
 So Long and Thanks for all the Bits - jacquesm
http://jacquesmattheij.com/Tell+HN%3A+So+Long+and+Thanks+for+all+the+Bits
======
edw519
_The downside for me is that I'm a person that is of an addictive nature and I
can't do things half..._

Me too.

I have always struggled with how to allocate my limited time. Every time I
have wanted to do something in the past few years, the first question that
came to me was, "How much time will this take away from my work?" At first, if
the answer was nonzero, I didn't do it. But I have slowly learned that nonzero
answers were OK, and in many cases, quite welcome.

 _About a year ago I vowed that I'd quit HN on the day that I'd pass 50,000
karma..._

Funny, some time ago, I vowed that I'd never quit HN, no matter how high (or
low) my ROI. I was one of the first ones here and plan to be here to help turn
out the lights (perish the thought).

Jacques, please understand that you are part of my addiction to HN. Your
contributions have been priceless. I suspect you have reached the point in
your life where you have a responsibility to "pass on" the gifts you have
received. You probably have many other ways to do this, but none, I imagine,
as effective as Hacker News.

Your contributions here have changed lives. I hope you haven't pulled a Matt
Maroon and obfuscated your password. I urge you to reconsider. It _is_
possible for an addictive overachiever to get most of his work done and still
be part of HN. I am living proof.

Part of being a successful achiever is not giving up. I hope I'm not alone in
not giving up on you. There must be a workable solution to your problem.
Consider us resources to find it.

What do we have to do to help you continue to be part of this community
without sacrificing too much else?

~~~
seiji
Terribly addictive things: drinking, video games, social networking, and
online forms.

Is it ethical to prod your alcoholic drinking buddy because he's fun to be
around? Maybe the one not wanting to be alone has a problem too and just can't
see it.

When somebody admits they found a negative influence in their life,
congratulate them, acknowledge you'll miss them, then let them move on.

~~~
pyre
While I agree with the sentiment, I think that the results of an HN addiction
can be more productive than the results of alcoholism. Contributing to
reasoned debate on HN probably helps to educate a lot of people even if they
don't participate themselves.

------
DanielBMarkham
So first thing this morning I scanned HN.

Then I scanned the rest of my 30 startup tabs in my browser.

Coming back to HN, and wanting to get some work done, I finally forced myself
to close the tab.

Two hours later I succumb to my inner demons and open HN back up, and there's
JacquesM saying he's bailing.

Yay Jacques! Boo Jacques! I respect the hell out of you and I'm going to miss
you. I even at one point thought about coming by and visiting, and then it
occurred to me: what would we do? Sit in a coffee shop and post comments back
and forth on HN? Something wrong with this picture.

So I think you are doing the right thing. My current strategy is to use
stopwatches and such to limit my participation -- so far with very mixed
results. I am able to use HN as sort of a reverse productivity indicator: the
longer I stay on HN any one day the less likely I am to feel like the day was
well spent. That's not HN's fault by any means: I think there's just something
naturally addictive about interacting with lots of other people who have the
same skills and interests as you do. HN is my watercooler. And that's a good
thing and a bad thing.

Remember that if you come back we will all forget the fact that you left. Kind
of like your friends at the bar forgetting that you went to rehab. :)

~~~
Jun8
This may come out as selfish, but what about the rest of us? What if all the
high-karma uber-commenters leave? I think you guys have a responsibility to
the community to at least dedicate _a little_ time to HN. Please, please don't
stop contributing altogether.

~~~
swombat
I upvoted you, because it's an interesting, if misguided, point.

