[HN Gopher] No Comment (2010)
___________________________________________________________________
No Comment (2010)
Author : ColinWright
Score : 58 points
Date : 2025-08-05 14:30 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (prog21.dadgum.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (prog21.dadgum.com)
| gnabgib wrote:
| (2010) At the time (108 points, 65 comments)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057133
| ColinWright wrote:
| I was unable to find a previous submission, so thanks for this.
|
| I'm now interested to compare any comments and contributions
| here with those made last time. Have people's opinions changed?
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Interesting comments by pg on that thread, he said he felt like
| he was on reddit when reading HN even way back 15 years ago.
| krapp wrote:
| There's a reason complaining that HN is "turning into Reddit"
| is a "semi-noob illusion as old as the hills."
|
| People show up here expecting a community far more erudite ,
| intellectually and technically deep and separated from
| popular culture than they find, and when disillusion sets in
| they interpret this as a degradation of the culture.
|
| Also in a culture that eschews humor and common sentiment the
| way HN often does (in order to not "be like Reddit")
| hostility, misanthropy and cynicism become intellectual
| virtue signals.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Nowadays, popular Reddit has devolved into such a dumpster
| fire, even saying "HN is better than Reddit" is practically
| insulting HN.
| thunderbong wrote:
| Thanks. I really liked the top voted comment there by edw519
| [0]
|
| > I have a simple guideline for real life interactions with
| others that carries over quite well on-line, "Deal with issues;
| ignore details." > It's amazing how well this works in person,
| especially when trying to get something done. My number one
| question to another is probably, "Is that an issue or a
| detail?" We can almost always decide together which it is.
| Then, if it's an issue, we deal with it, and if it's a detail,
| we move on to the next issue.
|
| > This has also saved me countless hours and aggravation on-
| line. If I post something and someone disagrees, I quickly
| decide whether or not it's really an issue and only engage the
| other if it is. I realize that this is just a judgment call,
| but I'd estimate about 90% of on-line disagreements are just
| details. In these cases, I think it's best to simply move on.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057250
| taeric wrote:
| Having an online comments section would also be an obligation to
| make sure it isn't getting abused. Probably resulting in yet
| another inbox you have to stay on top of. (Well, optimistically,
| it would be that. I try and never forget that the expected
| outcome is just flat out silence.)
|
| It does seem that many of us have completely different mindsets
| for online commenting. They say that tone is lost in text, which
| is certainly true. Probably better thinking of it as the color
| magenta. That is, a bit of a fake thing that is often fully
| inferred by our brains from other signals.
| Apreche wrote:
| I have also intentionally not included a comments feature on my
| blog.
|
| The biggest reason is to avoid extrinsic motivation. What we
| really miss from the early web is that people were publishing
| with almost purely intrinsic motivations. Nowadays almost
| everything on the web is extrinsically motivated, and that is the
| source of much of the toxicity.
|
| The second reason is a matter of principle. It's _my_ blog. I
| publish things here. Why should I feel obliged to allow any rando
| to publish their screed right next to mine on _my_ website? If
| you got something to say, go publish on your own web site. If you
| want, email me. Maybe if I'm feeling generous I will publish a
| letter to the editor, like a traditional newspaper or magazine.
|
| IMO comments sections were largely a mistake. We would have been
| better off in a place where we didn't take for granted that every
| single article published on the web would have one.
| alnwlsn wrote:
| On my personal site, I have a comments section per post but
| they are on a separate page. So only people who actively look
| for them will even see them. Bit moot though, anyone who ever
| ends up contacting me usually writes an email rather than a
| comment.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Now with a lot of user generated content and moderation laws
| coming into effect, comment sections may now be seen as an active
| liability.
| ColinWright wrote:
| I think you mean ... "... may _now_ be seen as an active
| liability. "
|
| If you see this reply in time you might choose to edit your
| comment.
|
| Alternatively, feel free to explain to me why I'm wrong!
|
| (Edit: Now fixed ... happy to help. Cheers!)
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Thank you, fixing the typo not -> now
| getnormality wrote:
| When someone posts on forums and social media, IME it's very
| common that the replies focus on how they can "make OP wrong".
| They only seem to care about how OP can be interpreted as
| ignorant or illogical or immoral, rather than insightful or
| helpful. I am sure I'm as guilty of this as anyone else.
|
| It would be good if we understood this phenomenon better, why we
| do it and how we can be more balanced in our approach to what
| others say online.
| burnte wrote:
| > They only seem to care about how OP can be interpreted as
| ignorant or illogical or immoral, rather than insightful or
| helpful.
|
| This is tied to the societal confusion that wrong is the same
| as bad. Culturally it's bad to be wrong, so we are made to feel
| ashamed when we're wrong. Really, we should be grateful because
| it gives us the chance to learn and grow. Being wrong isn't
| bad, staying wrong might me.
