[fknorangesite]

> As I type this, every top-level comment here is a criticism or a nitpick.

This is maybe going to sound snarky, but honestly I really am being serious: at this point, what else do you expect from this website? HN has a well-earned reputation of being a bunch of kneejerk-critics and naysayers.

[maxbond]

Personally, I do expect this behavior, but I also call it out, because I don't accept this behavior.

For better or worse HN is my community. Its given me so much over the years, even as it's infuriated me much of the time. As I recognize patterns of dysfunction I highlight them, so that the community can understand & overcome them.

And I do think I see incremental progress. Not to say I caused that progress, I have no idea what if any role I played from my modest soap box (I suspect very little), but I think there's every reason to hope for the better.

[nixpulvis]

Not all critique is knee-jerk just because it comes quickly.

[CydeWeys]

Good point. I can rattle off criticisms of an idea instantly if it happens to touch my little corner of the industry I've been working in for over eight years. It's rare at this point that I ever encounter a novel idea that I haven't already given thought to.

[tjstankus]

I hear you and I agree. The HN vibe is nitpicky, for sure. I was a little surprised the comments here were 100% negative (or not positive, to be fair). I usually wouldn't bother reading all the comments, but I care about Ruby, so I was a little more irked by the negativity than usual. :)

[joshspankit]

The core of that reputation is because people on HN want the best and many of them know that expecting the best can be an effective way of getting it.

Yes, there are critics who are not ‘in the arena’, but for the rest I see a lot of care (AKA taste as defined in Ira Glass’ words on “The Gap”) put in to the comments.

[maxbond]

I'm sure there is a lot of care, but I also see a lot of people abusing the concept of care in order to troll.

I have had/seen this conversation over and over again on HN:

Commenter: This topic sucks, I wish people would stop posting it to HN.

Me: I understand this topic isn't interesting to you. Why don't you ignore it and click on something else?

Commenter: I care so deeply for this community, I hate to see this topic reduce it's SNR.

Does the commenter care about HN? Presumably. Does that make their complaint legitimate? No. They're bothered by how a subset of people on the site want to discuss some topic, and they're manufacturing a reason that sounds better than, "I don't want to see it."

But no one is entitled to have articles that are to their taste posted to HN. Sometimes this is expressed more like, "this isn't appropriate for the HN audience." But the audience of an HN post isn't what anyone imagines HN looks like, it's the subset of HN members who find that post in particular to be interesting and worthy of discussion.

[nixpulvis]

Have you ever been in a room with someone trying to change the subject you are deep in thought about? Two things happen: A) you don't notice, and B) they might start trying to find new tactics if they are still willing to engage at all.

I speak from a good deal of experience with this. Active listening was a good crutch for me in a lot of ways, but it works very poorly with people more and more often these days (especially online) and by the time you reach texting and forum posting, you basically just have to read walls of text before you can respond.

I hate to say it but sometimes I just need to interrupt you! Same goes the other way. Please, PLEASE, chime in with some reverb or retaliation. (Hell, maybe one day I'll earn a slap on the back ;)

Then you have the next problem. It spirals... like a positive feedback loop. You find yourself in a thrilling conversation/argument with someone only to have completely alienated the rest of the room. Now what? Is anyone else even paying attention? Would they have liked to, but you both just flew past them and dove straight into your threads?

I think this stuff is insanely hard in the real world sometimes, and only harder online. I like HN partially just because I feel like a lot of people here kinda get that.

P.S. I'm also the kind of person who types really long emails, then spends a while trying to edit them down. Sometimes I just don't have the energy. Sorry for the hypocrisy.

[maxbond]

Are you telling me I long-windedly went on a tangent?

I'm open to this criticism I'm just not entirely sure I'm correctly interpreting you. (It certainly wouldn't be the first time I was told I was unclear or long-winded.)

I don't mean to speak out of turn, but just to offer you information, your experience really reminds me of how friends have described ADHD to me. I'm just putting that out there in case it's useful, make as much or as little of it as you care to.

[nevans-rb]

> your experience really reminds me of how friends have described ADHD to me

I can't speak to how often this happens for people without ADHD, but it is a very common trait for those with ADHD (and describes me rather well on most days).

For what it's worth, my interpretation was that they were criticizing you so much as elaborating/describing/explaining a different perspective on the same phenomenon you described (or at least, a similar phenomenon)... and then that turned into its own tangent. of a tangent of a tangent.

So, bringing these tangents all the way back to the OP: ADHD is hard, communication is hard--especially with people. Communication patterns are context sensitive. Toxic communities are easy, toxic communication patterns are easy, and establishing constructive communication patterns for a broad community of people is hard. Ruby's community tends to be mostly nice, although it's a lot less popular and energetic than it was 12 years ago. Ruby itself is marvelous--haters be damned--even when there's a little truth in the criticism. I think that its positive impact on the industry as a whole is hard to measure (almost every commonly used web framework before Rails, Rails, almost every commonly used web framework before Rails; and the languages like Rust and Elixir are hugely influenced by the idioms, ergonomics, and aesthetics of Ruby, IMO). And adding Data in ruby 3.2 is a great little building block and will probably replace 90% of my Struct usage. And I've been wondering if I should backport it, wait for all of my projects to hit 3.2+--I'm hoping there will be a good implementation in the "backports" gem soon--or just use one of the gems that will create an adapter layer over it (I'm sure one or more of the dry-* gems will be built on it, and I'm using them in a few places anyway).

So, I was going to type a six word reply ("yeah, this is a common ADHD trait.") and this accidentally got blurted out. So yeah. ADHD. ;)

[nevans-rb]

crucial edit: s/my interpretation was that they were criticizing you so much as/my interpretation was that they weren't criticizing you so much as/

[joshspankit]

I never said it was perfect, but care as it’s expressed in the world never is. There is always a vocal majority who cut down and even a vocal minority who actively work to ruin what is good, but care is like the sun: no matter what it’s always out there helping things grow.

[sidlls]

This is a very polite and optimistic way of putting it. Having been in this industry for 15+ years now, I have a more jaundiced view.

[code_biologist]

I'm about 15ish years in and I have a jaundiced view of the jaundiced view. I've learned a lot of "the right way" things from HN that are genuinely better. True shop knowledge from people "in the arena" with expertise building and running the kind of systems I build and run. There are a lot of pricks though, to be sure.

[debaserab2]

I have definitely learned a lot too but it’s rarely from the knee-jerk first responses on tech posts.

[synu]

That can be true, though it can also be a sort of cheap way to sound smart in a group of smart people.