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This is not aimed at the commenter, but rather a generalized statement: yntries like this make me love and at the same time hate HN. Great articles with mostly

by cavDXF 4y ago

This is not aimed at the commenter, but rather a generalized statement: yntries like this make me love and at the same time hate HN. Great articles with mostly uninformed comments, whereas the two or three guys with knowledge on the topic are buried deep underneath. Egypt was ptolemaic, thus hellenised. Cleopatra is famously Greek, not Egyptian.

darkerside 4y ago
Bring uninformed and asking questions should be appreciated, not condescended. It's an attitude that I see too much of in our society but hope to see less of here on HN. This is a topic I'm also ignorant of, and I'm glad to see a discussion spark up.
- carapace 4y ago
  > Bring uninformed and asking questions should be appreciated I disagree. There's too much noise already. This isn't StackOverflow. Wikipedia exists. People should take a moment to read up on whatever subject before they ask questions rather than wasting other people's time coming up to speed on fundamental knowledge. (It's not like ancient Egyptians and Greeks are particularly obscure, eh?) We can have much deeper discussions if people ask informed questions.
  - darkerside 4y ago
    Sometimes the experts have a really deep discussion, and that's cool. Sometimes people just want to spitball because a post sparked their imagination. The great thing is, we can do both. If you don't like the question that was asked, find another or ask one yourself. I fundamentally disagree with feeling people should be silenced because they are not asking the right questions. How much research should be necessary? How much baseline knowledge is "enough" to participate? Who gets to draw that line? Thank Zeus it's not you, and instead people get to draw their own lines by engaging, or not, with other commenters on this social network.
    - carapace 4y ago
      > Who gets to draw that line? Thank Zeus it's not you... I'm not the Spanish Inquisition. The worst I can do is downvote stupid or ignorant questions that could be easily answered by a web search and ten minutes of reading. > I fundamentally disagree with feeling people should be silenced because they are not asking the right questions. That's not how I feel. In fact, I would say that "feeling people should be silenced because they are not asking the right questions" is a symptom of mental or emotional illness. What I feel is that it's disrespectful at best to lean on other people for basic knowledge rather than doing one's own homework. Even if you don't agree that "lazyweb" is disrespectful, I would still argue that it wastes a lot of time and energy. If someone asks a question that could be answered by ten minutes of googling, they are just using the forum as a interface to google, eh? There are plenty of other places on the Internet where people can go to get basic information, Wikipedia, Stackoverflow, Google, etc... Places where it's perfectly appropriate to be one of the "lucky 10,000" ( https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ ). I don't think being "uninformed and asking questions should be appreciated" here. FWIW I do think it should be tolerated, because A) that's how some people learn (however disrespectfully and lazily) and B) occasionally ignorant questions lead to very interesting and informative discussions (which is the whole point of HN as far as I'm concerned) and we cannot reliably predict which ignorant questions will lead to such discussions.
      - darkerside 4y ago
        > The worst I can do is downvote stupid or ignorant questions that could be easily answered by a web search and ten minutes of reading. You can also state your point eloquently, as you did. All I'm doing is expressing my counterpoint to yours in this public forum. I think where we really disagree is that I don't think there is a clearly defined baseline for "common knowledge". You say it's something like "10 minutes of googling", but I think there are other valid definitions, like the information you have on hand at the moment. i.e. is this a research library or a cocktail party (or something in between)? There's certainly a point where it turns to trolling, but questions asked in good intent are fair game as far as I'm concerned.
        4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
throw0101a 4y ago
Sometimes it's easier to use a shortcut: > Cunningham is credited with the idea: "The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."[15] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham#Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham#Law

by cavDXF 4y ago

darkerside 4y ago

Bring uninformed and asking questions should be appreciated, not condescended. It's an attitude that I see too much of in our society but hope to see less of here on HN. This is a topic I'm also ignorant of, and I'm glad to see a discussion spark up.

carapace 4y ago
> Bring uninformed and asking questions should be appreciated I disagree. There's too much noise already. This isn't StackOverflow. Wikipedia exists. People should take a moment to read up on whatever subject before they ask questions rather than wasting other people's time coming up to speed on fundamental knowledge. (It's not like ancient Egyptians and Greeks are particularly obscure, eh?) We can have much deeper discussions if people ask informed questions.
- darkerside 4y ago
  Sometimes the experts have a really deep discussion, and that's cool. Sometimes people just want to spitball because a post sparked their imagination. The great thing is, we can do both. If you don't like the question that was asked, find another or ask one yourself. I fundamentally disagree with feeling people should be silenced because they are not asking the right questions. How much research should be necessary? How much baseline knowledge is "enough" to participate? Who gets to draw that line? Thank Zeus it's not you, and instead people get to draw their own lines by engaging, or not, with other commenters on this social network.
  - carapace 4y ago
    > Who gets to draw that line? Thank Zeus it's not you... I'm not the Spanish Inquisition. The worst I can do is downvote stupid or ignorant questions that could be easily answered by a web search and ten minutes of reading. > I fundamentally disagree with feeling people should be silenced because they are not asking the right questions. That's not how I feel. In fact, I would say that "feeling people should be silenced because they are not asking the right questions" is a symptom of mental or emotional illness. What I feel is that it's disrespectful at best to lean on other people for basic knowledge rather than doing one's own homework. Even if you don't agree that "lazyweb" is disrespectful, I would still argue that it wastes a lot of time and energy. If someone asks a question that could be answered by ten minutes of googling, they are just using the forum as a interface to google, eh? There are plenty of other places on the Internet where people can go to get basic information, Wikipedia, Stackoverflow, Google, etc... Places where it's perfectly appropriate to be one of the "lucky 10,000" ( https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ ). I don't think being "uninformed and asking questions should be appreciated" here. FWIW I do think it should be tolerated, because A) that's how some people learn (however disrespectfully and lazily) and B) occasionally ignorant questions lead to very interesting and informative discussions (which is the whole point of HN as far as I'm concerned) and we cannot reliably predict which ignorant questions will lead to such discussions.
    - darkerside 4y ago
      > The worst I can do is downvote stupid or ignorant questions that could be easily answered by a web search and ten minutes of reading. You can also state your point eloquently, as you did. All I'm doing is expressing my counterpoint to yours in this public forum. I think where we really disagree is that I don't think there is a clearly defined baseline for "common knowledge". You say it's something like "10 minutes of googling", but I think there are other valid definitions, like the information you have on hand at the moment. i.e. is this a research library or a cocktail party (or something in between)? There's certainly a point where it turns to trolling, but questions asked in good intent are fair game as far as I'm concerned.
      - 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

throw0101a 4y ago

Sometimes it's easier to use a shortcut: > Cunningham is credited with the idea: "The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."[15] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham#Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham#Law