5 ms·

> Please don't complain about website formatting, back-button breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be interesting. https://news.ycombinator.

by caslon 5y ago

> Please don't complain about website formatting, back-button breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be interesting. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

jiggawatts 5y ago
[flagged]
- caslon 5y ago
  There's a place for it. Namely, the email of whoever wrote the piece. Not a discussion site. Spamming complaints on HN only serves to lower the quality of discussion.
- tomhoward 5y ago
  The point is that ranting about it here can't directly fix the problem. Sure, it can keep the topic of accessible/usable web development in people's minds, but it likely already is for most web developers using this site. Where a specific page/site is concerned, the person to complain to is the operator of the site hosting the relevant content - i.e., the person/group who can actually do something about it.
hutzlibu 5y ago
This seems like a bug, though. And this guideline is about general complaining about webdesign, where the design choices of the creators are not align with the users preferences.
dang 5y ago
Btw we made that guideline a bit more general recently: "Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—things like article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting." I expect it can be generalized further still, but I wanted to make it unambiguously cover the generic flamewars about things like "why is this on Twitter instead of a blog", since those come up a lot and are super repetitive. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  Hmm, if I may offer my two cents—while I like what you’re trying to do there I think you’ve made the guidelines less clear. Until you called out Twitter threads explicitly, I didn’t see the connection. And I’m actually still not sure what “name collision” means. I have no helpful suggestions on how to make this clearer, unfortunately.
  - acheron 5y ago
    I'm guessing "name collision" is the "I thought this was about [something else]" comment. E.g., an article about Pliny the Elder and people saying "I thought it was about beer". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15160573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15160573
    - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
      Thanks, that makes sense! I still don’t think that’s anywhere near obvious enough for the guidelines, however.
      - dang 5y ago
        If people post the endlessly repeated "I hate reading blog posts on Twitter when they should be a blog", that's a complaint about website formats, no? I don't want to make these things overly specific!
    - dang 5y ago
      That's a perfect example. Another would be "why do people pick ungoogleable names" or generally any shallow-predictable comment about the name of a thing rather than the thing itself. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29449955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29449955 (not to pick on that commenter!)

by caslon 5y ago

jiggawatts 5y ago

[flagged]

caslon 5y ago
There's a place for it. Namely, the email of whoever wrote the piece. Not a discussion site. Spamming complaints on HN only serves to lower the quality of discussion.
tomhoward 5y ago
The point is that ranting about it here can't directly fix the problem. Sure, it can keep the topic of accessible/usable web development in people's minds, but it likely already is for most web developers using this site. Where a specific page/site is concerned, the person to complain to is the operator of the site hosting the relevant content - i.e., the person/group who can actually do something about it.

hutzlibu 5y ago

This seems like a bug, though. And this guideline is about general complaining about webdesign, where the design choices of the creators are not align with the users preferences.

dang 5y ago

Btw we made that guideline a bit more general recently: "Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—things like article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting." I expect it can be generalized further still, but I wanted to make it unambiguously cover the generic flamewars about things like "why is this on Twitter instead of a blog", since those come up a lot and are super repetitive. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Wowfunhappy 5y ago
Hmm, if I may offer my two cents—while I like what you’re trying to do there I think you’ve made the guidelines less clear. Until you called out Twitter threads explicitly, I didn’t see the connection. And I’m actually still not sure what “name collision” means. I have no helpful suggestions on how to make this clearer, unfortunately.
- acheron 5y ago
  I'm guessing "name collision" is the "I thought this was about [something else]" comment. E.g., an article about Pliny the Elder and people saying "I thought it was about beer". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15160573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15160573
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    Thanks, that makes sense! I still don’t think that’s anywhere near obvious enough for the guidelines, however.
    - dang 5y ago
      If people post the endlessly repeated "I hate reading blog posts on Twitter when they should be a blog", that's a complaint about website formats, no? I don't want to make these things overly specific!
  - dang 5y ago
    That's a perfect example. Another would be "why do people pick ungoogleable names" or generally any shallow-predictable comment about the name of a thing rather than the thing itself. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29449955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29449955 (not to pick on that commenter!)