
Hacker News comments I'm tired of seeing - lispython
http://www.righto.com/2013/09/9-hacker-news-comments-im-tired-of.html
======
jasonkester
My personal favorite is "The plural of anecdote is not data".

Correct. The plural of anecdote is _conversation_ , which is exactly the
reason we're here.

I think this one comes down to people misunderstanding the reason we're here
in the first place. If you start to notice that the discussion here resembles
the sort of conversation you'd have around the watercooler, that's probably
has to do with the fact that Hacker News is indeed the internet's watercooler.

Complaining that that seems to be the case and asking people to stop having
lively conversation is not really helping anybody. As much as some folks want
this to be the Royal Society for Correctly And Properly Dismissing The Ideas
Of Other People, it's not.

Good thing, too. That place wouldn't be any fun.

~~~
DanBC
It's immensely frustrating when someone is discussing a well conducted study
showing an interesting result to have another person say "This feels wrong. I
had $ANECDOTE, so maybe they researchers are missing
$CONCLUSION_FROM_ANECDOTE?", which has been covered in the study and in the HN
comments and is just a weird point anyway.

~~~
mbesto
Most of the conclusions I find in comments on HN, are rarely _conclusive_.
I've always struggled with comments that provide one data point (or better
yet, a generalization of data points) that the user declares a conclusion
from. I can't tell if I'm just being pessimistic when I detract these poorly
thought out conclusions or if they are genuinely good for the discussion.

~~~
skyebook
Because comments probably aren't the best place to talk about conclusive
anything: it's a discussion. If you've done the leg work to get something
solid it can at least get the discussion it deserves if submitted to HN.

------
zainny
One thing that really annoys me about HN is how damn contrarian everyone
always tries to be. Responses typically take the most absolute narrow and
unforgiving interpretation of any point you are trying to make and
subsequently use that to spin a counterpoint.

Drives me batty.

~~~
rdtsc
I see two reasons:

1) If people agree with the idea they'll probably just nod their head, or
upvote. If they disagree it is more likely they'll post something rather than
just downvote (people feel the need to explain perhaps why they downvoted)

2) Geeks feel the need to say something contrarian to show how smart they are.
It is a way to tell everyone they have a bigger intellectual penis than
everyone else.

~~~
jonahx
This seems about right, but I'd venture it's 80% 2) and 20% 1).

~~~
philangist
I have to disagree. I think it's 80% 1) and 20% 2)

------
raverbashing
HN sometimes looks like an Asperger's meetup.

I understand this is a place for serious debate and constructive criticism,
but sometimes it's more uptight than getting interviewed at a border control.

I visit and get value from it, but this article is spot on. Well, I still
think [citation needed] is relevant sometimes, in the case of a
legitimate/interesting (or maybe questionable) citation that would produce
more value with the citation. (But sometimes it goes like this "The sky is
blue"[citation needed])

~~~
pavlov
Yes, sometimes you want to see a source, but why would you use that phrasing?
The passive form doesn't feel like a conversation. Like the original poster
wrote, it comes across as passive-aggressive.

Imagine someone walking into a coffee shop and ordering coffee by saying:
"Coffee required" \-- while drawing imaginary square brackets around his head
with his fingers.

~~~
dredmorbius
It's a convenient and recognized request for more information.

It's pretty much the equivalent of "RSVP" on an invitation -- a shorthand
request that the person it's directed to take an action out of consideration.

Reading it as passive-aggressive strikes me as the attitude of someone who's
looking for a social slight. In my experience, that search is rarely
unsuccessful.

~~~
VLM
One way to interpret it as passive aggressive is if its merely an attempt to
steer the argument in the direction of the fallacy of appeal toward authority.
(abortion is wrong) (citation needed?) (my bible) (I'm not Christian) (holy
way begins)

Another way is just a psuedo-politeness. (... and applying ohms law aka power
= voltage / current ...) (citation needed?) (quick google search results in
...whoops)

It does make perfect sense for situations where the literature is lacking.
Yesterdays discussion of ultra minimal RISC architectures is a good example.
So, seriously, the linked to paper only has three references? And I've read
two and don't have access to the third? In the grand history of bored
programmers daydreaming about turing tarpits I'm somehow familiar with 2/3 of
all written articles yet never heard of the remaining 1/3 until yesterday?
Citation needed. There's got to be more academic articles than listed. Just
looking at the turing tarpit section along of various esolang sites...

~~~
dredmorbius
_(abortion is wrong) (citation needed?) (my bible) (I 'm not Christian) (holy
way begins)_

Perhaps for some. For me it's clear that I've encountered someone whose
worldview is fundamentally transrational and further discussion isn't
necessary.

My purpose isn't to _change the person 's mind_ but to _understand it._ And if
that understanding leads me to the conclusion that they're not worth wasting
time in discussion, so be it. What's frustrating is when someone drops some
vaguely provocative hint of something without giving a sense of what underlies
it. Knowing the source of the bullshit is helpful.

 _It does make perfect sense for situations where the literature is lacking._

Also for where the person posting has a specific instance or reference in mind
but cannot be assed to provide it. Again, my experience is that discussions
with such people tend to be pretty unproductive. I only wish H/N had the
ability present on, say, Reddit, to tag people as idiots. I've similarly
created "idiot", "troll", "denialist", and "libertardian" circles on G+ simply
to keep tabs of who's not worth engaging with (or noting to others that their
conversation will likely be unproductive).

