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Imagine, as a thought experiment, that HN declared a do-over and took another stab at answering the question. What, specifically, do you want in the new thread
by patio11 14y ago
Imagine, as a thought experiment, that HN declared a do-over and took another stab at answering the question. What, specifically, do you want in the new thread that was not present in the old thread, and what do you not want in the new thread that was present in the old thread?
Some potential options:
a) Keep all the facts. Remove conclusory statements which suggest that this is a bad idea.
b) Remove the discouraging facts. Add new facts which tend to not be discouraging, such as "Monthly cable rates are high relative to many B2C products and lifetime values can easily hit the thousands of dollars, allowing you to spend a lot on customer acquisition." Add conclusory statements suggesting that this makes founding a cable company a good idea.
c) Remove discouraging facts about the cable industry, replace with to-do action items which accurately describe the process of how one would set up a cable company (regulatory approvals you'll need, who to hire, how much to raise, etc etc), and very carefully attempt to phrase "Convince investors to stake you with $X0 million" in such a way that it does not sound discouraging.
d) Remove everything about starting a cable company. Treat the question as a springboard about "How to disrupt the cable industry?"
e) Something else?
- marcamillion 14y agoNot sure who in the heck downvoted this, but I proposed a simple solution for the community that would help us explore these types of topics on each post. Called - "Proposal: HWIGS HN: How would I get started". You can find it in the New section - http://news.ycombinator.com/newest http://news.ycombinator.com/newest Edit 1: For whatever reason, this comment seems to be a battleground. Been upvoted & downvoted so many times. Guess this comment symbolizes the struggle for those of us interested in preserving the quality of the community we have come to love, and with those that just love to downvote willy nilly.
- belbn 14y agoI was under the impression you aren't able to downvote on this site. In the same way this site is Reddit except the fact you can't react negatively to anything (downvote), we now need to do the same for comments. You either upvote or you do nothing. You either comment positively or you don't comment. Excellent job patio.
- polyfractal 14y agoYou can downvote comments, assuming you have enough karma (100? 500? something like that). You can't downvote stories themselves, however.
- djt 14y agoI believe the threshold is 400 karma
- Mz 14y agoI keep hearing 500. It used to be 200.
- FireBeyond 14y agoAs someone with 408 karma, I suspect 500 is probably more accurate.
- Mz 14y agoThank you. Have an upvote. It was 200 for me, so I was not sure.
- napoleond 14y agoPatrick, this is condescending. I doubt you meant for it to come across that way, but that's how I read it. Most of the posts in the original thread could have conveyed the exact same information in a less dismissive, discouraging, and sometimes even hostile tone--it would have made them more valuable to our community.
- Mz 14y agoYou are right: It is condescending, and I downvoted it for that reason which has no doubt been cancelled out by like a hundred upvotes just because it is Patrick. But, gee, how many other people get called by their first name instead of their handle? "Thomas" comes to mind, but I imagine it is a rather small club. Patrick is fairly introverted and gets super nervous when giving public speeches, even though he has experience doing so. On a much smaller scale, I have been in the kind of position he is in here on HN. I read his remark here as an attempt by someone with a lot of social pull and responsibility here but limited social savvy to affirm the good qualities of a forum he is very personally invested in. Yes, he did it less than smoothly. But his condescension is very likely a defense mechanism, knowing he is a big target and is very likely to be attacked. It is kind of him flinching, knowing it is coming and trying to steel himself for it. I don't know what the solution is, either for HN or Patrick. But I do know how uncomfortable it is to be called out by my given name in public when most other people are hiding behind some anonymous handle or otherwise lower profile. I know how awful it feels to be delivered what amounts to a personal attack so very personally, by name, from semi-anonymous crowds. I don't think putting Patrick on the hot seat like that helps HN at all. In fact, it likely makes things worse. One of the problems with HN is that it is a forum aimed at a largely socially awkward crowd. Most people who have the technical expertise to become influential here will be poorly equipped to perform crowd control duties, even though they essentially take that on as a de facto duty, like it or not. When they attempt to live up to that duty, it might help to cut them some slack and try to see the good intentions behind their sometimes mediocre execution. I wish the leaderboard had 160 names on it. It is the top 150-ish people who have some hope of "fixing" the loss of quality that is so frequently lamented here. I don't know exactly how to do that on such a large scale, but I have a few clues about how to proceed. And trying to meet people like Patrick halfway is part of it. (I apologize for how rambling this is. As is often the case, I seem to be running a fever.)