
Posting to HN is like exposing yourself to the eye of Mordor - dsowers
I see great projects here on HN every day, but we are a species which loves cynicism. The comment threads can be especially hard on authors.<p>To all the creators out there, I salute you.
======
jasonkester
There are a lot of people who don't understand what this place is for. Hacker
News is a cocktail party. It's a bunch of smart people getting together and
shooting the breeze about whatever we see on the front page. If you understand
that, you'll fit in fine.

Lots of new users here don't understand that.

If you spend any time on the internet, you're quickly trained that discussion
forums are places for combat. The goal is to look as smart as possible while
tearing everybody else down. To have an unrefuted comment is to win, and
nobody is going to let you do that so they'll tear your comment apart line by
line. Naturally, that person is a moron and needs to be told so, preferably by
turning his own trick against him and tearing _his_ comment apart. Stop me if
this sounds familiar.

That explains why the hardened slashdot veteran gets such a strange reception
here. Have you ever been at a party where there was a guy who just didn't
belong there? The belligerent know-it-all butting into conversations? The
drunk guy in a room full of sober people? The uninvited casual racist? We've
all seen what happens. People drift away from him wherever he goes, sometimes
stranding some poor soul talking to him, but generally trying as best as
possible to continue the party as normal and hoping he doesn't disrupt it
further. Nobody wants to confront him and ask him to leave directly, but they
all sure hope he'd get the hint on his own.

That's where we are here today. Except it's a big room and there are quite a
few uninvited intruders behaving badly. You'll notice that that guy at the
party often doesn't realize that he's out of place. Look through this very
thread and you'll spot a few of him, justifying their belligerent behavior and
complaining that the rest of us don't get it because this is The Internet and
that's how we're supposed to behave.

But we don't behave that way. That's why it's so good here.

~~~
kybernetyk
A cocktail party is filled with smalltalk. I don't want that for HN. I wan't
in depth discussion where I can learn something.

Removing all contrary points of view from a discussion makes it one-sided and
turns it into smalltalk.

As hackers we should have an open mind and accept that there are opinions
contrary to ours. We should embrace this fact and not stamp everyone who
doesn't agree with our views as an 'intruder'.

~~~
philbo
Straw man.

At no point does the parent advocate for smalltalk on HN or stamping out
contrary opinion en bloc. The point is purely about behaviour, respect and
being considerate of others.

~~~
Chris2048
That's like saying:

"I only claimed that 5 = 2 + 2, I never said anything about it being 4!"

Isn't that the conclusion to draw from HN being described as a cocktail party?

------
jaysonelliot
In my experience so far, posting to HN is more like carving my name on a tree
in a mostly uninhabited forest.

My various attempts to post an Ask or Show HN have mostly gone unnoticed. I
think it would be great if there were a place that Ask / Show / Tell / etc.
posts could get more traction in general.

~~~
zachwill
Have you checked out this section? <https://news.ycombinator.com/ask>

I normally never visit it, but it is available.

~~~
yen223
"I normally never visit it"

Therein lies the problem :) It doesn't matter if the parent visits it, if _no
one else_ does.

~~~
nostrademons
Then exploit this market inefficiency for yourself and fix that.

I try to make it a point to visit the /newest page, and find that I have
disproportionate influence on the content of Hacker News as a result. At slow
times, it only takes about 3-4 votes in quick succession for a story to crack
the top 30 on the front page. If a story is sitting on /newest with 3 votes,
you can be the one that starts a voting cascade that brings it to the top. And
as an added bonus, if you add an insightful comment, you can rake in hundreds
of karma points as your comment is the first thing that thousands of readers
see.

~~~
nutanc
I would say, now would be a good time to post something, as a lot of people
would have checked out /newest after reading your comment :)

------
noonespecial
_In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a
position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment.
We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the
bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the
average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism
designating it so._

Just watching a feel-good cartoon flick with the kids (Ratatouille) and
there's this little gem at the end. I'd like to meet the guy who wrote that
in. It sums it all up right there.

~~~
nocman
Ugh.

Ratatouille was the first Pixar movie I saw that was an utter disappointment
(no, I haven't seen them all, but I've seen a fair number of them). It was so
far from "feel-good" cartoon flick for me. Much more "I'll never get that two
hours of my life back" movie. Not sure how close to two hours it actually was,
but it felt like about 10 hours.

Not sure what they were smoking when they made that one. I realize that tastes
in movies vary widely, but I still find it hard to believe that people
actually _like_ that movie.