------
anigbrowl
_[citation needed] - This isn 't Wikipedia, so skip the passive-aggressive
comments. If you think something's wrong, explain why._

The reason to post this is not so much thinking the comment is necessarily
wrong as that it makes an extraordinary or absolutist claim absent any
evidence, which if accepted as fact is going to change the shape of the whole
discussion...perhaps appropriately, but the onus is on the person making the
claim to support it.

 _A link to a logical fallacy, such as ad hominem or more pretentiously tu
quoque - this isn 't a debate team and you don't score points for this._

Considering the requests that if one thinks something is wrong, one should
explain why, I'd say that identifying errors in reasoning is quite
appropriate; though some of them are so frequent that I just downvote rather
than pointing them out yet again. Fallacies of composition are astonishingly
frequent, for example.

~~~
jessedhillon
Yes, but on the other hand, fallacious reasoning is rarely the source of
disagreement or controversy in a debate. At least in my experience. All you're
doing by saying "ad hominem" is shifting the focus to technical delivery of
the argument rather than focusing on the real matter of the discussion.

And most people forget that calling something an ad hominem attack does not
mean that it's wrong. Most things which get called ad hominem are usually not,
in fact -- saying "you are dumb and your arguments is wrong because of X, Y,
Z" is different than saying "your argument is wrong because you are dumb" (the
latter would be ad hominem, the former is merely an irrelevant statement)

~~~
ordinary
_All you 're doing by saying "ad hominem" is shifting the focus to technical
delivery of the argument rather than focusing on the real matter of the
discussion._

I'm not sure I agree. The use of ad hominem is the shift away from the
discussion proper. Calling ad hominem (or any logical fallacy) out is merely a
recognition of that shift, and could be considered a (weak?) attempt at
getting back on topic. When used correctly, that is.

------
moomin
Cliches like this are OK. What really annoys me is that the top rated comment
is invariably a straight-forward contradiction of the original article's
thesis. Like this comment here.

~~~
k__
Is there already a law for this?

I would love this to be called "Moomin's Law"

~~~
sker
I personally call it Pwnage Culture. Karma-based sites love it when a user
debunks an article or another user's comment.

You get extra points if you start your reply with a cold remark such as "No."
"Wrong." "False." And then you put some random citations to Pubmed or
Wikipedia at the bottom of your comment.

~~~
RivieraKid
"You get extra points if you start your reply with a cold remark such as "No."
"Wrong." "False."

Exactly, I automatically downvote comments like that.

~~~
lotsofcows
That'll teach them! It's fortunate that nerds are psychic.

It's ok, you can downvote this, I know it'll make you feel better about
yourself.

~~~
RivieraKid
Yes, it makes me feel better, that's the only reason I do it.

------
nekopa
This.

Just because these comments appear quite frequently it doesn't necessarily
mean that they are responsible for making your eyes tired, after all,
correlation is not causation. Maybe try to adjust the font on your browser or
use one of the popular HN chrome extension. Remember that HN is a free site
and if you're not paying for it, you're the product, so try to see how you can
improve your comments, thereby improving the product.

Even though Pg has a legal duty to maximize shareholder value for YC [citation
needed] changing how people comment would be premature optimization - why
don't we see how the site shakes out after a couple of years. Saying that this
is a place for discussion is at best a leaky abstraction, like Playboy
magazine, I come here predominately to read the articles. I feel that I
understand most of the technical articles posted here, even though some people
say I suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect I feel that is just a needless ad
hominem.

You can read more about this in a blog post I wrote:

Is the quality of HN discussion falling?

~~~
puzzlingcaptcha
Why didn't you write this reply in Haskell/Node.js/Go/Rust? I did a naive
implementation (since I am still kinda new to this) of your post in all those
languages and here are my benchmark results:

~~~
jacques_chester
Please make sure to follow up with a blog post about how you coped with being
on the front page of HN.

~~~
mindcrime
And somebody please make an unsolicited re-design of that blog post and submit
that to HN.

------
regularfry
The HN comment that really bores me is the one that totally denigrates the
project described in the link because it's "been done before", "won't work
because X" where X is a woolly hypothetical, "doesn't solve Y" where it's
blindingly obvious that Y is either incredibly hard or tangential to the
point, or "could simply be done with just A, B and C" where A, B and C are
some permutation of a raspberry pi, arduino, a kinect, some random combination
of open source libraries, emacs and a blender.

There is benefit in new approaches to old problems. Incomplete attempts are
still useful. Actually getting a project into a state that more than one
person can use it, even if that use is just "Here, read the code. It doesn't
work, but you might find it enlightening," is an effort worth respecting.

It's _extremely_ rare that these comments have any worthwhile content in them.
They seem to serve to point at the commenter's username and say "Aren't I
clever for spotting the problems with your project?" What effect is that
supposed to have past your own ego? You can't rewind the universe to a state
where the project didn't happen, so why not take 3 minutes instead of 2 and
find something positive to highlight rather than a negative to pick on?

~~~
InclinedPlane
To put an even finer point on it, one of the worst and most pervasive comments
is of this type:

 _" This is a cat, but I like dogs, why isn't this a dog?"_

Once you understand the type you start noticing it everywhere all the time.
Any time there is a creative work there will always be someone complaining
that it's not the thing they wanted created instead.

------
citricsquid
The biggest problem with Hacker News comments -- actually, make that all
comments -- is fundamental: the sort of people that leave comments are (more
often than not) people that want something, ANYTHING, to say, not people that
_have_ something to say.

