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by runjake 4959 days ago
He said "experiment", not "toy". Spin it however you want, but nobody's forcing you to be here.
1 comments

He did say experiment but that implies that PG wishes to manipulate the site in order to observe outcomes - when you manipulate something without due regard to the possible detriments it is known as "toying with" that thing. Ergo I asked the question as to whether PG's goal was merely to observe the community and manipulate it with no regard for the community itself or if it was perhaps something more lofty.

From what I've seen I think the community has grown organically out of the noble work of Ycombinator and that largely the tool of HN has been a relatively passive element in that growth. PG appears indifferent to HN as a tool - neither wanting to experiment with it, develop it, improve it, nor disregard it.

>nobody's forcing you to be here //

Nice.

Do you feel passive-aggressiveness is the way to build a valuable community?

It was not spin it was enquiry with an attempt to dig in to the nature of calinet6's statement: calinet6's response makes it apparent that the important feature of the statement was not the choice of the word "experiment" but instead the apostrophe-s, ie that HN belongs to PG. I feel that by asking the question in the way I did that I shortcut to this result.

[Aside: in general, would you say my presence as part of this community is to it's detriment?]