|
| And then you tie in a societal misperception that some people
| hold that life is a zero sum game, and you can only get ahead
| by tearing someone else down, and you get the modern internet.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| That's a very good point. Being wrong is bad, changing your
| mind is bad, so people stick to something they know is
| probably wrong but changing and admitting that is even worse.
| lemonberry wrote:
| Agreed. I also think a lot of people don't know the
| difference between knowing something to be true and believing
| it to be true. I suspect most of us spend quite a few years
| in this space. It takes a commitment to epistemic honesty and
| self awareness to get past this. Though, I'm not sure humans
| can completely shake it.
| bmink wrote:
| Nowhere is this urge (and the reward for it) stronger than HN.
| In the majority of comment sections, the top comment is one
| that pounces on a few words from the posted article, however
| tangential or self-serving.
| Intralexical wrote:
| I definitely agree it happens more than ideal on HN as far as
| I've seen.
|
| However, HN is also one of the few places where it's not
| uncommon for me to see people push back on it. And often
| comments that "pounce on a few words" are offering valid
| criticism on only that part IMO, while still accepting the
| larger work that's been posted.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Part of it is because people who simply agree don't have
| anything to say.
|
| Comments like "^ This", are generally frowned on, because they
| don't contribute knowledge to the discussion and we have votes
| to show agreement. Constructive criticism does. I think this is
| a good thing, on forums like HN I prefer constructive criticism
| over unconstructive praise.
|
| However, it doesn't explain unconstructive criticism ("how OP
| can be interpreted as ignorant or illogical or immoral"). Maybe
| people don't know how to criticize gently and helpfully*, or
| being rude correlates more with expressing your opinion.
|
| * My advice would be: make objective points and focus on the
| content, don't make subjective points or attack the commenter.
| getnormality wrote:
| It seems implied here that the main things that happen online
| are unconstructive praise and constructive or unconstructive
| criticism? So I wonder what's going on with the fourth
| possibility, constructive feedback that is neutral-to-
| positive. Why does that box go unmentioned? Are we somehow
| especially bad at, or uninterested in, doing stuff that fits
| in this category?
| armchairhacker wrote:
| In my mind, there are three kinds of positive constructive
| feedback:
|
| - Constructive criticism, but worded nicely. "This is a
| cool project, it would be cooler if..." is a nicer way
| (with some praise) of saying "This part isn't very good:
| ... [inverted]"
|
| - Appreciating a specific part of the project, which I
| think is the technical definition of "constructive praise".
| "I especially liked X". This is useful because it
| implicitly suggests what to emphasize or elaborate (the
| part being praised) and what to improve or change (other
| parts). Unfortunately this may be the rarest, especially on
| HN; it's at least rarer than constructive criticism.
|
| - Suggestions for new features. Actually these are pretty
| common on HN. I was lumping them with criticism ("you don't
| have X") but that's just a reinterpretation, and any
| constructive feedback can be reinterpreted as criticism ("I
| especially liked X" => "Every part was bad except X").
| That's probably why I didn't address the other kinds of
| feedback, but thinking about it more, criticism is only the
| feedback that's phrased negatively.
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| Conversly, the best way to get help fast is to state something
| wrong and wait for someone to correct you. Only asking takes
| more time to get an answer.
|
| I'd call it the "Duty Calls Law" after https://xkcd.com/386/
| MarkusQ wrote:
| Actually, it's called Cunningham's Law.
|
| https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
|
| (I'm really hoping you were intentionally setting up the
| straight line for that joke; if not, sincerest apologies).
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| I only thought someone will correct me if I'm wrong after
| clicking the reply button :)
| vehemenz wrote:
| On the other hand, most people double down even when they've
| been thoroughly corrected. I find that behavior even worse,
| somehow, than the typical, curt "make OP wrong" response.
| Intralexical wrote:
| Probably because helpful people will be driven away when they
| open a thread and see contrarian attitudes. But contrarians
| that open a thread and see helpful attitudes will just be
| contrarian towards both OP and the helpful people.
| Outcome | Helpful | Contrarian
| -----------|------------------------ Contrarian |
| Contrarian Contrarian Helpful | Helpful
| Contrarian
|
| So yes, there may be effects in play like zero-sum thinking,
| anonymity, ego, obstinacy, or self-selection for strong
| opinions or real-life jerks.
|
| But it almost doesn't matter whether contrarian attitudes
| really are "very common". Absent a force that mitigates this
| unbalanced outcome matrix, it's almost an asymptotic
| statistical certainty that any Internet thread with enough
| participants will have _enough_ contrarians in it that the
| entire thread (and the dominant strategy for anyone who wants
| to participate in the thread) devolves towards contrarianism.
