That’s going to take a while to process for me. Have tried to be an active user since 2014 and whenever I have something of value, it’s already been expressed better by someone else.
Marc Twain had a technique to create text of value.
If you hear some news, notice your immediate reaction. Everyone thinks the same thing, so dump that thought in the litter. Same for your second immediate reaction. The third or fourth reaction are maybe different enough to merit writing down.
I almost didn't reply to this to say, "This is the same for me as well," because, well, it's the same! Someone already expressed, in better phrasing, what I would otherwise say.
But given the subject matter, I feel a reply is in order.
I don't think ive ever read a reply to one of my comments. I use Materialistic for Android and it doesn't really provide all the controls the desktop does. Particularly, I cannot edit comments, and I have no inbox or way to see replies to my comments. I remember when I realized that was even a thing when browsing on the desktop once, I had all these thoughtful and interesting replies and rebuttals but in the end it just gave me anxiety. So I just don't worry about it anymore, I comment what I think without the need to see if someone wants to debate, it's very freeing as I only comment rarely and on things which i feel strongly about.
Maybe im missing out on being schooled on all my 'infantile, toxic' opinions but I like it better this was. Reddit, has a much stronger echo chamber as there's no way to not see constantly delayed prominently, blinking and screaming for your attention, that someone replied to you. Likely a mob here to attack your self worth just for the sake of hurting your feelings, usually provoked by any opinion that's even slightly outside/opposed to the subreddit-approved thought patterns. It trains you to be afraid to challenge the status quo (there are many people who seem to use reddit only to attack). I know HN is better than that but I cannot help feeling some anxiety after a couple specific comments from which I futilely attempted to defend myself with reason and caring conversation.
Get in the habit of submitting interesting articles you read! It takes 15 seconds and adds a lot to the community to take a handful of shots at a submission each month.
Well, it wasn't so slow for me, but it did feel slow.
What I found most disappointing is that while I am here most for software development topics I got my karma on economic, political, geographic, Europe vs. US etc. topics.
It is a bit to me too yes, I don't make the rules! I can make sense of it though: 0 is neutral, as expected; comments start at 1, because everybody votes for their own comment; 1 point of comment score doesn't move user karma, because increasing karma just by commenting is undesirable.
While counterintuitive it does make sense. IMO psychological perception of difference between score 0 and 1 is far greater than difference between 1 and nigher scores.
Yeah your 1 score of post / comment doesn't give your karma, but it's still show your contribution as valuable.
Upvotes are what contribute to karma, not comment scores. A comment with a score of 1 hasn't received any upvotes (okay, maybe an equal number of upvotes and downvotes).
Counterintuitive for normal mortals. Maybe not for hackers who have learned that the first element is indexed by 0. Doesn't work in fully equivalent way. But hackers use more than languages and concepts are often somewhat different between them. It's been a long time I wrote FORTRAN IV :)
Don’t worry too much. Go find an Apple thread and post about CSAM or proprietary walled gardens, find any random CVE thread and post about how “heads must roll” or some shit, go find a meta thread and post about how repetitive the comments can be.
Maybe not as impressive since it's a number, but I got mine in 2021. HN names aren't terribly competitive, it seems. Maybe it's due to the more mature culture here.
Yours does not include an English dictionary word or name though (unless sh counts, but that's shorter and less common than 'max'), but yeah 5-char words being available, I'm also not too surprised by.
What I've done on reddit for throwaways is use 123123 as password so they can be reused. Not a one has gotten 'hacked' yet over months of use, I'm quite surprised tbh. Maybe I should publish the password on the relevant accounts once I decide to stop using them. Ideally there'd be a time factor before it changes hands to avoid confusion and editing old posts, but I would probably forget (hence the dummy password strategy).
And 36^5 is even a bit bigger. (Numbers are allowed. Think that's it though - case is recorded, but I don't think you can sign up Dheera, because dheera exists.)
Eh. I’ve found that a reasoned argument works better than a rant.
When I send a story out for beta reading, I go through and fix all the major spelling and grammar mistakes first. I shouldn’t need to, but people get hung up on the spelling and don’t see the story.
It’s the same with rants. People see the anger and frustration and miss the argument being presented.
You can argue people should look past the emotion and consider the logic. I’d agree. And I do my best to do that myself. But the reality is many people won’t. I choose to be pragmatic and rewrite any rant more carefully so I’m heard. Or I delete it because it doesn’t add meaningfully to the conservation.
Also, some controversial topics are the result of irreconcilable beliefs. See any discussion of Apple. In those threads, people talk about things they value and other people don’t value those things. There are arguments and rants that don’t go anywhere as a result.
As a result of this observation, I approach communication deliberately. If I think a rant will be heard, I’ll let myself rant. If I don’t, I take time to think why I disagree and figure out how to phrase it in less aggressive language.
There are people who really dislike this approach for a variety of reasons. I enjoy talking to them because I don’t have to do this song and dance number.
TL;DR read the room and speak in a way you’ll be understood. :)
> When I send a story out for beta reading, I go through and fix all the major spelling and grammar mistakes first. I shouldn’t need to, but people get hung up on the spelling and don’t see the story.
One good rule of thumb: people will respond to the weakest part of your argument. So instead of making it as long as possible, and addressing several unrelated points in an attempt to preempt all objections, it's best to cut out everything but the core of your message. The question I always ask myself whenever commenting here is, "is my comment strong enough?". If it isn't, I delete my comment. If there are weak parts, I prune them. It's better to leave an incomplete but strong comment, than a comment which tries to be complete but has several weak pieces.
You’ll get there one day. I’ve kind of enjoyed the idea that downvoting is limited to a few, meaning someone that is greyed out must have said something very wrong or worthless. I’m guessing that gate keeping polls also means that they’re more of an event than low rent submission spam.
Grayed out, to me, about as often means that someone expressed an opinion, and others disagreed with that opinion. Or they tried to joke and it fell flat.
¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
You're downvoted here because others disagree that someone that is greyed out must have said something very wrong or worthless, but that's not a very wrong or worthless opinion. Only naive, perhaps.
I try to use downvotes rarely, and only for "egregiously contravened community guidelines" not "expressed opinion I strongly disagree with"
Keep participating! Downvotes (and flags) are not generally a big deal if your overall contribution is positive
I want to upvote this just to keep it out of gray (since I do think it adds to the conversation), but this being grayed out is just hilarious on a meta level.
And not greyed out anymore right after upvoting and responding.
The downvoting system is indeed pretty witty, in that few people can downvote, but a lot more can undo the downvotes. I can't downvote myself yet, but I do check downvoted comments and when I feel that it got downvoted by personal bias, I simply undo it.
And usually don't follow up on what happens next, so whether it gets downvoted again or not I wouldn't know. But then I don't care that much, in most cases.