To each his own, I guess.

~~~
austengary
I can't tell if you're being ironic or the spirit of this thread flew right
over your head.

------
gfodor
Unless you are building something for hackers, HN feedback is generally just
noise. You might be able to get some legit usability feedback. But for the
most part, you're just going to get a bunch of people fixating on one or two
likely irrelevant issues (like what programming language you used, what
database, if you are integrated with Facebook/Twitter/Instagram, your choice
of font color.) There is a tendency for HN commenters to spout opinions that
can be readily rejected with real data, I'm surprised more authors do not
present their work with a list of common criticisms and data to counteract
them.

Really, the best thing you can get from HN is probably refining your skill at
being able to separate useful criticism from non-useful. And a thick skin and
confidence in your idea and execution, which is a pre-requisite for being able
to digest constructive criticism and perceive who are just being Comic Book
Guy haters.

------
danso
I think we're all in agreeance that trollish snark ("Great, Facebook for
[insert subgroup]", "This sucks", etc.) is not helpful (and is almost always
downvoted, or at least I'll downvote)

But what about: "Why do I have to login to Facebook to see this?", "There are
too many typos for this to be taken seriously?", "The font/colors are really
hard to read", "It's broken in Firefox", "Facebook tried this in 2009 and they
had [such and such] kinds of problems, what are you doing differently?"

I dunno...Maybe people have different expectations when doing a "Show HN?" If
you've worked hard on something, of course you should be encouraged ...but if
you're pitching it as a viable startup idea...then you, IMO, _shouldn't_ just
want "atta boy/girl" comments...constructive criticism now could save you a
lot of pain later on.

~~~
pyre
I'd say there are probably quite a few people that post to Show HN just for
peer validation. Sure the constructive criticism is helpful to improve the
project, but comments like:

    
    
      Change the colors, my eyes are bleeding.
    

Or:

    
    
      Ugh, another Bootstrap site?
    

could be worded in a more positive fashion while still delivering the same
content. Even examples like:

    
    
      Doesn't work in Firefox
    

aren't useful, because there's no mention of the Firefox version and/or the
operating system.

------
readme
I salute the cynics.

There's nothing worse than throwing good at a bad idea only to one day realize
you've wasted your time, money, and effort.

If one cynical comment is enough to derail your ambitions, you shouldn't be
doing a startup.

~~~
sjtgraham
The problem is that the very vocal snarky minority heap shit on absolutely
anything and everything.

~~~
GhotiFish
got some candidates that fit that description? It's easy to tell yourself that
the only reason someone's objecting, is because they object to everything.

~~~
yen223
I have one. Me, 5 years ago :)

The fact is, building something is _hard_. Criticizing something is _easy_.
There's no special skill involved in picking apart somebody's project, making
a big deal out of what is otherwise a minor flaw, and using that to dismiss
that guy's work. That was a great way to make myself feel better about the
fact that someone else built something, _and I didn't._

------
zalew
A lot of people recently try to enforce some back-patting culture. It's not
what drives progress. Deal with it, you're not in pre-school anymore and
nobody will give you a medal for participation. If you're unable to handle
criticism and take out some value from people's opinions, you'll have a hard
time in technology and in business.

~~~
sillysaurus
_Deal with it, you're not in pre-school anymore and nobody will give you a
medal for participation. If you're unable to handle criticism and take out
some value from people's opinions, you'll have a hard time in technology and
in business._

The problem is that people such as yourself make the world a worse place to
live in and to experience. There's more to life than technology and business.

~~~
zalew
this thread is about posting websites, not finding the meaning of life.

congratulations on accomplishing writing the comment, have a cookie.

~~~
sillysaurus
HN is a community. It's not about "posting websites" any more than a club is
about bbq's. And comments with aggressive overtones, such as yours, make the
community worse.

~~~
boot
LIFE IS GAME OF CHESS DAMN IT.

why am i so lonely.

------
beefsack
To be honest, this isn't the place to be posting projects if all you want is
for people to see what you're doing and you have a fragile ego. The feedback
from here is very valuable if you take it objectively.

I feel that if you want to have your ego stroked and have some exposure for
your project, the best place to post it would be somewhere like Reddit. If you
want to show some good minds in the field and get valuable advice, then post
it here.

------
theshadow
You are right. When I first joined HN reading comments was my favourite part.
I would be in awe of all these intelligent and insightful people, I would
often skip entire articles and read the comments first. Things have really
taken a major turn for worse in the last 6-8 months. Almost every single thing
posted gets picked apart to bits and not in a good way. It has gotten so bad
that I have actively started avoiding the comment section. My rule of thumb
these days is only read comments in threads below 20 posts as these low
comment threads are the ones with the highest chance of reading something
interesting rather than just typical tired criticism of the of the article. I
don't even consider threads with over 50 comments as these are almost always a
complete cesspool of negatively.

------
bichiliad
Personally, I'd rather have "the eye" than posting something and expecting
positive feedback. If I wanted that, I'd ask my mom what she thought. At least
here, I know that if I get positive feedback, I'm either doing a really good
job, or I'm just really good at riding a fad.

