[patio11]

If there's one social norm I'd love for HN, it would be "If you build things, we're on your side." (I hope that the normative intent of this is clear enough to not require 2 paragraphs of inoculations against nitpickery. On second thought, if there were two social norms I'd like for HN, that plus "Default to not nitpicking.")

[tptacek]

Strongest possible agree.

If there's one thing my gut says has changed for the worse since I joined, it's the cant away from supporting people who build things to tearing them down.

I asked in a "how do we improve HN comments" thread awhile back if Paul Graham could just add this to the guidelines, but it got drowned out by all the nerdy feature requests and didn't get much discussion.

[tedsanders]

That's a great idea. (I wish people on the internet were more supportive and less antagonistic in general. It's a tendency we should all be aware of.)

[wikwocket]

But we are hackers; it's our intrinsic pedantry and relentless drive to improve that got us where we are today! Of course you're right that this leads to nitpicking and one-upmanship in comment threads.

On the bright side, looking to the quality comments here is a great way to learn constructive criticism (as well as learn about a variety of other topics too).