3 ms·

I don't think you are right on this one. This is a primarily tech oriented website. When someone posts a 2 years old cross-platform project that's arguably sub

I don't think you are right on this one. This is a primarily tech oriented website. When someone posts a 2 years old cross-platform project that's arguably suboptimal from many technical perspectives, and the submitter explicitly asks for feedback and criticism, I think it is fair game to actually give feedback instead of hugboxing.

dang 2y ago
Certainly—but it is not hard to do that while also respecting the guidelines. Here is one thing that https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html says about comments on Show HNs: When something isn't good, you needn't pretend that it is, but don't be gratuitously negative. Making criticisms by starting out with "Great, another" is snarky and gratuitously negative. This is not a borderline call. Also, "we have had better for decades" is arguably a shallow dismissal of someone's work, which https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html asks commenters to avoid: Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. If I make my own toaster as a side project, pointing out that there have been better toasters for decades is not meaningfully engaging with that work. Better might be to inquire: what is it about the toasters that have existed for decades that wasn't satisfying you? And then I might say "well, I wanted it to have a progress bar". And you might say "Mousetoaster was released 18 years ago and more or less already had that," and then we could have an interesting conversation about it. That's the sort of interaction we want. It still offers lots of ways to talk about what's missing from a project, or the fact that it won't work on Firefox.

3 ms·

I don't think you are right on this one. This is a primarily tech oriented website. When someone posts a 2 years old cross-platform project that's arguably sub

by not_your_vase 2y ago

dang 2y ago
Certainly—but it is not hard to do that while also respecting the guidelines. Here is one thing that https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html says about comments on Show HNs: When something isn't good, you needn't pretend that it is, but don't be gratuitously negative. Making criticisms by starting out with "Great, another" is snarky and gratuitously negative. This is not a borderline call. Also, "we have had better for decades" is arguably a shallow dismissal of someone's work, which https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html asks commenters to avoid: Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. If I make my own toaster as a side project, pointing out that there have been better toasters for decades is not meaningfully engaging with that work. Better might be to inquire: what is it about the toasters that have existed for decades that wasn't satisfying you? And then I might say "well, I wanted it to have a progress bar". And you might say "Mousetoaster was released 18 years ago and more or less already had that," and then we could have an interesting conversation about it. That's the sort of interaction we want. It still offers lots of ways to talk about what's missing from a project, or the fact that it won't work on Firefox.