[sssilver]

I figure there's value in sharing why one would not want to use something that's being shared/offered here.

Hacker News is a discussion platform. People submit ideas with the expectation that the community would find them interesting enough to discuss them.

When someone submits an idea of text-only content publishing, is it not perfectly reasonable to discuss one's thoughts on that idea, whatever they happen to be? And if those thoughts didn't resonate or apply, would lack of upvotes not conveniently push these thoughts to the bottom of the page where most never reach?

If I was an author of such a platform/idea/product, these are exactly the kind of responses I'd be most interested in reading. Not the feel-good high-fives, but the "what did I miss that others find important"s.

[richardw]

I think it’s turned into the place to submit work when you want as much harsh feedback as possible. You can get upvotes but need to run the gauntlet of “why isn’t it open source/here’s a better app/this is dumb” etc. Top comments are often pretty caustic, so that’s the culture we’ve built. I guess if you want to sharpen your offering really fast, this is optimal.

“Any system that forces humans to express themselves purely in ASCII, monospace, and monochrome is crude and borderline disrespectful towards human expression.”

What is the outcome you’re hoping for, by giving that feedback? Should we kill the authors now or just shun them until they give us pictures?

Edit: every single system makes choices. You either try please everyone or you choose a set of people to focus on. This one isn’t for you, and that’s ok. It may fail and that’s ok too. I don’t think it’s disrespectful to human expression, if anything it’s a form of human expression.