~~~
Too
I think the karma system can also be a contributor to this. Any comment you
make has the chance to get a few upvotes, regardless of how little it
contributes to the conversation. So people just spam comments to get a few
points here and there.

This phenomena can be seen in forums without karma also but i think in places
with karma it is usually worse, worst offenders being digg and reddit where
everybody tries to make a silly joke as those are easy points.

A better algotithm calculating the karma as an average over all your comments
maybe could help..

~~~
hollerith
>A better algotithm calculating the karma as an average over all your comments
maybe could help

The metric I would most like to know is how many votes my comments got divided
by the total number of words in my comments.

~~~
jacques_chester
Wouldn't this favour the short smartarsery that's one of the not-done things
hereabouts?

~~~
polymatter
It would also favour the short and succinct over the long and rambling. Which
sounds like a good thing, if you believe that useful information can be
distilled losslessly.

~~~
jacques_chester
Pithy wisdom only really works when it lands in a mind on the edge of
understanding it.

------
lutusp
Unfortunately there are too many useful rhetorical devices in the list,
devices that serve a purpose. Ironically, the list starts off with
"correlation is not causation," an expression that in most cases is raised for
very good reasons -- for example, any popular science story that includes the
word "linked" but without adequate qualifiers.

If more people were science-literate, these platitudes wouldn't be necessary.
But they aren't, so they are.

~~~
TelmoMenezes
I agree. The author says "If there's some specific reason you think a a study
is wrong, describe it". Unfortunately, this is very often precisely the
problem: many times not in the study itself but in the way it's reported.

"Correlation is not causation" mistakes are not always obvious. Especially
when there's ideological bias. E.g: the claim that owning a gun increases the
chances that you will be violently killed by X%.

~~~
lutusp
> The author says "If there's some specific reason you think a a study is
> wrong, describe it". Unfortunately, this is very often precisely the
> problem: many times not in the study itself but in the way it's reported.

Too true. My recent favorite was a popular account of a marijuana study. The
popular article was titled "Marijuana causes psychosis" or words to that
effect. The popular account went on about how teenagers went crazy after
smoking killer weed. The study itself said, "We don't know whether marijuana
use sometimes causes psychosis, or psychosis sometimes causes marijuana use.
More study is needed."

------
RivieraKid
100% agree and I'd add other things I hate about HN:

* First comment debunks the article.

* Comments that start with "No." It's worse if the "No." is in its own paragraph.

* Mentioning Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

* General passive-agressivness.

* Lack of humour and light-heartedness.

* People upvote some really shitty stuff. The newest submissions page is sometimes more interesting than the homepage.

* People love to upvote blogposts of some people, e.g daringfireball.net or paulgraham.com, no matter the quality.

~~~
caw
The humor is why I also browse Slashdot, even though they're generally late
(like by days) with the submissions. There's a little bit of serious
discussion, a lot of memes, but then some generally humorous discussions based
off misinterpretations of comments, articles, and titles.

------
gilgoomesh
The first 8 points are all totally valid comments and I don't think they can
be rejected out-of-hand. The author seems annoyed by a perception that they're
thrown into the mix in snarky, passive aggressive or ad hominem ways but that
doesn't invalidate their use when they are accurately applied.

Facile, poorly reasoned content is abundant on the internet. Hacker News is a
firehose of content – both good and bad – and commenters aim to filter that by
tagging the content through comments.

It is not always a good use of your time to make a reasoned argument against
blatant logical fallacies, scientific/engineering ignorance and failure to
understand modern tech business practices. If you're spending more time
discounting vapid content than its idiot author spent creating it, then the
world is suffering a net loss.

~~~
saurik
The inevitable comments about Bettridge's law of headlines every time a title
ends in a question mark are not helpful. They don't make an argument, as the
article is hardly ever arguing for the question. It is just indicating "look
at me, I know of this exotic jargon term, and it happens to apply to this
article title". Like, this article could have been "would hacker news improve
if we stopped posting certain kinds of comments?"; the answer might be "no",
but saying "no, due to Bettridge's law of headlines" provides no value or
understanding to the reader.

~~~
pekk
Sensationalized, misleading titles are not helpful.

~~~
saurik
This, also, is not useful to point out every time an article title ends in a
question mark. I'm not advocating _for_ articles with titles that end in
question marks, only that there is no value in reflexively pointing out "this
article's title ends in a question mark" every time it happens: Bettridge's
law of headlines exists, the point has been made, and even to the people who
haven't heard about it, it doesn't give the reader any insight. I maintain
that the only use of that particular comment is to make the person writing it
feel smart for knowing a jargon term.

~~~
pekk
The use of that comment is to point out and perhaps penalize a form of
manipulation which hurts discourse, the sensationalized headline.

This is valid in the same way that it is valid to point out when a headline
contains a false and self-serving claim.

I don't think anybody is under the slightest illusion that having heard of
Betteridge's law demonstrates any particular intelligence.

~~~
saurik
It does not penalize the article, as even before this concept was given a name
it was already clear. The only people it "penalizes" are the people who have
to see the comment every single time an article, no matter what the quality
level of the content, happens to have such a question-marked title. Think
about it this way: the article got voted to some place, and maybe is even on
the front page; do you think yelling "Bettridge's law of headlines says 'no'"
is changing that vote?

