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Author of War and Peace was very frustrated about size of that book I doubt that's true. I seem to recall that Tolstoy had his wife copy it 9 times by hand as

by gruseom 13y ago

Author of War and Peace was very frustrated about size of that book I doubt that's true. I seem to recall that Tolstoy had his wife copy it 9 times by hand as he rewrote it. Also, "wall of text", meaning "something that might take an effort to read", is not considered bad on HN, though verbosity (which is not the same thing) is. Also, the phrases "wall of text" and "TL;DR" are Redditisms that most people here try to keep HN clear of. Other invasive species from Reddit include: addressing people as "sir" in comments; introducing something (usually something distracting) with "obligatory"; and others I can't remember right now. There used to be a sign as you crossed the Alberta-BC border asking people to be careful about inadvertently bringing pine beetles from one province into the other. I feel like we should have one of those.

EugeneOZ 13y ago
Well, it's offtop, but I hate when somebody calls me a liar. In Wikipedia: "6 декабря 1908 года Толстой записал в дневнике: «Люди любят меня за те пустяки — „Война и мир“ и т. п., которые им кажутся очень важными»". In English: (google translate) December 6, 1908, Tolstoy wrote in his diary: "People love me for the trivia -" War and Peace "and the like, which they seem to be very important". I don't read Reddit at all, so I don't care about their Redditisms.
- gruseom 13y ago
  That quote expresses Tolstoy's frustration not about the size of his novels but about the importance people attached to them. In his old age Tolstoy wanted people to focus on moral concerns, not artistic ones. For old Tolstoy, War and Peace was empty of significance, but certainly not because it was too long—that would be the last thing he cared about by 1908! Also, please don't use inflammatory language on HN. "Calls me a liar" is about the most inflammatory way you could put that. My comment was hardly about you, and "lie" implies something evil, which is way over the top. I'm merely saying that one of your points was mistaken. Is there a word for the opposite of inflammatory language? That's what we're trying to do on HN, even at the cost—this took me years to figure out—of being a little more boring.

by gruseom 13y ago

EugeneOZ 13y ago

Well, it's offtop, but I hate when somebody calls me a liar. In Wikipedia: "6 декабря 1908 года Толстой записал в дневнике: «Люди любят меня за те пустяки — „Война и мир“ и т. п., которые им кажутся очень важными»". In English: (google translate) December 6, 1908, Tolstoy wrote in his diary: "People love me for the trivia -" War and Peace "and the like, which they seem to be very important". I don't read Reddit at all, so I don't care about their Redditisms.

gruseom 13y ago
That quote expresses Tolstoy's frustration not about the size of his novels but about the importance people attached to them. In his old age Tolstoy wanted people to focus on moral concerns, not artistic ones. For old Tolstoy, War and Peace was empty of significance, but certainly not because it was too long—that would be the last thing he cared about by 1908! Also, please don't use inflammatory language on HN. "Calls me a liar" is about the most inflammatory way you could put that. My comment was hardly about you, and "lie" implies something evil, which is way over the top. I'm merely saying that one of your points was mistaken. Is there a word for the opposite of inflammatory language? That's what we're trying to do on HN, even at the cost—this took me years to figure out—of being a little more boring.