| my impression right of the bat with "Let's see now" and onward was that you were being harshly critical. I was being harshly critical of calling the man at work and naming him. I also wrote: The article spends pages talking about _why and the author’s relationship with _why’s work. Great. It spends a page talking about _why’s desire for anonymity and reclusive nature. Good. It talks about _why’s “infosuicide” and notes that it happened shortly after he was “outed.” Fine. I mentioned the things I liked and said so. What you don’t seem to like is the lack of “balance,” as if given that I spent a few paragraphs talking about the stuff I didn’t like, I should spend ten or twenty paragraphs about the stuff I liked. But my feelings about the things that I liked were just that I liked them. You have stronger feelings about the things that you liked, so you write your comment in accordance with your feelings. I am not writing a book review for the NYT, and neither are you, that’s the beauty of the forum. I am obliged to be polite, to avoid name calling and other poisonous behaviour, but I am also obliged to—as the saying goes—sit down at the keyboard and open a vein. |
It also caused some to actually not read the article, and that's what drew me out. Annie's work here deserved a better first impression from the HN community, and I think anyone who has an interest in _why would benefit from reading it. The anonymity thing was a sidebar at best.