informally asking authors not to Tweet HN links may well result in most of the compliant ones never getting anything to the front page again.