3 ms·

Can you stop making up quotes? You do it a lot on this site, and it's both uncool and against the rules. I'm not going to engage with the other, less obvious

by cxr 3y ago

Can you stop making up quotes? You do it a lot on this site, and it's both uncool and against the rules. I'm not going to engage with the other, less obvious (but still not particularly well-hidden) strawmen in your comment.

arp242 3y ago
Eh? I didn't "make up" anything. Quotation marks are commonly used for all sorts of things other than exact literal text someone else said, and having a dialogue like that is one of them. I will continue to use quotations marks in this fashion, together with millions of other people on the planet, whether you like it or not, because it's a common way to use quotation marks and absolutely no one is confused this usage. My post broke zero rules and I encourage you to email HN if you think that I'm a pervasive rule-breaker with my alleged "made-up quotes" so you can be told the same by the site's moderators so these pointless spurious accusations can stop.
- dang 3y ago
  It's not listed at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html but there is a convention on HN of asking users not to use quotation marks to make it look like they're quoting someone when they're actually not. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22quoting%20someone%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
  - arp242 3y ago
    But I didn't "make it look like I'm quoting someone" because I don't think anyone in good faith would interpret it as such. A quick look at your list shows that it's mostly about bad faith takes, and the problem there is bad faith takes and not quotation marks. This kind of usage of quotation marks is also pretty common on HN by the way, as it is in the rest of the world – just on the first page of my "threads" I see two other people do it, and no one objects because it's fine. If you want to police "quotation marks can only be used for exact literal quotes" then ... good luck. If you want to rant about people being "misguided" and "narcissistic" then maybe you should maybe also be able to take some criticism from the people that you insult as such, instead of insisting on extremely strict formalities that almost no one else insists on.
    - pvg 3y ago
      it's mostly about bad faith takes The problem with that style of 'aggro paraphrase' is that it's not easy to distinguish from a bad faith take and people react to it as if it is. Plus they're often right. If you don't like the punctuation-specificity of the convention (I don't) just take it as 'don't do aggro paraphrase' and stop doing aggro paraphrase.
      - arp242 3y ago
        "Aggro paraphrase" is a rather different argument than "you're making up quotes" though, which is only a very slightly nicer way of saying "you're lying". What you're saying is essentially "your post came off as aggressive", or something to that effect. And I agree with that. And if the post I replied to had been an otherwise nice post then sure. But it's not. It's a hugely bitter, contemptuous, and insulting piece. "Don't respond to bad posts with bad posts" as Dan would say and sure, I agree with that too, and I typically don't, but it really wasn't that bad in this context. Let's be real: calling people "narcissistic" for being a bit playful with some layout is not exactly in keeping with the spirit HN's guidelines, is it? I know you're just an innocent bystander here, but ranting and raving and insulting but then insisting on impeccable behaviour from others is one those flaming hyper-toxic behaviours that destroys, well, everything. Actually I'd argue this is at the root of why Twitter is such a dumpster fire because everyone seems to insist on being an asshole while calling out others for ... being an asshole.
        pvg 3y ago
        is a rather different argument than "you're making up quotes" though It doesn't matter, it's that how it's perceived. As to the other thing, just downvote and flag comments you think are bad.
        arp242 3y ago
        Perceptions are not reality, or necessarily reasonable. And the flags are most likely due to the "Who here is the selfish and narcissistic one here?"-comment, which could indeed have been phrased as less of an accusation (even though it's the same insult/accusation that was used in the post I replied to). I would have flagged it for that. I'm always open to criticism on, well, anything, but if you can't even side-ways acknowledge the flaming rant that I replied to for what it is then clearly our standards of "acceptable behaviour" are so different that we have little common ground. Maybe no one should call anyone a narcissist or things like that? I shouldn't have either as I said, but that is the really the issue here as far as I'm concerned.

by cxr 3y ago

arp242 3y ago

Eh? I didn't "make up" anything. Quotation marks are commonly used for all sorts of things other than exact literal text someone else said, and having a dialogue like that is one of them. I will continue to use quotations marks in this fashion, together with millions of other people on the planet, whether you like it or not, because it's a common way to use quotation marks and absolutely no one is confused this usage. My post broke zero rules and I encourage you to email HN if you think that I'm a pervasive rule-breaker with my alleged "made-up quotes" so you can be told the same by the site's moderators so these pointless spurious accusations can stop.

dang 3y ago
It's not listed at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html but there is a convention on HN of asking users not to use quotation marks to make it look like they're quoting someone when they're actually not. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22quoting%20someone%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- arp242 3y ago
  But I didn't "make it look like I'm quoting someone" because I don't think anyone in good faith would interpret it as such. A quick look at your list shows that it's mostly about bad faith takes, and the problem there is bad faith takes and not quotation marks. This kind of usage of quotation marks is also pretty common on HN by the way, as it is in the rest of the world – just on the first page of my "threads" I see two other people do it, and no one objects because it's fine. If you want to police "quotation marks can only be used for exact literal quotes" then ... good luck. If you want to rant about people being "misguided" and "narcissistic" then maybe you should maybe also be able to take some criticism from the people that you insult as such, instead of insisting on extremely strict formalities that almost no one else insists on.
  - pvg 3y ago
    it's mostly about bad faith takes The problem with that style of 'aggro paraphrase' is that it's not easy to distinguish from a bad faith take and people react to it as if it is. Plus they're often right. If you don't like the punctuation-specificity of the convention (I don't) just take it as 'don't do aggro paraphrase' and stop doing aggro paraphrase.
    - arp242 3y ago
      "Aggro paraphrase" is a rather different argument than "you're making up quotes" though, which is only a very slightly nicer way of saying "you're lying". What you're saying is essentially "your post came off as aggressive", or something to that effect. And I agree with that. And if the post I replied to had been an otherwise nice post then sure. But it's not. It's a hugely bitter, contemptuous, and insulting piece. "Don't respond to bad posts with bad posts" as Dan would say and sure, I agree with that too, and I typically don't, but it really wasn't that bad in this context. Let's be real: calling people "narcissistic" for being a bit playful with some layout is not exactly in keeping with the spirit HN's guidelines, is it? I know you're just an innocent bystander here, but ranting and raving and insulting but then insisting on impeccable behaviour from others is one those flaming hyper-toxic behaviours that destroys, well, everything. Actually I'd argue this is at the root of why Twitter is such a dumpster fire because everyone seems to insist on being an asshole while calling out others for ... being an asshole.
      - pvg 3y ago
        is a rather different argument than "you're making up quotes" though It doesn't matter, it's that how it's perceived. As to the other thing, just downvote and flag comments you think are bad.
        arp242 3y ago
        Perceptions are not reality, or necessarily reasonable. And the flags are most likely due to the "Who here is the selfish and narcissistic one here?"-comment, which could indeed have been phrased as less of an accusation (even though it's the same insult/accusation that was used in the post I replied to). I would have flagged it for that. I'm always open to criticism on, well, anything, but if you can't even side-ways acknowledge the flaming rant that I replied to for what it is then clearly our standards of "acceptable behaviour" are so different that we have little common ground. Maybe no one should call anyone a narcissist or things like that? I shouldn't have either as I said, but that is the really the issue here as far as I'm concerned.