Nobody gets paid for posting on HN or having a high karma. We sure as hell
don't have a responsibility to keep donating our time to post interesting
stuff... any more than an avid networker has a responsibility to turn up at
all the networking events!

~~~
Jun8
That you're not paid for commenting on HN is certain; that people sometimes do
things out of charity is equally obvious :-) I wasn't intending to imply an
obligation, so perhaps "responsibility" is the wrong word. A crude analogy
(since it's the first one that pops to mind) is how sad the Ruby community way
when _why left.

------
jgrahamc
Interesting. I've been working on a blog post entitled "My slow disengagement
from HN" about why I had been slowly walking away. But people might as well
read yours.

I've been consuming HN through the newsyc50 Twitter account which only shows
me news items that have > 50 points. I started out with newsyc20 (> 20) and
have been weaning myself off.

I've found that stopping reading the conversations has been the easiest part,
but that HN's filter of interesting stories is hard to beat.

~~~
justlearning
"I've found that stopping reading the conversations has been the easiest part,
but that HN's filter of interesting stories is hard to beat."

(imo) the conversations/comments make HN more than the stories. When I read
the comments before the stories, I get a different perspective(than reading
stories before comments).

------
patio11
I hope you (and everybody else in the community) have peace, prosperity, and
happiness, whether on HN or wherever your journey leads you.

------
swombat
Sorry to see you go! I hope you're not leaving the IRC channel though :-)

For what it's worth, for those who feel HN is a bit too engaging but still
want to read the best, most useful startup articles every day (according to
who? according to me!) do follow <http://swombat.com> as a low-engagement
substitute. Swombat.com will never take over your life - you can't even
comment there! :-)

(Email subscriptions are coming soon, for those who don't even want to open up
the browser)

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I wish I could double-upvote that, swombat. It was a heartfelt message of
sadness, and also a plug for your website.

I can't imagine a better way to send off Jacques. True HN spirit.

(And for those of you who think I'm being snarky, I am not. HN is about trying
things out to help people. It is fitting that, when presented with a problem,
we should share the things we have been working on to help folks with that
problem. Outstanding job. I only wish I had something to offer along these
lines.)

------
pclark
I use all addictive web services primarily on my iPhone:

* Facebook

* Quora

* Twitter

* Hacker News

The interface is slightly more awkward - but not annoying - and I generally
check my iPhone when doing something that is inefficient (eg: making tea) so I
don't feel bad about using web services there.

I find its made a big difference to my productivity.

~~~
discreteevent
Same here (on an android). It makes me less inclined to comment, which can be
a real timewaster as then you are committed to the thread. Normally I touch
type so I don't have the patience for the SW keyboard.

------
Samuel_Michon
Jacques, you are one of my favorite commenters. I'm sad to see you go, but I
definitely understand your reasons, this place is way too addictive. I've
added your blog to my Google Reader list [1], I hope you'll write there often.
I especially love the monthly idea dump.

 _Het ga je goed._

[1] For those interested, the RSS feed url is:
<http://jacquesmattheij.com/blog/1/feed>

~~~
yuvipanda
Thanks, needed that. Autodiscovery didn't seem to work on his blog.

------
RiderOfGiraffes
Two words: Evaporative Cooling.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1777665>

[http://searchyc.com/submissions/%2522evaporative+cooling%252...](http://searchyc.com/submissions/%2522evaporative+cooling%2522?sort=by_date)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1934367>

~~~
btilly
An alternate name for the result is the Dead Sea effect:
[http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-
the-d...](http://brucefwebster.com/2008/04/11/the-wetware-crisis-the-dead-sea-
effect/).

However I think that it is too early to get _too_ concerned about hn.

------
michael_dorfman
Well, I certainly didn't see _that_ coming.

I'm a bit speechless, but thank _you_ for your participation, and all that
you've given the community over the years.

~~~
alnayyir
I just freakin' told you. _Just_ told you.

Edit: this is why I'm always irritated

<http://hackerne.ws/item?id=2161059>

------
aresant
My personal solution to the HN addictiveness problem is to use the noprocrast,
maxvisit, and minaway that are built into your user settings.

