7 ms·

Your claim that your product will not be discontinued is worthless. If you're so sure of that, put your money where your mouth is, and offer an SLA with a cont

by gwillen 12y ago

Your claim that your product will not be discontinued is worthless. If you're so sure of that, put your money where your mouth is, and offer an SLA with a contractual minimum duration you promise to keep the service up, and significant monetary penalties if you fail to meet it. Doesn't sound like a good idea? Then shut up.

kenster07 12y ago
I find the angry tone of this message to be misplaced and unnecessary.
- thejosh 12y ago
  Not really. If someone claims that their service will not be discontinued, unless they can offer some sort of agreement then it's worthless. Not like they can't shutdown their company irrespective of any promises.
  - pfraze 12y ago
    How about building it to be self-hosted and releasing under the AGPL license?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- wldcordeiro 12y ago
  Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory in action. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19 http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19
  - Dylan16807 12y ago
    Disagree. It's harsh to make a point that there is no evidence they're telling the truth, not to be edgy or get attention. It would be better without the 'shut up' but a bit of an 'angry' tone is fitting. Really, I'm more uncomfortable with a link to a webcomic joke as an argument point...
    - pessimizer 12y ago
      It's not even an argument point, but just being used as a way to call someone a name without owning it.
      - wldcordeiro 12y ago
        No it isn't. If I want to call the poster a fuckwad, I'll call him one. The only reason I linked the comic is because it may not be common knowledge to everyone where the 'theory' is from.
        Throwaway618 12y ago
        You disingenuous bastard: "Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory in action" You seriously don't think you called him a fuckwad?
        wldcordeiro 12y ago
        That's the name of the 'theory' while it does imply that they're a 'fuckwad' (whatever that may be) it's not my chosen word to call them, I'm just citing it. But go ahead and defend the unnecessary rudeness and hide behind your throwaway account. I'll make it clear: The OP of the comment is being an asshole/fuckwad/douchebag/<insert word conveying sentiment here> by being needlessly rude due to the anonymity provided by having an online pseudonym.
        Throwaway618 12y ago
        Well, you've managed some consistency, then. You are just as rude as the activity you're calling out. That's all I'm trying to say.
        throwaway7714 12y ago
        Well, you've managed some consistency, then. You are just as rude as the activity you're calling out. That's all I'm trying to say.
- extesy 12y ago
  I also disagree with the tone but I understand the reason. They will gladly shut the service down once someone offers them enough money in aqui-hire.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - grinich 12y ago
    They will gladly shut the service down once someone offers them enough money in aqui-hire. It's a bummer this is the status quo with startups. To me, it's the most disappointing thing about the tech world. I actually interviewed at other companies first, and only cofounded Inbox when I couldn't find anywhere else to solve this problem. Probably the only convincing thing I can say is that if you wanted to build a company to flip quickly, an email infrastructure startup is certainly the most painful, masochistic way you could go about it. We spent the better part of last year reading RFCs and fixing tons of obscure bugs to get this far.
    - nawitus 12y ago
      But if you don't plan to be acquired, why not sign a contract in that effect?
mgkimsal 12y ago
" and will not be ‘discontinued’ unexpectedly." 'unexpectedly' is the key. Giving people 3-6 months of runway to say "we're shutting down on day X" is still living up to that statement.
- aroman 12y ago
  That's not much of a feature, it's more like a common courtesy. Call me entitled, but I would expect that to be the case even without them explicitly saying so.
grinich 12y ago
(Michael from Inbox here.) Ouch. We're just a few hackers trying to fix broken developer tools. Any claim is just a claim, for sure. We know that it's a long road to earn trust of other developers. One of the (many) reasons we made the sync engine open source was so that developers could run it on their own metal without trusting us. Transparency is really important to us. This is just the beta announcement of our API. I'd love to hear any comments you have on what guaranteed level of support+performance you would need for a hosted product. We're working on a hosted version now (so you don't have to run it yourself), and developer happiness is the #1 priority.
- nawitus 12y ago
  But if you believe in the claim, why not sign a contract that brings some validity to the claim?
  - cookiecaper 12y ago
    Agreed. Those kind of binding agreements are the only way you can guarantee that something won't change immediately upon acquisition, and an interested party may still buy your company if you have such agreements. They may just have to wait a while to shut you down if that is indeed their plan. However, I don't really know if that's a better alternative than just shutting down upon acquisition, lest a false sense of security be provided to the users.
  - bduerst 12y ago
    That makes sense - even if Inbox goes back on their word, there can be grandfathered-in users who have a contractual obligation from Inbox and whoever acquires/resells it. Makes the existing user base much less valuable to possible buyers though :)
  - girvo 12y ago
    They've release the code. That's contract enough for me.
- GuiA 12y ago
