[archivist1]

not everything needs to be judged by how well it "makes sense at first glance", not everything needed be on message all the time....

some things take (demand) time to be appreciated and known (if not understood)

a good relationship, a work of art... maybe even content

not everything is optimized for quick consumption

[rfrey]

From your flagged comment, you're interpreting the downvotes as some sort of reactionary resistance to your free thinking rebellion against conformity.

In reality I think it was because you gave a hostile, pompous response to an honest question about the motivation of TLA. The actual point you made is not controversial at all, in fact it's quite self evident, banal even.

[archivist1]

I think it is a free-thinking rebellion against a certain type of conformity. I think that's a good thing, something that should be welcomed.

You don't know what's honest, hostile or pompous, only your interpretation. Pretend that's the truth? Don't impose that.

It's even harder through text when you don't have tone of voice, body language, other context. So you should be careful before leaping to accuse a hostile intent, don't you think?

Why should my comment be any less valid than the question. I don't think the question was bad at all. Don't judge stuff like that.

Your misinterpreting hostile intent should be a violation of the HN guidelines. That's not responding to the strongest version of what I said, that's misrepresenting to a straw man so you can hate on it. It's not my problem if you need to hate on something. That pal has nothing to do with me, so don't make it about me, huh?

Pretty clear I would think.

Also, "controversial" and "banal" depends on who you are, and context. When you put it like that...inspires me to think people maybe don't like having something obvious, but off-message pointed out to them? They want an answer, don't tell them to expand their mind.

But...teach people how to fish, not feed them, right?

[stevehawk]

I'm so confused as to why this is being downvoted.

[dang]

Perhaps because it broke this guideline: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's true—and a great thing to point out—that not everything on HN needs to explain itself right away, but in this case the lack of charity to the commenter trumped the expression of charity to the OP. And following up with dyspeptic community-bashing is definitely not a win.

[archivist1]

There's no lack of charity. I would know, I wrote it. And the downvotes occurred before the community critique. Which also must have hit a nerve.

I think meta-questioning "do you even need to ask other's what this is about, why not let it work on you first" is responding to the strongest version of what was said, much stronger than simply answering the question.

People misinterpret dissent of the line for hostility, more so with something unfamiliar, where they want even more to have an answer "what is it". It's not very intellectually humble, but it is hilarious.

Interpreting hostility in my response ought to violate guidelines as well. Why should I be punished for others mistaken interpretations of hostility?

I think it's more about them reacting to their own misinterpretation.

I think it's a consequence of HN self-optimizes for people to be able to efficiently not just learn content from an article, but efficiently form an opinion from the comments. It's not so easy to form an opinion when there's multiple valid strands. I think people are projecting their expectation to not be confused.

"Don't tell me to expand my mind, just tell me what to think." It's not my problem if people get uncomfortable forming their own opinions sometimes. I think it's a good thing to have your own interpretation of Kicks Condor. That doesn't hurt anyone...but it might take you a bit of time/effort/discomfort to form it.

I guess I'm OK to do things that way because I grew up going to a lot of art galleries. Comfortable with ambiguity in some things. I think it's funny how engineers need everything to be explicit, and how that's connected to programming needing that as well. I think they could laugh at that about themselves, rather than getting seriously grumpy and hating on me...but hey, that's them, not me.