Mentioning here as it was probably 6 months before I realized these existed -
from the original thread:

"Like email, social news sites can be dangerously addictive. So the latest
version of Hacker News has a feature to let you limit your use of the site.
There are three new fields in your profile, noprocrast, maxvisit, and minaway.
(You can edit your profile by clicking on your username.) Noprocrast is turned
off by default. If you turn it on by setting it to "yes," you'll only be
allowed to visit the site for maxvisit minutes at a time, with gaps of minaway
minutes in between. The defaults are 20 and 180, which would let you view the
site for 20 minutes at a time, and then not allow you back in for 3 hours. You
can override noprocrast if you want, in which case your visit clock starts
over at zero."

<http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html>

~~~
kapitalx
Unfortunately Incognito mode on the browser gets me right back in.

------
Jun8
What, noo! OK, here's the deal, nobody upvotes this submission so he doesn't
go over 50K karma :-)

I never corresponded with jacquesm personally but in my relatively brief time
in HN came to enormously appreciate his thoughtful and knowledgeable comments,
his calm, anti-flame tone, but most importantly his generosity with ideas.

I am perplexed by this decision, though. I spend one to two hours per day on
HN on average, assuming he does more, it's a good chunk of time. Yet, isn't
stopping contributing altogether somewhat drastic?

I think HN needs all the mentoring it can get and hope that this does not
become a trend. As they say: "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful!"

~~~
brk
There is a little known bug in the HN code, but karma tops out at 65534 and
then rolls back to 1. So, upvote this story ~15000 more times and he'll come
back.

------
Flemlord
> About a year ago I vowed that I'd quit HN on the day that I'd pass 50,000
> karma, that should be enough for anybody and that point in time has come.

Downvoted. ;-)

------
user24
I joined reddit when I was supposed to be writing my MSc thesis; my karma
soared to a few thousand pretty quickly.

Karma is an odometer, counting up how much time you could have been spending
doing something else.

It does pay to take a step back from time to time. Fare well, and I wish you
all the best.

------
ohyes
When I want to get work done, I just set my hosts file to block all of the
time-wasting sites.

127.0.0.1 localhost

127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com

127.0.0.1 www.reddit.com

Etc,

Then if I want to check those sites I have to go through the hassle of opening
the hosts file and commenting the lines.

This definitely of keeps me from checking 'reflexively' throughout the day.

Its a solution that even works on Windows and Mac!

~~~
olalonde
There is also noprocrast in your profile.

------
justlearning
Jacquesm, I never written to you before...I have always procrastinated
emailing you. Just wanted to say thank you!.

You have been among the articulate members in here. There are so many 'high'
posts from you that not even a * top jacquesm 100 posts * would do justice to
your contribution. Thank you for sharing your experiences.

Would it be private to disclose what you would be doing in your "HN time"? Any
thing new on your mind? I was wondering how you would hold it back without
letting us know :) Please do write about your 30 day de-addiction experience

Good luck to you (and hope you (don't) have a relapse!) :)

------
JacobAldridge
I look forward to reading the follow up memoir about your time on HN, '
_Mostly Harmless (Assuming Time has no Value)_ '.

It is tempting to downvote some of your old comments to keep you below the
50,000 limit. But as others have pointed out, there will be plenty of other
opportunities to connect and learn from you. I'm sure the productivity boost
that awaits you will be a boon to us all.

For specifics, I found your sharing the experience with ww.com and video in
the early days of the web were incredibly interesting and edifying. Thank you
for that.

------
RiderOfGiraffes
I'm pretty sure I'd prefer to be remembered for most insightful contributions,
rather than just as "Best Nick". Still, I'll take what I can.

No doubt we'll still be in touch. I have some follow-ups that I've promised,
and are still on the way.

Best.

~~~
shortlived
Would you care to fill in a noob on the meaning of your nick?

~~~
apgwoz
He literally rides giraffes.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Yup. I have a giraffe, and I ride it. In suitable circumstances I also ride
giraffes that belong to other people.

Email me if you really, really need to know more.