  > Ouch. We're just a few hackers trying to fix broken developer tools. And we (gwillen and anyone who agrees with his comment, myself included) are just a few hackers who are tired of having the rug pulled under their feet when $CORP inevitably comes with the big bucks and all claims made by the founders in the early days of the company mysteriously disappear from the homepage. Talk is cheap.
pc 12y ago
> Doesn't sound like a good idea? Then shut up. Your comment is needlessly mean-spirited. The top-voted comment on the recent Show HN thread would seem to apply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7984826 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7984826
- Throwaway618 12y ago
  It's a fair and honest criticism that has produced interesting conversation. You're being mean-spirited as well, but you think you're exempt. Shove off.
  - Throwaway618 12y ago
    Heh, HN doesn't report individual comment scores accurately; my account is at -9 now but this comment stays at -4. It's funny to imagine anything like Reddit's (?|?) controversy here.
- pessimizer 12y ago
  >Instead of "you're doing it wrong", suggest alternatives.
- cookiecaper 12y ago
  I don't think it has to be read as especially malicious. He's trying to make a point with pointed language, but it doesn't necessarily imply ill-will.
  - dang 12y ago
    Such nuances are lost in an anonymous internet forum. It doesn't have to be read that way (what does?) but that doesn't matter—look at the effect it has had.
    - throwaway7714 12y ago
      Moderation systems fail when they don't accept that toxicity is a human norm, pretending instead that human toxicity is an enemy to be defeated. Why is it so wrong to criticize a bad idea? To do so bluntly? The "effect that it had" was an honest conversation. Ultimately I find HN's policies an embarrassment and a symptom of dishonesty. Way I see it, you were brought on to make moderation more transparent, and you're doing well, but you weren't actually given powers to attack HN's main problem, which I'd define as a discomfort with disagreement. And maybe that's a human problem. But we live in a very negative time. Outright hatred is a part of life, and tools of hatred (downvoting, shadowbanning) are hypocritically applied to shut hatred down. But it doesn't shut it down, and it shouldn't. To say "You shouldn't feel this way" is fair game when applied as an argument between people. What you say when you banish shit is "You shouldn't exist," and that's an unsustainable mindset. You can see the logs. You can probably see that I'm a serial offender when it comes to pissing people off here. I've got yet another account on your bad list because you think you can control discomfort. But you don't have a modicum of transparency or honesty in your line of work, dang: there's nothing you can point to that explains why my downvoted comments are both at -4 as some minimum, but the css makes them different shades of grey. That's really trivial shit to care about, but that's my point: you're not taking care of trivial explanation of policy. You're an improvement, but that doesn't mean you're done.
MichaelApproved 12y ago
> with a contractual minimum duration you promise to keep the service up, and significant monetary penalties if you fail to meet it. Take it down a few notches, you're solution will likely not work. This is the company's only product. If the product gets discontinued, the company is likely broke. The "significant monetary penalties" is unenforceable because the company will not have any money to fulfill the SLA penalty.
- andrewfong 12y ago
  It's a good hedge against an acquisition though. Presumably you could structure the SLA such that any acquirer would be on the hook.
- smacktoward 12y ago
  >If the product gets discontinued, the company is likely broke Or has just been acquired, which I think is more what the parent was getting at. >The "significant monetary penalties" is unenforceable because the company will not have any money to fulfill the SLA penalty. The acquirer would, though!
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- jacalata 12y ago
  He obviously doesn't think it's normal. He thinks they are making abnormal claims ("we will remain available") and therefore should be prepared to make guarantees beyond normal in order for anyone to take them seriously. Sounds reasonable to me, if you think it is unreasonable, can you explain why?
cracell 12y ago
I'd love to see companies whose charters legally make them impossible to acquire. No idea how this would work in practice or if you could actually make it enforceable under US law. But I'm so sick of startups just being R&D for corporations and screwing over their userbase once they get acquired. Or even worse is companies that only get off of the ground because of user support via kickstarter or similar fund raising platforms and then get acquired. Of course it would be much harder for those companies to raise funds but there's always bootstrapping. It'd be a big win for the consumers of the product and if marketed correctly (something like "Non-Acquirable LLC"), it could become a good way for a startup to show that they put their users first.
- pjc50 12y ago
  Mutuals. I was involved in setting one up at university (http://www.srcf.ucam.org/ http://www.srcf.ucam.org/) and it's still running long past the time I had anything to do with it. I believe it's a good model for "community" internet services, by definition run in the interests of the users. It's not impossible for one to sell out, but it requires the members (customers) to vote for it. In the case of the UK building societies, by bribing them with the capital reserves that were turned out to be essential to keeping the mortgage system running.
  - _puk 12y ago
    And the building societies that didn't sell out have since become the safe harbours in times of uncertainty i.e. Nationwide. You'd hope there'd be a lesson in there somewhere - short term gain versus long term stability.
- dublinben 12y ago
