Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mikeash 4407 days ago
This would seem to imply that mantis369 is representative of "the HN community" but jeorgun is not, which seems like an odd distinction.
1 comments

> This would seem to imply that mantis369 is representative of "the HN community" but jeorgun is not, which seems like an odd distinction.

I thought it was evident that I wasn't basing my assessment on a sample size of two comments on one thread...

You shouldn't read an opinion about a characteristic of "the HN community" as applying to "every single person who comments on HN", but rather to "HN in general, as expressed through comments and votes on those comments, across hundreds or thousands of different threads, has historically showed this trait".

Surely you understand why I went with the much more concise "the HN community", given that it's IME almost universally understood to refer to be equivalent to the above longer definition.

Well yes, but then the same kind of thing applies to my post. A few people express this attitude, in general, but they're rapidly countered by others.