6 ms·

Nice that they’ve found an even worse method of longform writing than twitter posts tied together. I remember a time when “blog about it” was a pejorative dism

Nice that they’ve found an even worse method of longform writing than twitter posts tied together. I remember a time when “blog about it” was a pejorative dismissal applied to weird ranting. Now, I think of that phrase except I’m pleading for people to just put the sentences… into paragraphs!

adolph 4y ago
This is a true comment. MS Word has less pointless computer administrivia. It’s cargo cult as a service.
quickthrower2 4y ago
That said the site UI could do this for us. It then becomes just a beef on the protocol.
- adenozine 4y ago
  Sure, and to take it further, I could’ve just copy and pasted it myself and not complained at all. It all reduces, but it’s simpler to just have categories of content. And this is a category error of a blog post in tweet form. There’s probably browser extensions for twitter threads already, could be a good starter project for someone to adapt one for fediverse sites.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dang 4y ago
I know. But please: "Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- adenozine 4y ago
  Perhaps you should review the definition of tangential. The medium of something is hardly tangential to the self-nature of that thing. We could go more into Kant, but why waste the time? Not that I expect you to (re)consider anything other than the same three links your account spams anytime you see a post that you personally don’t appreciate. Thanks for all you do, you’re truly a marvel.
  - dang 4y ago
    Let's not argue about what 'tangential' means or what Kant said (or McLuhan for that matter). If you can suggest a better word I'm all for it. The point is that these generic-offtopic complaints are extremely repetitive. Maybe the first 1 or 2 (or 17) times one sees them they aren't a big deal, but after that it's bad to be overrun by them like weeds. It's not that they're wrong—rather, precisely because they have a point, they tend to get upvoted, crowding out more interesting/specific conversation. That then leads to complaints about the complaints and god help us. That's why we added that rule. It's a tradeoff between the particular (yes the annoyance exists, yes the comment is valid—I personally agree with it) vs. the general (it's even worse to see these things over and over again, especially at the top of threads). Both are valuable, but only one can prevail and the global optimum is more important. If you really feel strongly about such formats, you should take it up with the people who are choosing to publish this way. Complaining to a link aggregator is like yelling at a photograph. Thanks for the kind words, I think! - but... three links? Also, I protest. The number of HN posts I "personally don't appreciate" is massively greater than the number I reply to. This is an internet forum, after all; I spend my days failing to appreciate things.
    - adenozine 4y ago
      Probably half the people who frequent this website, if not more, are some form of web engineer or at the very least are web-adjacent. It’s a function of UX being a core paradigm of that work that leads to such frequent reflections about a submitted link’s “finer points.” I understand the posts are extremely repetitive, but I’ve not seen a non-regressive attempt to account for this clear and evident desire to discuss this on HN’s part. As far as I know, HN has never tried to have a different comment section for this or other “””offtopic””” discussions, it’s only ever harangued people for talking about it. I was a roofer in my twenties, three decades ago. When you ride around with roofers, you inevitably hear “oh, that one’s a piece of shit. Oh that one’s nice. Oh, they screwed the pooch with that flashing. Oh, that pattern looks great.” It’s part of the trade to reflect on other roofs, and it comes with the territory in most trades, ime, to talk to other tradespeople about best practices. I’ve long thought splitting the comment section into Topic and Offtopic would result in better user experience, as well as tagging posts, being able to mute other users, and a million other features forums had twenty (!) years ago. I already know how desperately HN insists upon itself, but this is my frustration with the moderation surrounding these points. Users have no customization of the experience, they want to talk about the experience, HN says no, of course not.

adolph 4y ago

This is a true comment. MS Word has less pointless computer administrivia. It’s cargo cult as a service.

quickthrower2 4y ago

That said the site UI could do this for us. It then becomes just a beef on the protocol.

adenozine 4y ago
Sure, and to take it further, I could’ve just copy and pasted it myself and not complained at all. It all reduces, but it’s simpler to just have categories of content. And this is a category error of a blog post in tweet form. There’s probably browser extensions for twitter threads already, could be a good starter project for someone to adapt one for fediverse sites.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

dang 4y ago

I know. But please: "Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

adenozine 4y ago
Perhaps you should review the definition of tangential. The medium of something is hardly tangential to the self-nature of that thing. We could go more into Kant, but why waste the time? Not that I expect you to (re)consider anything other than the same three links your account spams anytime you see a post that you personally don’t appreciate. Thanks for all you do, you’re truly a marvel.
- dang 4y ago
  Let's not argue about what 'tangential' means or what Kant said (or McLuhan for that matter). If you can suggest a better word I'm all for it. The point is that these generic-offtopic complaints are extremely repetitive. Maybe the first 1 or 2 (or 17) times one sees them they aren't a big deal, but after that it's bad to be overrun by them like weeds. It's not that they're wrong—rather, precisely because they have a point, they tend to get upvoted, crowding out more interesting/specific conversation. That then leads to complaints about the complaints and god help us. That's why we added that rule. It's a tradeoff between the particular (yes the annoyance exists, yes the comment is valid—I personally agree with it) vs. the general (it's even worse to see these things over and over again, especially at the top of threads). Both are valuable, but only one can prevail and the global optimum is more important. If you really feel strongly about such formats, you should take it up with the people who are choosing to publish this way. Complaining to a link aggregator is like yelling at a photograph. Thanks for the kind words, I think! - but... three links? Also, I protest. The number of HN posts I "personally don't appreciate" is massively greater than the number I reply to. This is an internet forum, after all; I spend my days failing to appreciate things.
  - adenozine 4y ago
    Probably half the people who frequent this website, if not more, are some form of web engineer or at the very least are web-adjacent. It’s a function of UX being a core paradigm of that work that leads to such frequent reflections about a submitted link’s “finer points.” I understand the posts are extremely repetitive, but I’ve not seen a non-regressive attempt to account for this clear and evident desire to discuss this on HN’s part. As far as I know, HN has never tried to have a different comment section for this or other “””offtopic””” discussions, it’s only ever harangued people for talking about it. I was a roofer in my twenties, three decades ago. When you ride around with roofers, you inevitably hear “oh, that one’s a piece of shit. Oh that one’s nice. Oh, they screwed the pooch with that flashing. Oh, that pattern looks great.” It’s part of the trade to reflect on other roofs, and it comes with the territory in most trades, ime, to talk to other tradespeople about best practices. I’ve long thought splitting the comment section into Topic and Offtopic would result in better user experience, as well as tagging posts, being able to mute other users, and a million other features forums had twenty (!) years ago. I already know how desperately HN insists upon itself, but this is my frustration with the moderation surrounding these points. Users have no customization of the experience, they want to talk about the experience, HN says no, of course not.