  A worker-owned cooperative would be seemingly impossible to "acquire" since it is wholly owned, and operated, by those working in the organization. If the corporate charter does not allow outside shareholders, that would prevent the most common forms of acquisition.
- bengali3 12y ago
  I'm guessing a limit on possible exits would be a red flag for investors who are looking for a return. Having clauses with each investor that let you purchase back your shares from them at predetermined times and rates (returns would need to be healthy for them) limits their upside, but lets you buy back control whenever. - assuming you can afford it for public companies in the US, also see "Poison pill": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_rights_plan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_rights_plan http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/06/30/dealpolitik-poison-pill-showdown-at-american-apparel/ http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/06/30/dealpolitik-poison...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
izolate 12y ago
If it's any consolation, if I were to post something to HN, I'd appreciate this kind of brutal honesty above everything else. But I suspect I'm in the minority.
- mkal_tsr 12y ago
  Yup. And let's not forget, that's usually for Show HN, whereas this is a full-on company release/announcement ... not the typical "check out what I made over the week/weekend" where there are bound to be more flaws by virtue of short development time.
dang 12y ago
> Doesn't sound like a good idea? Then shut up. Please don't be aggressive like this on Hacker News. It violates the guidelines and degrades the discourse. That sentence has no information in it—it's just rude—so the comment would be better without it.
- npizzolato 12y ago
  Sorry, but I have to disagree. The sentence only has no information in it I'd you choose to blindly look at the words in a vacuum. But if you think about what he said, what he meant, the tone has a ton of information, the most obvious is a drop frustration of the empty promises and frequent shut downs that is all too common in recent startups. I think the comment created worthwhile conversation. And I'm not sure it would be better off without it. Obviously you can disagree, and given your position perhaps my opinion doesn't really matter, but to say it has no information is just being dishonest, and I say that in the nicest way possible.
  - dang 12y ago
    > I think the comment created worthwhile conversation. I see two conversations here. One is about users feeling betrayed by acquisitions and whether that could be mitigated contractually. That conversation didn't require abusiveness to be created. The other conversation is about who is being a fuckwad, and hardly counts as "worthwhile". Unfortunately, it is what such rudeness leads to, and it only gets worse. Keep in mind that we're not talking about rudeness in general. We're talking about its effect on the already precarious balance of a particular optionally-anonymous internet forum. The argument here isn't ethical so much as empirical.
    - Helianthus 12y ago
      > That conversation didn't require abusiveness to be created. How can you say that with any certainty? The only real example you have of this kind of conversation happened right here; which is to say, you have pretty strong evidence that the conversation did require abusiveness to be created. You as a moderator are making value judgments on what should be discussed; you're not clearly specifying rules of engagement in general, and in this topic you've proven you couldn't enforce them even if you had them written down. You know what referring to the conversation about who's the fuckwad does? It validates me, because I was one that made a point of being part of that conversation. It tells me that that conversation was, in fact, worthwhile: because it got your attention. And now I'm posting with (what's essentially) my HN main, a shadowbanned account, because I'm pretty sure that you'll still see it. With the topic dying, with your post only a few hours old, I'm basically given a free private message to you. (You can also definitely track down who I really am now, but that doesn't really frighten me.) So I can say: we're not really on a different page on the "already precarious balance" here. Despite my hatred for this community, I still care about it. (That's practically what hatred means!) What I'm sure we disagree about is perhaps what's encapsulated by this topic. The two conversations you see are actually intimately connected, though perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they inform each other. I think the Valley has a serious problem with positivity. You can't be negative in the networking world, and what that leads to is a culture where legitimate negative criticism is shut down. And that's where I fought today, and where you fought; the balance is that the negative criticism won the day. Which is why I say that your moderation is ultimately powerless. I'm still here, writing to you. Even if for some programmatic reason you never read this, even if you've made an effort to not hear specific voices, I still exist. And even outside my participation, the point was abusively made, because those forces make their point regardless of this chatter, and it might just be true that damage is the only real way of understanding and coming to terms with change. If talking about who is a fuckwad isn't worthwhile, why does so much of your moderation involve finding fuckwads and terminating their participation? This is a good conversation, solely because it happened. Because I can drag you into it no matter how elitist you're acting. (And I don't really think you're nearly as elitist as pg was; you've gone good clarifying work on title renaming, but you inherited a stupidly tough position.) In fact, I suspect I'm writing this just to tell you how screwed you are.

