4 ms·
That's a bullshit guideline. Back button breakage is a crime against usability and we should be as vocal and irritating as possible about it -- especially in a
by Tao3300 4y ago
That's a bullshit guideline. Back button breakage is a crime against usability and we should be as vocal and irritating as possible about it -- especially in a forum that regularly results in changes along the "Why did (insert FAANG) lock my account with no explanation?" front.
Again, this guideline is garbage. Rage against it. Rage against back button breakage.
There should be a guideline against citing the guidelines. I'm guilty of it too, but it's a boring and shitty (and off-topic! it's metadiscussion!) thing to do.
- OrderlyTiamat 4y agoI think this is a worthy cause and something that interests me. But it should have its own place, and not be brought up randomly on some other topic. Perhaps you or someone else could write a post on it and submit it! That would lead to better engagement and a more focused discussion. It would also be in tune with the guidelines- come to think of it, that's probably why the guidelines are as they are.
- dang 4y agoI appreciate the juicy center of good humor in your comment of rage. Maybe the following will help. You're right, of course. It's just that there are competing values, so we have to make a tradeoff. One value is usability and having web content be less annoying, intrusive, abusive, and so on. No disagreement there. I think most HN readers share similar feelings about these things; certainly I do. The other value is curiosity. Curiosity likes new things, different things [0], unexpected things—things it can learn from. It doesn't do so well with repetition [1], indignation, or genericness [2]. These two values conflict because complaints about the former tend to be repetitive, indignant, and generic. How to decide the conflict? That question actually has a clear answer, because we're trying to optimize for just one thing here, namely intellectual curiosity [3]. So that value has to win. This is one of those cases where it's super helpful to have just one thing you're optimizing for and to know exactly what it is. It's not that this is the 'right' decision, the 'correct' guideline, or anything like that—it's just correct relative to what we're trying to optimize for. [0] Diffs are what's interesting https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=diffs%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20repetition%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=generic%20discussion%20by%3Adang%20-flamewars%20-flamewar&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... [3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
- youor 4y ago
- Tao3300 4y agoThanks for writing that up and taking the time to explain the "optimizing". The moderation approach makes a lot more sense when you consider it as a hill-climbing heuristic along that one particular axis. > complaints about the former tend to be repetitive, indignant, and generic. Rest assured that I'll do my best to avoid these in any future complaints about back button breakage!
- dang 4y agoSend me a link if you come up with a new one ;) Yes, exactly - it's hill-climbing. Sisyphean optimization, you might call it.