This reply may seem clever and proper from the point of view of someone living in a Reddit culture, but it is rude and pointless in a Hacker News culture.
We do not place high stock in pointless pedantry or mundane memes. We focus on intelligent, meaningful discussion that centers around important points in submissions. Picking a tangential (and historical) analogy to attack does not further the discussion in any way. This entire thread is a massive waste of space.
Largely, I'm not going to disagree with you. I agree that we should look for truths and value in whatever is posted, and foster useful and constructive discussion.
However, you appear to have done that of which you accuse. There is merit in the comment you criticize, even though it is not fully or clearly expressed. Try to draw an intelligent and meaningful discussion from it ...
The point, perhaps, is that a bad analogy at the start of a piece is an example of bad writing. Good hackers need to write well, and the lesson to learn here is that good writing requires moving beyond the mundane cliche and finding analogies that are relevant, accurate, and true.
Yes, this thread got out of hand, and I probably should take much of the blame for that. The down-votes are telling me that people think it doesn't belong. I'll take my lumps. But to dismiss a comment like this as being content-free is to share the blame for not finding value.
The real mistake is the Reddit-like expression of the point, rather than attempting to highlight something positive. With that I agree.
Am I the only person that thought jerrya's original comment was quite well thought out and reasonable, and was only later put off the discussion by other people attacking him?
If criticisms such as jerrya's are the plague of Reddit, then surely "this is a bad HN comment" is the plague of HN. And yes, I realize I risk being self-referential here, but I really think this needs proper calling out.
I thought jerrya's original comment was reasonable until I got to, "citation-needed.jpg." I was actually "lucky" that he included that bit, making me question the relevance of his entire post.
It is not unintelligent or spammy comments that endanger the discourse at Hacker News. It is comments that seem to be saying something worthwhile that get upvoted and take up valuable real estate on the comment threads while being of almost no value that threaten to bring Hacker News too close to the multitude of other sites out there.
It used to be that the HN comment threads were multiple times better than the submissions themselves. I would have a very hard time arguing that today.
Someone is stuck in Reddit water.
This reply may seem clever and proper from the point of view of someone living in a Reddit culture, but it is rude and pointless in a Hacker News culture.
We do not place high stock in pointless pedantry or mundane memes. We focus on intelligent, meaningful discussion that centers around important points in submissions. Picking a tangential (and historical) analogy to attack does not further the discussion in any way. This entire thread is a massive waste of space.