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https://twitter.com/whitequark/status/1175767033360740352 https://twitter.com/whitequark/status/1175767033360740352

tambourine_man 7y ago
I’ve seen this hatred towards HN before on Twitter and I don’t really get it. HN is one of the most polite places on the internet, including Twitter.
- lightedman 7y ago
  Being a massive control freak over how people express themselves is anything BUT polite. That is why HN gets its well-deserved reputation.
- losteric 7y ago
  HN has a lot of smart people. People don't like being fact checked, especially when they believe they discovered something significant until experts show it was a basic misunderstanding.
  - angry_octet 7y ago
    This is the cannonical example of why HN gets it wrong. You really are not an expert in 99.99% of the topics on HN, so having this kind of holier than thou attitude is just really obnoxious.
    - losteric 7y ago
      And this is the canonical example of why Twitter gets it wrong :) I'm not talking about myself. Never even remotely implied it. HN is filled with the 0.1% that truly are experts on individual topics. You'll find people that wrote papers on quantum mechanics chiming in on QM discussions, people with decades of RF HW experience correcting those 5Ghz conspiracies, start-up founders jumping in on discussions, and (in this case) people that can read spec sheets and understand how systems like these are built and programmed. No one's an expert on much, but plenty are experts on something. Twitter's often too shallow to even entertain the possibility of being wrong.
- Osiris 7y ago
  Having made (what I thought were polite) comments on Reddit only to get down-voted into oblivion, I agree that HN has one of the most thoughtful and respectful communities I've participated in.
  - 0xcde4c3db 7y ago
    In my experience, it's pretty easy to misjudge the expected overall level and style of politeness in a given social space. Many people were raised with the idea of politeness being a safe default, but in some spaces being too polite can come off as aloof or condescending.
- compuguy 7y ago
  There have been a number of HN threads that have become quite, er, hostile or toxic in the past. The most recent example of this would the comment thread for this article: "Richard M. Stallman resigns" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990583)
tptacek 7y ago
It's good to remember that things end up on HN because random people post them here, not because their original authors want them here. HN is not, as a rule, good at keeping this in mind, and tends to treat anything that lands on HN as if it was part of a discussion they are (1) a part of and (2) welcome to participate directly in. I think it's in fact super healthy for people to set clear boundaries about how they engage with this place, and "this Twitter thread was not posted as a solicitation for an HN thread, or for HN people to jump onto my TL" is a very sane boundary indeed. That people read this kind of boundary drawing as "hatred" is itself a good illustration of the issue!

I’ve seen this hatred towards HN before on Twitter and I don’t really get it. HN is one of the most polite places on the internet, including Twitter.

lightedman 7y ago
Being a massive control freak over how people express themselves is anything BUT polite. That is why HN gets its well-deserved reputation.
losteric 7y ago
HN has a lot of smart people. People don't like being fact checked, especially when they believe they discovered something significant until experts show it was a basic misunderstanding.
- angry_octet 7y ago
  This is the cannonical example of why HN gets it wrong. You really are not an expert in 99.99% of the topics on HN, so having this kind of holier than thou attitude is just really obnoxious.
  - losteric 7y ago
    And this is the canonical example of why Twitter gets it wrong :) I'm not talking about myself. Never even remotely implied it. HN is filled with the 0.1% that truly are experts on individual topics. You'll find people that wrote papers on quantum mechanics chiming in on QM discussions, people with decades of RF HW experience correcting those 5Ghz conspiracies, start-up founders jumping in on discussions, and (in this case) people that can read spec sheets and understand how systems like these are built and programmed. No one's an expert on much, but plenty are experts on something. Twitter's often too shallow to even entertain the possibility of being wrong.
Osiris 7y ago
Having made (what I thought were polite) comments on Reddit only to get down-voted into oblivion, I agree that HN has one of the most thoughtful and respectful communities I've participated in.
- 0xcde4c3db 7y ago
  In my experience, it's pretty easy to misjudge the expected overall level and style of politeness in a given social space. Many people were raised with the idea of politeness being a safe default, but in some spaces being too polite can come off as aloof or condescending.
compuguy 7y ago
There have been a number of HN threads that have become quite, er, hostile or toxic in the past. The most recent example of this would the comment thread for this article: "Richard M. Stallman resigns" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20990583)

tptacek 7y ago

It's good to remember that things end up on HN because random people post them here, not because their original authors want them here. HN is not, as a rule, good at keeping this in mind, and tends to treat anything that lands on HN as if it was part of a discussion they are (1) a part of and (2) welcome to participate directly in. I think it's in fact super healthy for people to set clear boundaries about how they engage with this place, and "this Twitter thread was not posted as a solicitation for an HN thread, or for HN people to jump onto my TL" is a very sane boundary indeed. That people read this kind of boundary drawing as "hatred" is itself a good illustration of the issue!