Do you think people reading the comments are going "ah, that is something I
had yet to consider about this article; I had previously been curious to know
the answer to this deep and burning question, but now that I read this
comment, it is clear time that not only am I a fool, but I should down vote
this article, all articles like it, and start my own crusade to scream the
name of this wonderful law of headlines every time I see such an article".

The best you are getting is "oh, I didn't realize someone had assigned this a
funny 'law'... that will be a great trivia item I can being up to demonstrate
my epic knowledge of jargon". The result is then just another person in the
article comments adding noise. It is nothing more than a way to add mild
justification to the seemingly-dying practice of yelling "first": you just
need to know, for each article, what bingo terms happen to apply, and then be
he first to lay claim to them.

------
bane
I was expecting this to contain the inevitable "why didn't you do this in
Haskell?" that seems to come and go in waves. I've come to think that there's
a non-trivial percentage of HN users that are simply bots (written in Haskell)
that insert this into a random percentage of threads. If they're responded to
it then brings in a human to continue the conversation.

More seriously, these aren't just gripes, most of these have some kind of
remediation step too. Most of the comments here seem to be missing that.

That being said, most of these are still very valid things to be said here,
the problem is not that they're being said, but that they _have_ to be said.
People in general are lazy and carry around terribly poor models of the world
in the heads. 8 of these are really constant, low pressure attempts to correct
this problem with the last one just being a cultural issue that this isn't
reddit.

~~~
danieldk
Given that this comment is also about Haskell, can we assume that one of the
bots became sentient?

~~~
bane
Hello, my name is "bane" how can I further our conversational goals about
Haskell and functional programming?

Have you considered the importance of the lambda calculus in your daily life?

------
zalew
> > What comments bother you the most?

"just use bootstrap/heroku/nodejs/techoftheday"

"hn is turning into reddit"

"[http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
Anything that good hackers would find interesting."

complaints about: negativity, wrong tone and cursing.

looking for reasons to get offended.

------
benologist
Random PG quote I've kept on my clipboard for days looking for the right day
to paste it. GOD I HOPE HE SEES.

Copying != stealing, because apparently time stopped about 8 years ago. And
this is digg.

IE is hard to develop for even though all the problems it had have been solved
for approximately 11 thousand years before anyone alive today was even born.

First they came for [whatever we're talking about] and I said nothing ...

~~~
ZeroGravitas
I've not read the link yet so I'm curious to see if this is meant as a parody
of bad posts or is sincere.

------
est
This is the kind of headline I am tired of seeing.

[http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

> If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective,
> we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it.

------
gnur
While this is true for long time readers, there are new readers on this
website every single day. Perhaps someone hasn't learned about the Dunning-
Kruger effect and learns something new. Perhaps the point that he wants to
make (I think) doesn't come through, he wants comments to be more then short
stubs, comments that really make a point.

------
ilyanep
Oh no. Is Hacker News going to start down the ever-descending death spiral of
angst that made parts of reddit so unbearable to me (until the angst became a
self-fulfilling prophecy)?

Many of these classes of comments are fairly reasonable in many cases (as
discussed in the rest of the comments here), and I really hope that we're not
about to begin the cycle of "I hate this place, it used to be so much better"
that seems to start up when Internet communities mature when I just got here.

~~~
jacques_chester
Yes.

Before HN, Reddit.

Before Reddit, K5.

Before K5, Slashdot.

Before Slashdot, Usenet and Listserv.

Before Usenet and Listserv, every community ever.

------
chris_wot
As the original author of [citation needed], I quite agree. That was designed
by myself to originally ensure that Wikipedians sourced their material, not as
a way to win arguments!

------
olalonde
Comments that annoy me most (mostly because they are blatant attempts at
fishing for karma):

"I would use this but it's in Javascript, there are better languages like X
and Y."

"The web is utterly broken, when are people going to realize this?"

"For all these years I ignored RMS/Assange/etc. but now I know he was right."

Comments with the words "nail" and "hammer".

------
michaelwww
Telling us how ridiculously little time it took you to build something cool.
Most of the time I enjoy what you built, but telling me that you did it "over
the weekend" cheapens it for me. Are you bragging, trying to excuse it's
shortcomings, or lying? All three most likely. Unless you're a team of people
in a weekend competition [1], I'd skip the part about only caring to put a
couple days into it before showing it off.

[1] [http://garage48.org/blogger/list-of-projects-built-over-
week...](http://garage48.org/blogger/list-of-projects-built-over-weekend-in-
garage48-helsinki-2011)

------
stevekinney
My least favorite—and all too popular—comment is the classic "How [or Why] did
this make the front page of HN?" I have gotten to the point where I almost
expect to see it near the top of every comments thread.

In fairness, the HN guidelines are pretty clear about this one:

 _Please don 't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate
for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to
its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there
is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that
you did._

------
d4nt
Part of the problem here is that any open [web] community will eventually
contain more people who've joined after you than people who joined before you.
Consequently, stuff you learned long ago is still new and interesting to the
majority of the population.

I had a interesting discussion with @ColinWright a few months back about how
you might design a forum based separate cohorts for each time period in which
people joined, and on scoring each post separately within each cohort - if I
had a few months to spare I would love to try building & launching that.
Sadly, I don't.