~~~
dquail
Hahah. classic. Let the comments slamming the guy that comments on negative HN
comments begin. I've had a few posts on the front page and have been lambasted
each time.

------
nitrogen
When to my surprise my creation made the front page of HN a couple years ago
(and Gizmodo, Crunchgear, Engadget, ...), the second most disappointing thing
was that there was _no_ criticism on HN. Has HN become so much more critical
since then?

The _first_ most disappointing thing was that I failed to capitalize on the
attention to the extent that I had hoped.

------
minimax
I was much more cynical about new technology products before I tried to build
and market one myself. That shit is hard, and most of the peanut gallery here
one HN has no idea what it takes.

------
jonathanjaeger
In general, I see a lot of cynicism on HN, but there's more positivity than
other sites and overall a super smart audience. For example, you have to wade
through a lot of crap to get a good YouTube comment on a high-trafficked
video. Here you don't have that problem. You'll get some quick-to-judge
comments but you'll also get great feedback (or at the very least, devils
advocate type feedback that's worth discussing). Everything: with a grain of
salt.

~~~
sjtgraham
The audience isn't as a whole super smart. Sure there are very smart people
that contribute to this community, but unfortunately they're outnumbered
significantly by a lot of poorly socialised idiots. One of the recent
watershed moments for me was when I think it was PG posted a poll on the user
ages, and there was a inordinate amount (obviously false) of very elderly
senior citizens using HN. I remember PG remarking upon it.

------
dylangs1030
I salute the creators as well.

As someone who goes out of his way to comment on every Show HN thread he sees,
I believe most users are _not_ cynical. I can see why most people could be
considered harsh; this is why I try to specifically say I'm being
constructive.

I think the best way to go about giving feedback is to start with the
negatives (the most glaring, preferably) and then end on a positive note with
what the developer is doing properly. This tells the creators that they're
doing good work and that they shouldn't abandon their babies (yet), they might
just need to tweak things here and there.

Conversely, tearing someone to pieces is mean and not productive, even if the
points are valid. There are arguments for this that generally go along the
lines of some Darwinian thinking where they shouldn't even be trying if they
can't take criticism - that's unrealistic and unfair to expect of people. We
all need to start somewhere. Help out fellow members.

Hacker News is not a trial by fire - nor is it meant to encourage a death
march. Those are two extremes. A comfortable middle ground where both
criticism and praise are given is optimum. And I find there is rarely a
submission so bad there's nothing good to be said about if at all.

------
joeblau
I got more views, comments, and backlash on Reddit than on HN for my project.
The HN community is analytical; they will always find a problem with your
solution--sometimes people will offer answers and that's where this community
shines.

------
cyanbane
I think the question you have to ask yourself when posting a project to HN is
are you ready to receive blunt and sometimes uncivilized responses to your
work(?). I think as long as you submit with that filter in full view that even
when your work is chided relentlessly for some already obvious gap you can
still sort through and determine legitimate criticisms. Say what you will
about HN and its strong convictions and shallow snide callouts, but there are
not a lot of avenues like it on the internet today for getting actionable
feedback.

------
ianstallings
IMHO you should try your best to ignore what people say unless it's
constructive to your work and life. Not everyone will love you and your work
and that's okay. Because this is serious business. Stand up for yourself and
learn to defend your work, your decisions, and your statements. If they are
just trying to get to you identify this and ignore them. But ultimately accept
that it's up to _you_ , not them, to change how it all plays out. I know that
is probably a tune you've heard before but it's true.

------
calhoun137
Yea i posted a project on here[1] and got completely ignored, i then posted
the same project on /r/gamedev and spent all weekend as the top post with a
steady steam of thank you so much this is awesome comments. I really would
like the validation of the HN community, but that seems super hard to achieve,
if not impossible. Doesnt mean im gonna give up, just gonna keep working hard
and hope to get a little lucky.

[1]<http://calhoun137.github.com/animator>

~~~
chmike
One should not consider HN votes as a process equivalent to a democratic
process where everyone expresses his opinion on the submission. Do not assume
lack of interest of HN readers to your submission if it doesn't get to the
front page.