~~~
JacobAldridge
_"I also ride giraffes that belong to other people."_

Naturally. Otherwise your nic would be RiderOfGiraffe.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Unless I had more than one. Which I don't.

------
steveklabnik
Jacques, I'm sad to see you go. I myself remember telling my girlfriend that I
was going to quit after 2k karma, and then I was going to quit once I made it
to /leaders... and here I am, posting a comment.

Maybe someday I'll have the same degree of self-control you do.

~~~
grellas
The one person who most strongly encouraged me to come back after I initially
had decided to bow out of HN participation was none other than jacquesm
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=779116>). I am glad I came back but now,
sadly, there can't help be but be some material diminution in quality and
sociableness with the departure of one so intelligent, encouraging, and
stimulating. Jacques, I can only say what you said to me: "You'll be missed .
. . I learned from [you] . . . I hope to see you back here some day!" I wish
you well.

~~~
steveklabnik
Well, if jaquesm convinced you to come back, that's just one more great thing
he's done that he won't be around to do anymore...

------
jeromec
It's a bit early for April Fools, Jacques. Nice try. I give it about a week.

If you are in fact serious and able to break the engagement I'm sure I won't
be alone in wishing for the speedy return of your contributions.

------
mahmud
Congratulations Jacques! That's a very good decision. We will stay in touch
privately, but I agree, it's best to get hooked on more useful things.

Cheers!

------
othello
This is the kind of message that reminds me that HN is not eternal.

That one day, it will be remembered as a precious community, surprising in the
quality of its members and the stability of its standards. A sort of modest,
modern day digital Athens if you wish.

So let's enjoy it to the fullest while it lasts, and thank you Jacques, for
all the invaluable contributions you brought to the community.

------
Mz
Classy exit. Should you find cold turkey not working for you, let me suggest
this might be an opportunity to hack yourself and figure out how to
participate in a non-addictive manner, which could be a profound positive
change in how you operate generally (since you indicate you have "an addictive
personality").

Peace and good journey.

------
zacharycohn
Jacquesm- You were the first person I ever "noticed" on HN, and whenever I'd
scan through comments I'd always stop to read yours. While it's sad to see you
go, I understand all your reasons. I've been involved with other communities
and had to do the same thing.

Good luck, and like swombat said - I hope you stick around the chat. :)

~~~
acqq
> the first person I ever "noticed" on HN

Same for me. Is there any statistics like average number of posts of the user
per day? I'd be really curious to see that number for "high karma" users.

As I've noticed him, I actually had an impression that JacquesM really does
only sit in front of HN pages, refreshes, reads and responds.

Afterwards I also found out myself why and how HN is so addictive.

~~~
zacharycohn
Well, by "noticed" I just mean that I noticed that I kept upvoting posts by
this "Jacquesm" guy. I had noticed other people existed. :)

------
ajays
Wow, 50K karma in just 785 days? That's almost 64/day, quite a feat.

For me, the discussions in the threads are the best part of HN. The
submissions are great; but what brings it all together is the discussion.

~~~
scotch_drinker
That's certainly some serious evidence in support of his addictive nature. How
much time each day would you have to spend on HN to get 50K in karma, even
allowing for a person who has a high level of quality submissions and
comments? Seems like it would take up a significant chunk of one's life and I
could see why he might want to quit cold turkey.

~~~
steveklabnik
While this is true, there's a reason that the mean isn't always used in
descriptive statistics: outliers can easily skew this. I've had a few multi-
hundred-point submissions, for example, and while 64karma/day is nothing to
sneeze at, you'd just need one or two really solid comments or a good
submission per day.

Then again, considering the way I'm phrasing this, maybe it's more of a sign
of my own addiction rather than something a reasonable person would say...

------
rudiger
If I had known you'd be quitting after 50,000 karma, I'd have downvoted more
of your comments!

~~~
boneheadmed
I'm rather new to HN, so I was wondering, can I buy some of that Karma on
E-bay?

