> Being kind is fundamentally about taking responsibility for your impact on the people around you.
Totally agree, especially in regard to when people share their projects on HN. The HN community moderation always seemed to be based on a very superficial rules - don't swear, don't mention banned keywords X Y or Z. Never have they seemed to seriously consider the impact that words have on other people, instead of just the words themselves.
> The HN community moderation always seemed to be based on a very superficial rules - don't swear, don't mention banned keywords X Y or Z. Never have they seemed to seriously consider the impact that words have on other people
Of course there's no rule against swearing.
This whole description is so remote from everything we try to do that I'm at a loss to know what else to say.
Certain very strong community norms have formed here, whether you realize it, or whether it was intentional or not. Sorry, I meant "rule" just as something that is somehow enforced, empirically. Probably "rule" is completely the wrong word, as empirical actions can often be the opposite of the written rules.
I'm talking relative, you're showing absolute. Oh, I see I edited that out of my previous comment.
Previously, I said to try an experiment using multiple accounts where you post comments with a swear word and slightly censored swearing, versus just posting uncensored swearing and nothing else different. You'll quickly see the relative difference in the community's reaction.
I fucking swear all the time here and don't give a shit how often I do it.
You'll only get voted down for it when the swearing makes it harder to read your comment, or conveys an emotional urgency unwarranted by the thread. For instance: "Fuck you" is unlikely to be well-received in any thread.
Agreed. I will never share anything I make with HN for this reason.
We all know the last 20% (polish) takes 80% of the work, and isn't the fun stuff. Yet that's generally what gets criticized when someone shares a link.
For any of my hobby projects, it's about making a POC or rickety MVP. I want to build things and learn quickly, not doing the last 20% schlub work that eats at my time to learn something else. Because of that, and what I've seen of the reception to other hobby projects, I have determined that HN is not an appropriate forum for me to share projects with.
Ignore 80% of the feedback (about the lack of polish) and pay attention to the 20% of 'useful' feedback. :)
I'm 100% guilty of criticizing the lack of polish on some things that get posted. Often times because I am not familiar enough to criticize more important details that may not be apparent to the average observer.
For example - I might have to comb through an entire project in a programming language I'm not familiar with to perhaps give feedback on a better algorithm they could have used for X to improve performance... Or I could criticize that their search feature is entirely broken and always results in an empty results page.
The latter is easier to find and a casual user might run into it, although it might be a pain for the programmer to fix on the front end. The former will likely have less notice for the casual user, but is more beneficial for the programmer.
This is my take on why you see a lot of criticism about the lack of polish compared to other aspects or details.
Totally agree, especially in regard to when people share their projects on HN. The HN community moderation always seemed to be based on a very superficial rules - don't swear, don't mention banned keywords X Y or Z. Never have they seemed to seriously consider the impact that words have on other people, instead of just the words themselves.