[cubtastic71]

It's nice to see someone stand up and say whoa. I mean my first youtube post of an arduino project I did - someone had to explain my miss-pronucenation of a word and paid no attention to the project itself. User comment boxes are not always as helpful as it might seem.

[blhack]

This is exactly the problem, and this is exactly why a lot of nerds don't stand up and talk about what they're doing. They're under the impression that if they're not working at on of MIT's labs, then what they're doing is worthless.

This is absolutely not the case. Some of the things that I've most enjoyed doing recently were a the "automated reddit observation system" (http://thingist.com/t/item/2945/) and my "Jarvis" alarm clock (http://thingist.com/t/item/4329/).

These projects were both probably done "wrong". The way I'm parsing RSS on Jarvis is probably "wrong" and I was nervous about publishing the code because I thought people would call me out on it.

But who cares. These things are hella fun. As one person said "Build shit. Do shit. Write Shit. Fuck the Haters. Let them know by the trail of Original Content you leave behind."

[jokermatt999]

As someone who occasionally finds myself nitpicking things (mispronunciation, you're/your, etc), I don't do it out of malice. In fact, I often like and agree with what the person was saying, I was just bothered by that minor issue.

Just pointing out a nitpick by itself sounds harsh, though. Instead of just posting "It's 'you're' for the contraction of 'you are'. It's easier to remember if you think of it as just replacing the 'a' with and apostrophe.", I always try to add my positive thoughts as well, even if I feel they add very little. For example, 'Great post, I know exactly what you mean when you say some people are just overly critical for no reason. One thing, though...".

Obviously, this will still make me sound like a nitpicking asshole at times, so I try to avoid the the truly small corrections (you're/your, its/it's, grammar/mispellings in general). The key is to point out that you aren't dismissing or ignoring the rest of the work, and that the nitpicks you had were really the only part you disagreed with.

[smokeyj]

Most critiques by grammar Nazis add zero value to the conversation and distract from the topic at hand. Have a cookie, you payed attention in English class, now gtfo

[ignifero]

Bullies, anonymous smartasses. The internet brings out the teenager out of people of all ages, that's what makes it addictive and fun isn't it? It's not the real world, you are not forced to be a grey, conventional and kind person.

There's this trend to kill anonymity on the internet, blogs switching to facebook comments etc. There's a value to anonymity, it facilitates criticism and that's what scientific journals have been doing for decades. It's also known that eponymous product reviews tend to be 20% more positive. The world is cruel, the world is pretentious. Take your pick (or don't)

[pg]

I think what makes the Internet fun is that it makes it easier to learn new things.