------
robomartin
In general terms HN manages to maintain a very high signal to noise ratio.
This is a credit to pg, the rules he created as well as active HN
participants. If you have spent any time at all on USENET you know exactly
what I am talking about.

HN is always interesting to read. You can learn a lot from people posting on a
variety of subjects while always tending to return to the core tech mission of
the site. I enjoy this aspect a lot. And, yes, things go off in tangents
sometimes yet HN has proven to self correct.

I don't really understand the focus on these comments.

------
vermontdevil
My favorite is the 'most politicians or CEOs are sociopaths'

I think the psychology of sociopath is complicated enough without the need to
assume one who made it to the top is a sociopath.

------
tokenadult
Paul Graham (the site founder) has commented on a type of comment that he
thinks is very harmful to the community, but hard to identify by a key phrase:
the "middlebrow dismissal." He wrote,

"The problem with the middlebrow dismissal is that it's a magnet for upvotes.
The 'U R a fag's get downvoted and end up at the bottom of the page where they
cause little trouble. But this sort of comment rises to the top. Things have
now gotten to the stage where I flinch slightly as I click on the 'comments'
link, bracing myself for the dismissive comment I know will be waiting for me
at the top of the page."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4693920](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4693920)

As other readers have noticed, my idea of an interesting water cooler
conversation with colleagues is referring to verifiable facts about the
external world while checking the reasoning of a submitted article. The
Internet is, indeed, mostly about sharing unsupported opinions, as the article
kindly submitted here suggests, but I enjoy having my opinions examined by
comparing them to facts in the real world, and I try to extend the same favor
to the friends I meet here.

------
oelmekki
Personally, I'm tired of comments complaining about HN commenters (not saying
author did so, though, those are helpful and non aggressive recommendations).

HN is by far the place on the internet where I find the most insightful
comments.

------
mryan
[http://xkcd.com/1053/](http://xkcd.com/1053/)

For each of these irritants, perhaps someone has just recently discovered them
and is keen to appear knowledgable the next time the debate comes up.

If I had my way, a comment that matched something like /^This\\./ would result
in an immediate hellban. I don't know why this particular habit annoys me so
much.

------
asgard1024
It would be nice to have a sort of an "argument" database, so instead of
putting the argument in the comment again, you could just link to the
database. Then computers could filter these arguments automatically for the
people who already know it. Maybe the arguments could be parametrized, to make
the connection to the problem at hand more obvious.

Ah well.. a man can only dream.

~~~
melling
A lot of arguments are repeated endlessly on the Internet, and elsewhere. I've
often thought that someone should build a graph database for this. Then maybe
we could move past the basic argument and go a little deeper.

~~~
asgard1024
I agree. There was Debatepedia
([http://dbp.idebate.org](http://dbp.idebate.org)), but it seems dead. Unless
the arguments are in sort of machine readable format, any filtering will be
difficult. The problem is the format - I believe AI researchers still struggle
with that one.

------
sker
I used to dislike the "this is why I love Hacker News" comment. It's not so
prevalent anymore, but it was very common 3 or 4 years ago.

And while we're on the subject, I dislike the use of the word _sure_ on nerd
sites. I say nerd sites because I haven't seen it (ab)used so much on other
sites or movies.

Basically, people say "I'm sure" to mean "I think" and "I'm pretty sure" to
mean "I kind of think."

I just went to reddit and the fist thread on my front page had 3 instances of
"pretty sure." I'm pretty sure it's the most common phrase and it gets posted
thousands of times per day in contexts where the user is not sure at all.

~~~
regularfry
You don't see either as often here as certain other sites, but two more that
are invariably abused: "Most people..." and "You've obviously never..." The
former is almost always code for "Most right-thinking people who fit into my
personal worldview, which I am terrified of breaking...", while the latter is
"I've got some domain knowledge here which on face value contradicts the
precise words you've just written. It therefore follows that it's impossible
for me to be wrong about..." and is more often than not followed by a
demonstration of exactly how wrong it is possible to be.

Any time I see either of these, it's end-of-thread-time.

------
lostlogin
Is this really relevant to Hacker News? What does it have to do with hacking?

------
asdashopping
Another thing that annoys me is people citing articles using numbered
references beginning with 0 ([0][1]...)

I can _maybe_ understand the point of using numbered references like this
(although honestly it barely affects readability having links inline) but
you're not a computer. It just comes across as pretentious when you start
counting at 0 as though you're referencing an array of references or
something. We get that you Know Computers.

------
DanielBMarkham
Meh. Not so much.

The problem here is the difference between a conversation and a mob of
emotional ranters (And I plead guilty to being in the latter category many
times). Most of these comments are meant to provide _context_.

The author seems to forget that it's much better to have a reasonable
conversation in context than it is to simply wander far afield on whatever the
outrage of the day is. Correlation does not equal context. Companies are there
to provide shareholder value. Google doesn't owe you anything. And so on. Yes,
these can be throwaway catchphrases (bumper stickers), but hell, I'd rather
have the usual half-dozen bumper stickers and then talk reasonably about
something that try to un-fuck a conversation built of some bullshit fallacy
with somebody talking very emotionally about things about which they aren't
fully informed.

We make the mistake over and over again of rewarding emotional content, not
useful content. I'd argue this post is a prime example of that. The reason the
same phrases come back again and again is that we continue to make the same
cognitive mistakes again and again. Ignoring that won't make it go away.

------
shaggyfrog
> What comments bother you the most?

How about you do one for story submissions? #1 on the list can be ones whose
titles are link-baiting "N Xs that Y" types.

