[mapreduce]

> If ever you make a mistake, never, ever write it up.

Sure you can write it up! But post it to maybe, Reddit?

The HN audience expects certain standard of quality and insight in the article if the article is on the front page.

Here the community has voted that this article does not meet the bar. I can't speak for others but for me this article is too obvious and uninteresting.

Instead of complaining about something that didn't happen here (nobody said the OP was stupid), maybe learn from the community feedback and refrain from posting articles that don't meet the community expectations?

[ColinWright]

> The HN audience expects certain standard of quality and insight in the article if the article is on the front page.

It was on the front page ... it hit the top spot. Various people in the community clearly did think it met the bar.

> ... nobody said the OP was stupid ...

Reading between the lines, several people effectively said exactly that.

I know, I'm in "Old man yells at cloud" territory here, but I was kinda hoping people would find a more positive way of interpreting the situation, rather than "Can't the author just RTFM?!?" types of responses.

My agèd and fading memory of what HN was like when I first joined suggests that people used to be more interested in being constructive and learning from other people's mistakes, even the mistakes that, when they didn't make them, seemed obvious in retrospect. Perhaps especially those ones.

Since this didn't meet your bar, since it's all too obvious for you, I guess there's very little for you to learn. I'm sorry you (and others) felt you had to dump on it, instead of leaving it for people who can still learn from things as "obvious" as this. After all, the votes that got it to the front page show that not everyone knows as much as you do.

[mapreduce]

> It was on the front page ... it hit the top spot. Various people in the community clearly did think it met the bar.

It was on the front page. It hit the top spot. Then it got flagged. Many people in the community clearly did think it was clickbait and did not meet the bar!

[ColinWright]

Yeah, as I say, people are a lot less tolerant now about people sharing simple mistakes they make than they were when I first started posting here. People used to grimace in sympathy, acknowledge that they've also made simple mistakes, and move on.

Now things like that get flagged, even though there's clearly a sizeable proportion of people who do still find it useful[0].

The demographics have changed[1].

So I'll remember, on your advice, that if ever I write up any simple mistakes I make, I won't post them here.

[0] FWIW, I think flags required to kill something is far fewer than votes required to get to the front page. So even if a vast majority of people think something is interesting, a far smaller collection of people can get it killed.

[1] Or my memory is faulty. I've been here 15 years now ... maybe it was always like this.