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They are writing the article for a specific audience: ffmpegkit users. All tech articles assume some prior technical knowledge.

rwmj 2y ago
And yet it was posted here and many people who know nothing of the project will read it. Writing a sentence saying what the thing is takes a few words.
- Igrom 2y ago
  And clicking on a link to GitHub takes no time at all. Is there anything wrong with that approach? Furthermore, I feel that you shouldn't blame the author for omissions if their post is shared outside of the intended audience.
  - rwmj 2y ago
    We could make every reader do the extra work, or the author could write a few words once.
    - JamesSwift 2y ago
      It seems you are suggesting they would do it every time they post though
    - dragonwriter 2y ago
      Well, yeah, you can go bug the authors of stories like this that someone (not the author!) at HN decides to post a link to that they need to change how they write for the benefit of an audience they aren't actively seeking, but I doubt that will do much good. But its especially silly to post on HN that authors need to change how they are writing in a thread on an article that wasn't posted here by the author, and where there is no indication that the author is a member of the community.
    - mjmsmith 2y ago
      He could title that section Why #3.
  - retrocryptid 2y ago
    I suspect there was a human who posted a link to the OP's post here on HN. It is -that- human who was being asked to provide context since they should have know that by posting a link to HN, they are posting a link to a community that may be different from the OP's original audience. i.e.- this was not a rerquest or taner saner to provide context, but a request for @ericdiao to provide context.
    - xg15 2y ago
      Except HN explicitly discourages this: You can intentionally submit either a text post or a link, but not both. For links, you could theoretically edit the title, but there too, the guidelines state that you should just use the original title from the article if possible.
      - rwmj 2y ago
        Yes, it's a shame that HN doesn't include a short 1- or 2-sentence summary of each article (on the front page).
        xg15 2y ago
        Exactly. I also think it would be interesting to know why someone decided to submit an article, so they could write their reasoning in there too.
- xg15 2y ago
  I see that more of a downside of HN's policy of essentially demanding that articles are posted without any context or explanation. It's not the job of the author to provide context for an audience they didn't even write for - but it would be HN's job to provide context for its own audience.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > And yet it was posted here Not by the author, so I don't see how that impacts how it should be written; and HN users are free to ignore things that don't interest them, or to spend a few minutes with a search engine learning context for things that seem like they might, but which are unfamiliar (and are generally competent to both of those things as appropriate.)

rwmj 2y ago

And yet it was posted here and many people who know nothing of the project will read it. Writing a sentence saying what the thing is takes a few words.

Igrom 2y ago
And clicking on a link to GitHub takes no time at all. Is there anything wrong with that approach? Furthermore, I feel that you shouldn't blame the author for omissions if their post is shared outside of the intended audience.
- rwmj 2y ago
  We could make every reader do the extra work, or the author could write a few words once.
  - JamesSwift 2y ago
    It seems you are suggesting they would do it every time they post though
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    Well, yeah, you can go bug the authors of stories like this that someone (not the author!) at HN decides to post a link to that they need to change how they write for the benefit of an audience they aren't actively seeking, but I doubt that will do much good. But its especially silly to post on HN that authors need to change how they are writing in a thread on an article that wasn't posted here by the author, and where there is no indication that the author is a member of the community.
  - mjmsmith 2y ago
    He could title that section Why #3.
- retrocryptid 2y ago
  I suspect there was a human who posted a link to the OP's post here on HN. It is -that- human who was being asked to provide context since they should have know that by posting a link to HN, they are posting a link to a community that may be different from the OP's original audience. i.e.- this was not a rerquest or taner saner to provide context, but a request for @ericdiao to provide context.
  - xg15 2y ago
    Except HN explicitly discourages this: You can intentionally submit either a text post or a link, but not both. For links, you could theoretically edit the title, but there too, the guidelines state that you should just use the original title from the article if possible.
    - rwmj 2y ago
      Yes, it's a shame that HN doesn't include a short 1- or 2-sentence summary of each article (on the front page).
      - xg15 2y ago
        Exactly. I also think it would be interesting to know why someone decided to submit an article, so they could write their reasoning in there too.
xg15 2y ago
I see that more of a downside of HN's policy of essentially demanding that articles are posted without any context or explanation. It's not the job of the author to provide context for an audience they didn't even write for - but it would be HN's job to provide context for its own audience.
dragonwriter 2y ago
> And yet it was posted here Not by the author, so I don't see how that impacts how it should be written; and HN users are free to ignore things that don't interest them, or to spend a few minutes with a search engine learning context for things that seem like they might, but which are unfamiliar (and are generally competent to both of those things as appropriate.)