~~~
anigbrowl
Also smugbait 'Why you will (do something that's likely to become popular)'
and the imperious 'Begin/stop doing something right now'. Yes, those headlines
do get my attention. In a way that makes me wish to slap the writer for their
lack of manners.

------
basicallydan
What comments am I tired of seeing, you ask?

This one:

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary
Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

If you want to argue against surveillance, please do it with your words
instead of just going "Well Benjamin Franklin said..."

I'm not saying don't quote him or use his arguments in yours, but simply
quoting a man who has been dead for hundreds is not an argument.

~~~
paulnechifor
I think that's perfectly valid. Sometimes a dead guy can make an argument
better than I can and it's better to quote him than rephrase it in my own
words and pretend I'm insightful. This does however mean that I'm supposed to
respond to criticism of the content of the quote since I agree with it.

~~~
basicallydan
I agree with it too, and yes it's insightful. I think the key thing missing
though is anything more to explain why you feel that way - as you say, you
need to respond to criticism of the content of the quote :)

------
jmadsen
I'll go with people who read your full paragraph, find the not quite 100%
perfect analogy in the 5th most important point, and worry it like a terrier
with a chew toy

These people should be shot in the face with a double barrel shotgun.

(You may now commence to argue over whether or not both barrels are really
necessary )

------
jamesjguthrie
Definitely sick of seeing [citation needed]

Sometimes discussion boards need to have opinions on them and not just facts,
IMO!

------
MichaelMoser123
'Leaky abstractions': I think its the wrong question if an abstraction leaks
or not; any abstraction is leaky by definition, an abstraction is created by
omitting details that are not relevant to the analysis, with the wish to
extract the essence; The right question is if the abstraction is relevant or
not.

Wikipedia says:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction)
"Abstraction in mathematics is the process of extracting the underlying
essence of a mathematical concept, removing any dependence on real world
objects with which it might originally have been connected, and generalizing
it so that it has wider applications or matching among other abstract
descriptions of equivalent phenomena."

------
insteadof
Just another example of the overzealous moderation on Stack Overflow to close
any and every question ever asked because it in some way managed to be useful
to anyone but their narrow minded view of what constitutes a programming
question that didn't fit their formula of Q&A.

------
DanBC
> "If you're not paying for it, you're the product"

This also sometimes misses the point. EG, when YouTubers complain about being
cut off from monetising they're not the customer, nor the product. Google is
the customer, choosing whether to buy the product or not.

------
brador
If you start getting annoyed enough to post about it it's usually a sign to
take a break.

~~~
graublau
How about a new site to rekindle the nostalgia when HN was small..?

~~~
taspeotis
Let's make /r/TrueHackerNews on reddit!

------
hrktb
This would be the kind of comment the author hates...but isn't "If you're not
paying for it, you're the product" a fallacy as well ? Paying for something is
orthogonal to being a part of what's sold to to someone else. For instance
newspapers/magazines cost a price but still "sell" their audience to
advertisers.

And yes, I love communities nitpicking news items, because it's not as if the
internet is in lack of discussion boards, and seeing different approaches on
the same items is so interesting.

~~~
jaredsohn
That statement is not a fallacy. Assuming a product is made by a business that
hopes to become profitable, if the users aren't paying for it then what other
business reason can there be to having users at all?

Your example doesn't support the argument since it just states that if users
pay for something it doesn't mean that they aren't also the product.

So it is possible to pay for something and be part of the product, to pay for
something and not be a part of the product, and to not pay something and be a
part of the product but not possible to not pay for something and not be a
part of the product.

~~~
hrktb
> _but not possible to not pay for something and not be a part of the
> product._

I'll reuse a newspaper example fo simplicity. An ad company might pay to reach
some portion of the audience (for instance the female worker segment between
18 and 30). But you don't control who will actually accesses the paper, and
the 5 years old boy using it to craft paper boats is not in the target and
just happens to use the product.

A company doesn't have to monetize 100% of their user base, and it might not
want to for any reason. There is no binding forcing a user of something to be
on some side of a product/not product fence. It can be neither, ot can be
both.

------
chatman
This.

~~~
ardianzzz
+1

~~~
chris_wot
The above two comments need to be added to his list.

~~~
TheSmoke
they are already in his list :)

~~~
chris_wot
Oops.

------
tingletech
What about "this is not redit" or "who changed the title?" (shouldn't someone
change this title to just "Hacker News comments I'm tired of seeing"?)

------
alexchamberlain
Good summary: This article sums up some of the comments that annoy me too, but
not because the comments is wrong or inherently annoying, but because the
comment is simply incomplete. For example, "Correlation is not causation" is
one of my more favourite sayings, but one should explain what was wrong in
that case too.

I, also, get annoyed with comments that are far too long for the point being
made - go write an article in response if you want. Expletives are also a no
go.

------
weego
Razors. Don't made vague references to some obscure razor you looked up on
wikipedia and force me to do the same. Use the words in your head to explain
what you mean.

------
GalacticDomin8r
So we should eliminate any methodolgy which ensures accurate communication and
the burden should be placed on anyone who wishes to challenge an assertion? At
least it's evident this isn't an academic forum, however any forum can be
thought of as a "debate team".