~~~
boneheadmed
Mi falta. No offense intended by the tongue in cheek comment. Perhaps not the
place....

------
yan
Jacques, I can understand and respect your decision. Thank you for your years
of engagement and contributions. Hopefully, we'll stay in touch.

------
vaksel
Sucks to see you go, you've been one of the better posters on here(if not the
best). But I know exactly where you are coming from...HN is just a huge time
sink and really hurts your productivity...something new and interesting shows
up every hour, so you don't have time to actually get things done.

The best way I found was to eliminate HN from any bookmarks and navigation
bars. When you have to type stuff in to get here, you really cut down on your
visits.

I think HN itself is a net positive overall since you get to learn a lot of
what's happening out there without checking 30 websites for news. The problem
are the comments. You check to see what people are saying, then come back and
see if there were any new ones or if someone responded to a comment you found
interesting.

What pg should do is add a productivity option that doesn't show the comments
link. That way you still get the stories, but aren't distracted by the
discussion.

A quick and dirty version of this would be to set .subtext { display: none;}

------
niyazpk
So one of the superstars of HN is leaving?

Jacques, it was wonderful to know you and read your thoughts here on HN. HN
will miss you dearly. While I respect your decision to leave, I'd urge you to
reconsider the decision to leave completely. And if you decide to come back,
we will be as welcoming as we always were...

Till then, so long my friend.

------
StavrosK
Well, that's too bad. I don't know if what works for me will work for you, but
I find it very hard to check the news sites (or the web) when I'm working on
something very interesting.

I'm guessing you wouldn't have to go if that did work for you, so thanks for
your help and support over the months I've been here.

------
jaxn
Quick! Everyone downvote comments from jacquesm and let's see if we can get
his karma back below 50,000.

In all honesty, like many others here I completely understand and wish you the
best.

The other day I saw the "lists" on HN and wondered what those karma leaders
get done in addition to gaining karma on HN.

------
adii
I actually found your blog via HN and have since too become a regular user of
the network.

------
chegra
It was a pleasure Jacques.

Well gentlemen, this how you make a graceful exit. Round of applause.

(HN Roast anyone?)

------
ww520
Jacques, thank you for all the wonderful posts. Really enjoy your insights and
the sharing of your life stories. I'm impressed with your desire to continue
to learn new stuff and asked questions.

I completely understand your motivation to quit HN. It takes a lot of time and
effort to write well thought out posts. Taking a break is good. I hope you do
come back for reading. HN is a nice source for news. I found that not logging
in helps to stop the urge to post. May be, just may be, after a while we'll
see your posts, however sparsely.

Good luck and wish you success on all your endeavors.

------
david927
I'm actually really happy to hear this. While we'll all miss you terribly,
every minute you're on HN you're not putting your brilliant mind to much more
important things.

~~~
sixtofour
Hmm, maybe. How relatively important is his direct and indirect mentoring that
took place here?

His life, his priorities, and I salute him. But if we're talking about impact,
what happens here is significant.

~~~
david927
I'm sorry I didn't say it better. I'm not saying his mentoring was
inconsequential; I'm saying he has even more important work ahead of him.

------
khafra
Jacques, I remember you telling me once that karma here at HN was as gameable
as it is anywhere. I remain convinced that you've gamed it by making
consistently high-quality, thoughtful, well-supported comments and posts
helpful to the people likely to vote here. You've certainly earned your HN
retirement, if it's that time; but the community will be poorer for it.

------
pyre
A little off-topic, but I wonder if it would be easy/hard to write some sort
of proxy rule that strips all cookies sent to the news.ycombinator.com domain.
That would prevent you from ever being able to login, but would still allow
you to maybe browse the frontpage. (Or even better strips all cookies, and
only allows access to the frontpage or just the RSS feed)

------
jacques_chester
Finally, I can rise to prominence as The Other Jacques!

edit: I can't read this thread, I feel like everyone is addressing me
personally :/

------
eagleal
Have you found a new similar community to join? In the sense a new community
with fresh "ideals" you are thinking of joining or already did. It's been more
then 6 months I've been trying to find a good place (I need a way to keep
track of trends).