by gwillen 12y ago

kenster07 12y ago

I find the angry tone of this message to be misplaced and unnecessary.

thejosh 12y ago
Not really. If someone claims that their service will not be discontinued, unless they can offer some sort of agreement then it's worthless. Not like they can't shutdown their company irrespective of any promises.
- pfraze 12y ago
  How about building it to be self-hosted and releasing under the AGPL license?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
wldcordeiro 12y ago
Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory in action. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19 http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19
- Dylan16807 12y ago
  Disagree. It's harsh to make a point that there is no evidence they're telling the truth, not to be edgy or get attention. It would be better without the 'shut up' but a bit of an 'angry' tone is fitting. Really, I'm more uncomfortable with a link to a webcomic joke as an argument point...
  - pessimizer 12y ago
    It's not even an argument point, but just being used as a way to call someone a name without owning it.
    - wldcordeiro 12y ago
      No it isn't. If I want to call the poster a fuckwad, I'll call him one. The only reason I linked the comic is because it may not be common knowledge to everyone where the 'theory' is from.
      - Throwaway618 12y ago
        You disingenuous bastard: "Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory in action" You seriously don't think you called him a fuckwad?
        wldcordeiro 12y ago
        That's the name of the 'theory' while it does imply that they're a 'fuckwad' (whatever that may be) it's not my chosen word to call them, I'm just citing it. But go ahead and defend the unnecessary rudeness and hide behind your throwaway account. I'll make it clear: The OP of the comment is being an asshole/fuckwad/douchebag/<insert word conveying sentiment here> by being needlessly rude due to the anonymity provided by having an online pseudonym.
        Throwaway618 12y ago
        Well, you've managed some consistency, then. You are just as rude as the activity you're calling out. That's all I'm trying to say.
        throwaway7714 12y ago
        Well, you've managed some consistency, then. You are just as rude as the activity you're calling out. That's all I'm trying to say.
extesy 12y ago
I also disagree with the tone but I understand the reason. They will gladly shut the service down once someone offers them enough money in aqui-hire.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- grinich 12y ago
  They will gladly shut the service down once someone offers them enough money in aqui-hire. It's a bummer this is the status quo with startups. To me, it's the most disappointing thing about the tech world. I actually interviewed at other companies first, and only cofounded Inbox when I couldn't find anywhere else to solve this problem. Probably the only convincing thing I can say is that if you wanted to build a company to flip quickly, an email infrastructure startup is certainly the most painful, masochistic way you could go about it. We spent the better part of last year reading RFCs and fixing tons of obscure bugs to get this far.
  - nawitus 12y ago
    But if you don't plan to be acquired, why not sign a contract in that effect?