People ought to be held to some standard of rigor if they decide to make an
assertion. For me, that standard starts with the original assertion, not with
someone who decides to question it.

------
nikatwork
Comments that focus on a single ambiguous phrasing or definition, then begins
a giant chain of people pedantically arguing about technicalities.

Can we please discuss ideas and concepts?

------
laichzeit0
The comment that gets my anal beads in a knot the most: "Citation please" or
"Can you link to a study that.." etc.

Sometimes people (myself included) just like to comment. Fart out a completely
subjective opinion without worrying about the little army of pedantic party
poopers coming along to spoil the fun.

It's just a discussion board after all. Must everything be quite so serious.
all. the. time. ?

~~~
pekk
Is it necessary to make groundless claims all the time? The reaction you are
seeing has a context of serious subject matter. If you want silly disposable
comments, try Reddit

------
vor_
Of all the cliches, I've hated "This" ever since I started seeing it on other
forums years ago.

The only one that bugs me more is "tl;dr". People have become terrified of
writing long text, so they apologize beforehand. Either stand by your long
text or shorten it so it's not long. I skip every "tl;dr" summary. It adds
nothing.

------
belorn
The one comment I truly get tired of seeing, is those that bring back the old
flame wars over the definition of the word "free", and if one license is
"free'er" than the other. Of all the classic flame wars, this one still lurks
around and makes noise once every few months, and is equally boring each time.

------
gfodor
I know this is off topic, but is anyone else annoyed that JavaScript is
required for this page, or that the text is too small, or that the color
scheme clashes, or that it requires Facebook connect, or any other surface
level detail that provides a soap box for me to rant about the personal axe I
have to grind?

------
Kiro
I upvoted this because I agree but the tone of the OP is another thing I don't
want to see in the comments.

------
amiune
One thing that I really love about HN is how damn contrarian everyone always
tries to be. This is always good when you can keep low the number of trolls.

If you don't like other people opinions then you can always do Mathematics.
The paradise where other people opinions don't care.

------
erikb
This is not criticism, but just an idea I had while ago while writing similar
articles: Maybe only people read this who only consider the gain you get from
reading their comment. Probably people who don't care about the other users at
all will not read it.

------
RickyShaww
Explaining a company's actions by "the legal duty to maximize shareholder
value" \- Since this can be used to explain any action by a company, it
explains nothing. Not to mention the validity of statement is controversial.

------
BetaCygni
I'm actually quite happy that the list contains these items. Yes, when
overused they are annoying (like everything else) but by itself they are all
(except the "general internet comment") valid.

------
islon
Wrong. Correlation is premature optimization, this is just a anecdotal
strawman hominen Dunning-Kruger headline that needs citation. By the way you
should have done it in Go.js on Arduino.

------
dredmorbius
On balance I disagree with most of Ken's observations, though not always or in
all cases.

 _A useful comment is one which moves the conversation forward. A non-useful
comment is one which serves NO useful purpose._

 _Correlation is not causation._ This is useful where a naive correlation is
shown without causal mechanism. It's _not_ useful when a correlation is shown
_and_ there's a strong causal link known.
[http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=552:_Correla...](http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=552:_Correlation)

 _If you 're not paying for it, you're the product._ I disagree that that this
is useless, though it's not necessary to point it out without some
justification.

 _" the legal duty to maximize shareholder value"_ Agree. Companies have
numerous stakeholders. The "shareholder value" proposition was birthed by
Milton Friedman and given a solid kick into the public eye by Jack Welch, who
later called it "the world's dumbest idea":
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/06/26/the-
orig...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/06/26/the-origin-of-
the-worlds-dumbest-idea-milton-friedman/)

 _[citation needed]_ Appropriate when someone makes an extraordinary,
unsubstantiated, and difficult-to-source claim. No, this isn't Wikipedia, but
it _is_ a high quality, high s/n discussion site. Not appropriate where source
is trivially confirmed or when intent is strictly snarky.

 _Premature optimization_ Depends on technical context. If substantiated, it's
a fair gripe.

 _Dunning-Kruger effect_ Sadly, far too often appropriate, IMO.

 _Betteridge 's law of headlines_ This is most often a meta-commentary: the
story posted is vague and poorly conceived, it really shouldn't have made the
front page. Increasingly I'm flagging such items (but not the Betteridge
comments on them).

 _Logical fallacies_ As with "citation needed": the quality of discourse is
served when people _don 't_ take cheap shots or rhetorical evasions. If you're
trying to make a point and you're committing obvious logical fallacies, you
deserve to be called on it.

 _Cue ... FTFY ..._ Cue: [http://i3.kym-
cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/406/282/2b8...](http://i3.kym-
cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/406/282/2b8.jpg)

~~~
randomsearch
"If you're not paying for it, you're the product."

I have to say that I disagree with this meme in general. Google does not sell
me (yet, at least) to its advertisers. It sells screen real estate and placed
links. Sure, the links are very targeted, and more specific than much
(probably not all) advertising that preceded it.

I know that this meme is trying to make a general point, i.e. "there's a
hidden cost to using this service", but I think it's overly-general and
unnecessarily negative. Many people enjoy newspapers and TV that rely
primarily on advertising for their revenue. I actually find Google's sponsored
links on their search results to be very helpful on occasion, and at other
times I find advertising a problem. Why the tendency to be so dismissive and
over-simplify?