I think I've assimilated all HN could give me. And good luck!

------
jackowayed
I feel a lot like how I felt when _why "died". Someone who made great
contributions to a community I love is leaving said community.

Best of luck, Jacques. We'll miss you, and we'll always love to have you back,
whether to return full force or just ask for feedback on a startup and then
leave again.

------
afterburner
Would HN participation be more manageably casual if the home page kept popular
stories around for more than a day? Then you wouldn't feel like you had to
visit every day just because you might miss something.

------
mechanical_fish
Thanks for the kind words about my nic ;), and good luck to you.

Perhaps one of these days someone will succeed in inventing the _optimally_
addictive HN experience, and we'll look forward to seeing you then...

------
ErrantX
Heh, going cold turkey to kick the "addiction", probably the only way. Wishing
you luck with it. The place will be weird without you :)

Thanks for all your contributions Jacques, drop me an email any time :)

------
Swannie
Au revoir, not good bye. I'm sure you'll be back, for old times sake.

------
jeff18
I am really, really bad with names -- even more so on Hacker News where the
names are grayed out...

But jacquesm is definitely one of the few that stuck with me. You will be
missed!

------
neovive
Sorry to see you go and thanks for all the great insights over the years.
Hopefully you stop by a few more times to read all of these appreciative
comments.

------
jhancock
Jacques, thanks for what you've contributed here. You are a voice of reason
and capture the spirit of why I lurk and occasionally participate on HN.

------
mattwdelong
You have helped me both indirectly through your contributions on HN and
personally one on one via #startups on freenode, and for that, I thank you.

------
kilian
Jacques, succes met je volgende avontuur ;)

------
_pius
Thanks for your great contributions Jacques ... it'll be strange not seeing
you around here anymore. Best of luck!

------
dhimes
I will miss your contributions, which I always find thoughtful and often find
enlightening. Best of luck to you!

------
petercooper
Awww - but, all the best to you, sir. Less traffic and faster pageviews does
sound good though.. :-)

------
ptn
A very sincere thank you, yours were the comments that would be on the top of
my list. Good luck!

------
fooandbarify
Cheers, Jacques. We never knew each other but I always appreciated your
insights. All the best!

------
fedd
i just (almost) quit smoking the <http://www.sql.ru>, a #1 russian database
guru community where i have 30k posts, and now you say that hackernews is as
addictive?

oh, no...

------
nalbyuites
I hope now you can concentrate better on your other endeavours. Good luck!

------
mcantelon
Happy trails, Jacques... enjoyed your commentary and perspective.

------
rubyrescue
i totally understand the sentiment. i just set my maxvisit/minaway to 20/1300.
one visit per day is healthier. perhaps no visits per day is healthiest for me
as well...

------
aaronbrethorst
Thank you, Jacques! We'll miss you :)

------
varjag
Your contributions will be missed.

------
pclark
You're a good guy. Good luck. :)

------
chanux
Will miss you. Farewell.

------
gsivil
All the best, Sir.

------
marknutter
Bye!

------
zackattack
Jacques has been a tremendously valuable member of this community and a true
friend to me. Asking nothing in return he has always been there to help.

I remember one day a couple months ago everything that could have possibly
gone wrong with my business/life... did. It was one of those moments they
always warn you about in the startup literature, and I was not expecting it at
all. I didn't even realize what was happening - that this was one of "those"
moments - I really, really was ready to quit.

Jacques talked me through it. I was ready to throw in the towel and he was
there talking to me on IRC and email and cheering me on.

It was one of those things that you just don't forget. I never forget people
who are there for me when I really need them.

Jacques is a friend and the entire community is for the worse from his
departure. The plus side is that since Hacker News is now slightly worse,
hopefully the downward trend will continue and he will come back again,
restoring equilibrium.