mgkimsal 12y ago

" and will not be ‘discontinued’ unexpectedly." 'unexpectedly' is the key. Giving people 3-6 months of runway to say "we're shutting down on day X" is still living up to that statement.

aroman 12y ago
That's not much of a feature, it's more like a common courtesy. Call me entitled, but I would expect that to be the case even without them explicitly saying so.

grinich 12y ago

(Michael from Inbox here.) Ouch. We're just a few hackers trying to fix broken developer tools. Any claim is just a claim, for sure. We know that it's a long road to earn trust of other developers. One of the (many) reasons we made the sync engine open source was so that developers could run it on their own metal without trusting us. Transparency is really important to us. This is just the beta announcement of our API. I'd love to hear any comments you have on what guaranteed level of support+performance you would need for a hosted product. We're working on a hosted version now (so you don't have to run it yourself), and developer happiness is the #1 priority.

nawitus 12y ago
But if you believe in the claim, why not sign a contract that brings some validity to the claim?
- cookiecaper 12y ago
  Agreed. Those kind of binding agreements are the only way you can guarantee that something won't change immediately upon acquisition, and an interested party may still buy your company if you have such agreements. They may just have to wait a while to shut you down if that is indeed their plan. However, I don't really know if that's a better alternative than just shutting down upon acquisition, lest a false sense of security be provided to the users.
- bduerst 12y ago
  That makes sense - even if Inbox goes back on their word, there can be grandfathered-in users who have a contractual obligation from Inbox and whoever acquires/resells it. Makes the existing user base much less valuable to possible buyers though :)
- girvo 12y ago
  They've release the code. That's contract enough for me.
GuiA 12y ago
> Ouch. We're just a few hackers trying to fix broken developer tools. And we (gwillen and anyone who agrees with his comment, myself included) are just a few hackers who are tired of having the rug pulled under their feet when $CORP inevitably comes with the big bucks and all claims made by the founders in the early days of the company mysteriously disappear from the homepage. Talk is cheap.

pc 12y ago

> Doesn't sound like a good idea? Then shut up. Your comment is needlessly mean-spirited. The top-voted comment on the recent Show HN thread would seem to apply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7984826 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7984826