To make it less unfair regarding valuable submission, check /news frequently
and upvote submission you consider of value.

------
tarr11
Do you have something to share? Cmon, we're not that bad. :)

~~~
dsowers
lol. I don't have something to share at the moment. I've felt "the eye" in the
past, however.

------
briholt
This is a reflection of humanity as a whole. No matter what you make, no
matter how great it is, everyone will try to tear it down and maintain the
status quo. It's human nature. The trick is to parse through the criticsm to
find what is legit (and make changes accordingly) and what is just complaining
and ignore it. Being able to judge feedback like this is an invaluable skill.

------
revorad
I've written up some tips on handling HN feedback on your apps -
[http://hrishimittal.com/post/45360001796/google-reader-
alter...](http://hrishimittal.com/post/45360001796/google-reader-alternatives)

Discuss here - <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5831504>

------
neverkn0wsb357
When I see posts like this, I get the sinking feeling that HN is going the
same way as reddit for 4chan /b/

------
Sealy
I agree with you, but the people on HN much nicer then on other forums.

Its hard when you've worked on something and then your post gets trolled to
death by a 12 yr old who has a strong opinion.

As much as I hate how direct they are, the comments are often true. I just
wished the criticisms were more constructive at times.

~~~
sillysaurus
_the people on HN much nicer then on other forums._

That's a common belief, but I've noticed that Reddit has recently been giving
higher-quality comments than HN. Take a look:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5745707>

vs

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1es4pf/soylent_t...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1es4pf/soylent_the_powdered_healthy_food_substitute_just/)

The Reddit comments are either positive, or they're skeptical in a way that
doesn't try to force their opinion on you. They say things like "Hey, I
noticed no one at Soylent seems to have a background in nutrition" rather than
"I beg you, don't fund these guys! What they're doing is inherently
dangerous." (The latter was actually a very common theme in the comments here
about Soylent.)

~~~
kybernetyk
Reddit != reddit. You are comparing a pretty small focussed subreddit to the
front page of HN. Actually there are a few subreddits I'm subscribed to where
I expect more insightful comments than on HN.

------
manish_lnmiit
I cant think of my day started without reading the HN posts, I am so addicted
to it because of the articles published here. its like precious to me. !!!!MY
PRECIOUS!!!

------
hardwaresofton
Other than this being the internet and developer-brain (read: I-could-have-
built-that syndrome), maybe people do it to make up for the fact that you
can't downvote

"fair and balanced"?

~~~
nilkn
You can downvote if you have at least 500 karma (recently learned this
myself).

~~~
pseut
Not submissions.

------
eli_gottlieb
Community, not species.

Ok, so I'm snarking a bit, but I always say that resorting to "human nature"
in conversation means you've given up on actually finding out.

------
weavie
I would rather someone tell me why they aren't going to use my project, no
matter how negative that just walk away and ignore it.

------
score
Two words: Rejection Therapy: <http://rejectiontherapy.com>

------
volkanvardar
Criticism, strengthens smart people; enrage idiots. -Napoleon Bonaparte

------
Sindrome
Welcome to the Internet. On here people act different because they are semi-
anonymous.

------
colemorrison
I SEE YOU.

AND USUALLY IT IS NOT GOOD.

(end quote)

~~~
colemorrison
Geezus I was joking to whoever downvoted me. "I SEE YOU" is what Sauron says
from "lord of the rings" and the "AND USUALLY IT IS NOT GOOD" was what the HN
Sauron would say thank you very much. Damn, I thought everyone had seen
LOTR...

~~~
sillysaurus
Heh, it's nothing personal. We downvote memes or quotes that don't also
contribute something unique. It's just quality control.

Truly hilarious jokes, on the other hand, are highly upvoted.

~~~
huhtenberg
Who are these "we" you are referring to?

------
Mordor
I see what you did there.

------
mcnemesis
There are times when I've taken it upon me to believe that if I post something
I've worked on to HN and it doesn't draw any attention (good or bad), that
what I'd assumed to be 'important' in the judgement of my 'peers' is actually
no. That way, I get myself simple, but effective feedback...

------
corresation
More navel gazing.