I also think that this meme is part of a general trend of finding pithy ways
to sound smart without acknowledging that most issues, such as the way web
services should be funded, are actually quite complicated.

~~~
dredmorbius
_I have to say that I disagree with this meme in general._

In a broader sense, "if you're not paying for it" falls under the broader
rhubric of "understand the philosophy driving the tools you use".

One of the key advantages of using Free Software is that, fundamentally, the
development model aligns the interests of the developer with the user. Not
perfectly and not always, but in general. Some projects make this explicit,
and the Debian Project is among the best-known examples, having a Philosophy,
a Constitution, and a Policy, all as explicitly stated documents, detailing
what the goals, concerns, and specific actions and rules of the project are.

Contrast with the proprietary software world in which the goal generally is
profit maximization, often with short-term interests, and often sacrificing
user experience in the process. Some companies avoid the pitfalls of this
focus to a greater extent -- Apple has long placed end-user experience above
all else, and, though I'm not a particular fan of the result, I can see its
appeal especially for less-technical users.

Microsoft, by contrast, has from its beginning a winner-takes-all dominance
strategy and had as its key customers OEMs and large businesses. I as an
individual user (or developer, or administrator) am well down the priority
list. Oracle would be another company whose alignment is often at odds with
mine -- and extends to its stewardship of its free software projects (the core
of which has largely migrated elsewhere, somewhat predictably). And yes, other
free software companies can get confounded missions -- I'd classify much of
the issues I encounter with Red Hat and GNOME as being fundamental to the
mission and goals of the projects.

In the Web space, there are a relative handful of successful models:

\- Amateur hour: not in the sense of "unpolished and crude", but literally "a
work of love". Something done by an individual (or sometimes small group) out
of passion. Often surprisingly good, but intrinsically limited in both scope
and technical capability absent some larger base of support or organization.

\- Propaganda: Whether it's selling a specific good (as opposed to mass
advertising) or a philosophy, this is _somebody with a message_. H/N falls
somewhat under this category.

\- Public service: Sites such as Wikipedia. Often donor or sponsor supported.
One way of scaling amateur hour.

\- Commerce: Directly selling some good or product. Can still lead to a
significant informational / conversational role, e.g., Craigslist or Amazon
forums.

\- Advertising: An aggregator of eyeballs. In which case, the particulars of
the user base are of interest to the site (and its advertisers). And there's
also often a very conscious effort to water down content to appeal to the
greatest number. Both of these can set up perverse incentives which tend to
drive down the ultimate value and quality of the site. Google has historically
balanced the interests of its users (e.g., the product) and its customers (the
advertisers), though I'm seeing a bit of a drift lately. Among the challenges:
advertising and marketing teams increase in prominence within the company,
chasing out the technical and user-focused talent (e.g., Marissa Meyer).
Though she's landed at a company which is much, much further down the "provide
benefit to advertisers" scale.

Then there's the additional issue that state surveillance (and hacker
communities) have a significant interest in such data troves.

One of the advantages to being pithy is that there's an implicitly referenced
and much longer argument which takes too long to type.

So, include above by default in "If you're not paying for it, you're the
product."

------
Demiurge
Can someone rewrite this article in Go?

------
Fortaymedia
The temptation to reply with one of those was great. But I resisted. Nice Post
:)

------
coherentpony
No need to read this -- just another Buzzfeed post.

------
Dewie
What grates me is people that use "order of magnitude" for everything. It's
fine if you're talking about different kinds of memory access or the acidity
of some lake due to acid rain. But writing phrases like "Ever since I started
biking to work, I feel an order of magnitude better" just makes you look
pretentious, to me.

Of course this is more of an aesthetic gripe rather than a gripe with some
rhetorical device.

------
amerika_blog
I'm tired of seeing the errors that prompt most of those comments. The
comments themselves are often very much legitimate.

------
Toshio
> "What comments bother you the most?"

Mindless evangelism of proprietary technologies, disguised as an attempt at an
insightful comment (microsoft's mvps and evangelists are particularly guilty
of this).

~~~
regularfry
Emphasis on the "mindless". I'm horribly spoilt in that I'm always hideously
disappointed when cool tech comes along that's not open source, but there's
some _very_ interesting work going on behind closed doors that is worth
evangelising.

~~~
pekk
Such work is not worth _evangelizing._ It is worth technical discussion. There
is a difference.

~~~
regularfry
If the work's going on behind closed doors, the technical discussion won't
happen without some kind of evangelism.

------
shurcooL
I have _never_ seen the 7 of 9 of those comments here. "FTFY" stuff is from
reddit.

~~~
DanBC
Wait, what?

You're the product
([https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22you're+the+...](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22you're+the+product%22&start=0))

Betteridge
([https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22betteridge%...](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22betteridge%22&start=0))

Correlation is not causation
([https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22correlation...](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22correlation+is+not+causation%22&start=0))

Maximise shareholder value is trickier, but here are three (and there are many
mnay more)
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5001366](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5001366))
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4262187](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4262187))
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6045044](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6045044))

Citation needed (scroll through the list a bit)
([https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22citation+ne...](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22citation+needed%22&start=0))

Dunning Kruger
([https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=dunning+k...](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=dunning+kruger&start=0))

FTFY
([https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=ftfy&star...](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=ftfy&start=0))