Throwaway618 12y ago
It's a fair and honest criticism that has produced interesting conversation. You're being mean-spirited as well, but you think you're exempt. Shove off.
- Throwaway618 12y ago
  Heh, HN doesn't report individual comment scores accurately; my account is at -9 now but this comment stays at -4. It's funny to imagine anything like Reddit's (?|?) controversy here.
pessimizer 12y ago
>Instead of "you're doing it wrong", suggest alternatives.
cookiecaper 12y ago
I don't think it has to be read as especially malicious. He's trying to make a point with pointed language, but it doesn't necessarily imply ill-will.
- dang 12y ago
  Such nuances are lost in an anonymous internet forum. It doesn't have to be read that way (what does?) but that doesn't matter—look at the effect it has had.
  - throwaway7714 12y ago
    Moderation systems fail when they don't accept that toxicity is a human norm, pretending instead that human toxicity is an enemy to be defeated. Why is it so wrong to criticize a bad idea? To do so bluntly? The "effect that it had" was an honest conversation. Ultimately I find HN's policies an embarrassment and a symptom of dishonesty. Way I see it, you were brought on to make moderation more transparent, and you're doing well, but you weren't actually given powers to attack HN's main problem, which I'd define as a discomfort with disagreement. And maybe that's a human problem. But we live in a very negative time. Outright hatred is a part of life, and tools of hatred (downvoting, shadowbanning) are hypocritically applied to shut hatred down. But it doesn't shut it down, and it shouldn't. To say "You shouldn't feel this way" is fair game when applied as an argument between people. What you say when you banish shit is "You shouldn't exist," and that's an unsustainable mindset. You can see the logs. You can probably see that I'm a serial offender when it comes to pissing people off here. I've got yet another account on your bad list because you think you can control discomfort. But you don't have a modicum of transparency or honesty in your line of work, dang: there's nothing you can point to that explains why my downvoted comments are both at -4 as some minimum, but the css makes them different shades of grey. That's really trivial shit to care about, but that's my point: you're not taking care of trivial explanation of policy. You're an improvement, but that doesn't mean you're done.

MichaelApproved 12y ago

> with a contractual minimum duration you promise to keep the service up, and significant monetary penalties if you fail to meet it. Take it down a few notches, you're solution will likely not work. This is the company's only product. If the product gets discontinued, the company is likely broke. The "significant monetary penalties" is unenforceable because the company will not have any money to fulfill the SLA penalty.

andrewfong 12y ago
It's a good hedge against an acquisition though. Presumably you could structure the SLA such that any acquirer would be on the hook.
smacktoward 12y ago
>If the product gets discontinued, the company is likely broke Or has just been acquired, which I think is more what the parent was getting at. >The "significant monetary penalties" is unenforceable because the company will not have any money to fulfill the SLA penalty. The acquirer would, though!

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

jacalata 12y ago
He obviously doesn't think it's normal. He thinks they are making abnormal claims ("we will remain available") and therefore should be prepared to make guarantees beyond normal in order for anyone to take them seriously. Sounds reasonable to me, if you think it is unreasonable, can you explain why?

cracell 12y ago

I'd love to see companies whose charters legally make them impossible to acquire. No idea how this would work in practice or if you could actually make it enforceable under US law. But I'm so sick of startups just being R&D for corporations and screwing over their userbase once they get acquired. Or even worse is companies that only get off of the ground because of user support via kickstarter or similar fund raising platforms and then get acquired. Of course it would be much harder for those companies to raise funds but there's always bootstrapping. It'd be a big win for the consumers of the product and if marketed correctly (something like "Non-Acquirable LLC"), it could become a good way for a startup to show that they put their users first.

pjc50 12y ago
Mutuals. I was involved in setting one up at university (http://www.srcf.ucam.org/ http://www.srcf.ucam.org/) and it's still running long past the time I had anything to do with it. I believe it's a good model for "community" internet services, by definition run in the interests of the users. It's not impossible for one to sell out, but it requires the members (customers) to vote for it. In the case of the UK building societies, by bribing them with the capital reserves that were turned out to be essential to keeping the mortgage system running.
- _puk 12y ago
  And the building societies that didn't sell out have since become the safe harbours in times of uncertainty i.e. Nationwide. You'd hope there'd be a lesson in there somewhere - short term gain versus long term stability.
dublinben 12y ago
A worker-owned cooperative would be seemingly impossible to "acquire" since it is wholly owned, and operated, by those working in the organization. If the corporate charter does not allow outside shareholders, that would prevent the most common forms of acquisition.
bengali3 12y ago
I'm guessing a limit on possible exits would be a red flag for investors who are looking for a return. Having clauses with each investor that let you purchase back your shares from them at predetermined times and rates (returns would need to be healthy for them) limits their upside, but lets you buy back control whenever. - assuming you can afford it for public companies in the US, also see "Poison pill": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_rights_plan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_rights_plan http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/06/30/dealpolitik-poison-pill-showdown-at-american-apparel/ http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/06/30/dealpolitik-poison...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

izolate 12y ago

If it's any consolation, if I were to post something to HN, I'd appreciate this kind of brutal honesty above everything else. But I suspect I'm in the minority.

