3 ms·

Thanks to the HN community

54 points by grellas 17y ago

For the past two months, I have been lurking in and about the HN community as a "noobie," making a few submissions and a fair number of comments on topics to which I felt I could contribute, even as a non-technical person. I am now constrained to "sign off" for the time being. I did not want to do so without saying thanks to you all for your graciousness. I have felt most welcomed here, even as one who is not strictly a hacker, though I have concluded on my own that I am misplaced as a general contributor to the site. I do hope to contribute or comment occasionally in the future on startup law-related items, as time may permit. Thanks again and bye for now.

jyothi 17y ago
I must have missed a lot of your comments. I just went through all your threads. I must say they are tremendously useful. Thanks! There was a time when HN first page would be more full of startup material (in which case you would have been able to educate us all lot more). This is what necessitates tagging on HN - newmogul too could have been just one more section on HN filtered by economy and finance related threads. The community definitely has a huge overlap.
rms 17y ago
It's been real. Also check out http://newmogul.com http://newmogul.com.
- satyajit 17y ago
  What's with Newmogul - saw it for the first time. A HN clone with biz focus?? Interesting.
  - movix 17y ago
    I'd say that's EXACTLY what it is. I'm curious as to how someone starts a site like Newmogul. What's day one like? Do they just have a load of links to news aggregated articles with comments from anyone they can grab around their office, and a lot of empty space on the site? Genuine question - how does it work? How do they drive their traffic in there?
    - rms 17y ago
      It's really tough. New Mogul worked because it was started by Nickb, a virtual link submission machine. For a while it was just a lot of stories submitted by Nickb and he mostly voted up every story submitted by someone else. It was only about 2 months ago that there started to be lots of comments. About a week ago Nickb went on vacation and hasn't been submitting and the site has held together.
alex_c 17y ago
It's been great reading your comments - definitely valuable contributions. Hope to see more in the future.
jhancock 17y ago
thanks for your contributions. and thanks for the heads up that you will not be around for a bit so we don't have to see posts wondering why you disappeared ;)
tptacek 17y ago
Sad to see you go. Still following your blog. Great stuff. What would a community do differently if it didn't want people like you to feel misplaced? Just too technical?
- rms 17y ago
  One problem I see is all the people here that misunderstand what Hacker News is about and think that the only thing on-topic is discussions about programming.
icey 17y ago
It was nice having an actual lawyer around here instead of the usual bunch of bloviators. Hopefully you're off to do something interesting!
- grellas 17y ago
  I'll be around practicing startup business law as usual, and I will be making occasional contributions to the site in that area. I really appreciate the people here and am not suggesting in the least that I feel alienated from you, only that there is a mismatch between my world and the hacker world that has led me to conclude that my general (non-law) contributions to the site do not really add anything meaningful to the discussions. Thanks to all for the kind comments (and, no, I won't ever be doing Erlang, whatever that is, not after what I saw yesterday).
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    I don't think you should take what happened yesterday as reflecting on Erlang in one way or another, that was a very limited number of users behaving in a childish way. But you are reinforcing a point I made elsewhere already, that tricks like that actually hurt the Erlang community. I don't know much about Erlang myself but it seems a nice enough technology.
  - pageman 17y ago
    I hope you reconsider and stay!
jws 17y ago
I hope he isn't leaving to pursue a new career as an Erlang programmer.
- pageman 17y ago
  +1 for me making me chuckle hahaha
jacquesm 17y ago
You'll be missed George, you're like NYC on /. only (much) less abrasive. There was some pretty good stuff in your postings, I know I learned from them. I hope to see you back here some day! this one should probably be in your bookmarks: http://www.grellas.com/faq_business_startup_010.html http://www.grellas.com/faq_business_startup_010.html
timwiseman 17y ago
It shall certainly be a shame to have you contribute less. I found your comments to be insightful and useful personally. Also, while I personally think that having this site mostly focused on more technical matters is nice, I do think there is room for nontechnical contributors in general.

54 points by grellas 17y ago

jyothi 17y ago

I must have missed a lot of your comments. I just went through all your threads. I must say they are tremendously useful. Thanks! There was a time when HN first page would be more full of startup material (in which case you would have been able to educate us all lot more). This is what necessitates tagging on HN - newmogul too could have been just one more section on HN filtered by economy and finance related threads. The community definitely has a huge overlap.

rms 17y ago

It's been real. Also check out http://newmogul.com http://newmogul.com.

satyajit 17y ago
What's with Newmogul - saw it for the first time. A HN clone with biz focus?? Interesting.
- movix 17y ago
  I'd say that's EXACTLY what it is. I'm curious as to how someone starts a site like Newmogul. What's day one like? Do they just have a load of links to news aggregated articles with comments from anyone they can grab around their office, and a lot of empty space on the site? Genuine question - how does it work? How do they drive their traffic in there?
  - rms 17y ago
    It's really tough. New Mogul worked because it was started by Nickb, a virtual link submission machine. For a while it was just a lot of stories submitted by Nickb and he mostly voted up every story submitted by someone else. It was only about 2 months ago that there started to be lots of comments. About a week ago Nickb went on vacation and hasn't been submitting and the site has held together.

alex_c 17y ago

It's been great reading your comments - definitely valuable contributions. Hope to see more in the future.

jhancock 17y ago

thanks for your contributions. and thanks for the heads up that you will not be around for a bit so we don't have to see posts wondering why you disappeared ;)

tptacek 17y ago

Sad to see you go. Still following your blog. Great stuff. What would a community do differently if it didn't want people like you to feel misplaced? Just too technical?

rms 17y ago
One problem I see is all the people here that misunderstand what Hacker News is about and think that the only thing on-topic is discussions about programming.

icey 17y ago

It was nice having an actual lawyer around here instead of the usual bunch of bloviators. Hopefully you're off to do something interesting!

grellas 17y ago
I'll be around practicing startup business law as usual, and I will be making occasional contributions to the site in that area. I really appreciate the people here and am not suggesting in the least that I feel alienated from you, only that there is a mismatch between my world and the hacker world that has led me to conclude that my general (non-law) contributions to the site do not really add anything meaningful to the discussions. Thanks to all for the kind comments (and, no, I won't ever be doing Erlang, whatever that is, not after what I saw yesterday).
- jacquesm 17y ago
  I don't think you should take what happened yesterday as reflecting on Erlang in one way or another, that was a very limited number of users behaving in a childish way. But you are reinforcing a point I made elsewhere already, that tricks like that actually hurt the Erlang community. I don't know much about Erlang myself but it seems a nice enough technology.
- pageman 17y ago
  I hope you reconsider and stay!

jws 17y ago

I hope he isn't leaving to pursue a new career as an Erlang programmer.

pageman 17y ago
+1 for me making me chuckle hahaha

jacquesm 17y ago

You'll be missed George, you're like NYC on /. only (much) less abrasive. There was some pretty good stuff in your postings, I know I learned from them. I hope to see you back here some day! this one should probably be in your bookmarks: http://www.grellas.com/faq_business_startup_010.html http://www.grellas.com/faq_business_startup_010.html

timwiseman 17y ago

It shall certainly be a shame to have you contribute less. I found your comments to be insightful and useful personally. Also, while I personally think that having this site mostly focused on more technical matters is nice, I do think there is room for nontechnical contributors in general.