mkal_tsr 12y ago
Yup. And let's not forget, that's usually for Show HN, whereas this is a full-on company release/announcement ... not the typical "check out what I made over the week/weekend" where there are bound to be more flaws by virtue of short development time.

dang 12y ago

> Doesn't sound like a good idea? Then shut up. Please don't be aggressive like this on Hacker News. It violates the guidelines and degrades the discourse. That sentence has no information in it—it's just rude—so the comment would be better without it.

npizzolato 12y ago
Sorry, but I have to disagree. The sentence only has no information in it I'd you choose to blindly look at the words in a vacuum. But if you think about what he said, what he meant, the tone has a ton of information, the most obvious is a drop frustration of the empty promises and frequent shut downs that is all too common in recent startups. I think the comment created worthwhile conversation. And I'm not sure it would be better off without it. Obviously you can disagree, and given your position perhaps my opinion doesn't really matter, but to say it has no information is just being dishonest, and I say that in the nicest way possible.
- dang 12y ago
  > I think the comment created worthwhile conversation. I see two conversations here. One is about users feeling betrayed by acquisitions and whether that could be mitigated contractually. That conversation didn't require abusiveness to be created. The other conversation is about who is being a fuckwad, and hardly counts as "worthwhile". Unfortunately, it is what such rudeness leads to, and it only gets worse. Keep in mind that we're not talking about rudeness in general. We're talking about its effect on the already precarious balance of a particular optionally-anonymous internet forum. The argument here isn't ethical so much as empirical.
  - Helianthus 12y ago
    > That conversation didn't require abusiveness to be created. How can you say that with any certainty? The only real example you have of this kind of conversation happened right here; which is to say, you have pretty strong evidence that the conversation did require abusiveness to be created. You as a moderator are making value judgments on what should be discussed; you're not clearly specifying rules of engagement in general, and in this topic you've proven you couldn't enforce them even if you had them written down. You know what referring to the conversation about who's the fuckwad does? It validates me, because I was one that made a point of being part of that conversation. It tells me that that conversation was, in fact, worthwhile: because it got your attention. And now I'm posting with (what's essentially) my HN main, a shadowbanned account, because I'm pretty sure that you'll still see it. With the topic dying, with your post only a few hours old, I'm basically given a free private message to you. (You can also definitely track down who I really am now, but that doesn't really frighten me.) So I can say: we're not really on a different page on the "already precarious balance" here. Despite my hatred for this community, I still care about it. (That's practically what hatred means!) What I'm sure we disagree about is perhaps what's encapsulated by this topic. The two conversations you see are actually intimately connected, though perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they inform each other. I think the Valley has a serious problem with positivity. You can't be negative in the networking world, and what that leads to is a culture where legitimate negative criticism is shut down. And that's where I fought today, and where you fought; the balance is that the negative criticism won the day. Which is why I say that your moderation is ultimately powerless. I'm still here, writing to you. Even if for some programmatic reason you never read this, even if you've made an effort to not hear specific voices, I still exist. And even outside my participation, the point was abusively made, because those forces make their point regardless of this chatter, and it might just be true that damage is the only real way of understanding and coming to terms with change. If talking about who is a fuckwad isn't worthwhile, why does so much of your moderation involve finding fuckwads and terminating their participation? This is a good conversation, solely because it happened. Because I can drag you into it no matter how elitist you're acting. (And I don't really think you're nearly as elitist as pg was; you've gone good clarifying work on title renaming, but you inherited a stupidly tough position.) In fact, I suspect I'm writing this just to tell you how screwed you are.