| alphazard wrote:
| Most content is promoting a product or someone's personal
| brand, or trying to get you the reader to do something. Even if
| the information in the post is true, it is much less likely
| that you should take the action that is implied (buy the thing,
| subscribe to the blog, join the cause). In a way almost
| everything is metaphorically wrong because our time is a scarce
| resource. People like to point out things that are wrong.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I tend to post "That inspires me/reminds me" kind of thing.
|
| Folks say "I'm making it all about me," and maybe they're
| right, but it sure beats the usual "drop trou, and drop grogan"
| style of many folks.
| johnfn wrote:
| The problem is that an online comment is not a dialogue.
|
| If I'm conversing with someone in real life, and they say
| something I strongly disagree with, I can disagree, and we can
| discuss and perhaps they tell me that I misunderstood them, or
| they articulated themselves incorrectly, or we are proceeding
| from different assumptions, etc. I'm reading something online,
| and I reach a sentence that I strongly disagree with, I
| essentially have to stop reading at that point, because from
| that point on I have diverged from being in alignment with the
| perspective of the author. And there's no back-and-forth to be
| had, so I need to state my point as clearly as possible -
| otherwise someone will just do the same thing back to me.
|
| I dunno, I kind of feel like I'm probably the type of person
| that's being described here, but I don't really intend to "make
| OP wrong". I just don't see any other option other than to
| state my disagreement as plainly as possible, so other people
| can pick it apart.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> focus on how they can "make OP wrong"_
|
| The focus is not really on making some nebulous "OP" wrong, as
| if anyone thinks about anything but themselves. The focus is
| compelling the software to give a result in response. The more
| obtuse a comment is, the more likely the algorithm will
| deliver.
|
| _> why we do it_
|
| Because there is no value in writing a comment that doesn't
| offer a result. You'd write in your private journal instead if
| that is what you were looking for. Different tools for
| different jobs.
|
| _> how we can be more balanced in our approach to what others
| say online._
|
| No need to try and make your hammer a screwdriver when you can
| use an actual screwdriver just as easily instead. That
| experience is found in not being online and going outside to
| talk to _people_ rather than software instead. Use the right
| tool for the job, as they say.
| theamk wrote:
| That's because finding out the mistakes in OP is one of the
| biggest benefits of the public comment section. Let's say I
| read a post about how NEW-TECH is so much better that the
| current state of the art. I may now be convinced to try it, but
| how do I know what's written in OP is not omitting serious
| downsides? That's where the HN (and other fora) comes in: read
| the comments and see if there are any problems with it.
|
| And according to the golden rule, this means I should also
| focus on negative comments. If someone told me an important
| NEW-TECH-1 downside in the past, and I see NEW-TECH-2 and I
| know its downside (maybe because I had to try it at work, maybe
| because I am an expert in the area), then I better hop in and
| post that.
|
| Positive experiences are also useful, but they feel redundant:
| after all, if OP is positive about NEW-TECH, it likely already
| mentions all the good things already.
|
| (note that "OP" is original post, not original poster. Arguing
| against people on internet is almost always a bad idea. Arguing
| against specific posts is much better.)
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| The thing is, if I'm looking for how something is wrong, I'm
| looking for substantive criticism. If someone says something
| like "yeah okay great system design but only BILLIONAIRES are
| going to be using this so late stage capitalism <insert rant
| on inequality here>" then that's not really substantive it's
| more of a rant by the author disguised as criticism. When a
| culture of criticism and negativity sets in you get a lot
| more of these rant-forms of tangential criticism than
| substantive criticism because it's much easier to write
| unsubstantive criticism than substantive criticism. Couple
| this with a tendency for folks to comment on titles rather
| than articles and you can get a ton of negativity slop all
| written in less time than it takes to read the article.
|
| It's a fine line. A culture too positive and you get shills
| and "+1 that looks great" repeated endlessly. A culture too
| negative and you get tangential rants disguised as criticism.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is a restatement of Chesterton's Fence - it's good.
|
| (Here's me leaving an inane comment on the outsourced comment
| blog, heh.)
|
| However, for low-traffic "blogs" I like having comments enabled,
| even if many never get shown, because sometimes the ONLY thing
| you can find on the Internet related to your issue is this one
| blog, and there's one comment with an updated link that saves all
| of your bacon and half the farm, too.
| amitp wrote:
| I _love_ having comments on my site /blog. I learn so much from
| some of them. For example, on my hexagon page, someone said
| there's a connection with "Eisenstein integers". I had never
| heard of them, and they were fun to learn about. Another example,
| I don't know "doubled coordinates" that well, so some sections of
| the page are incomplete. In the comments people have pointed to
| resources and code that fill in the gaps in my knowledge. Most
| recently, someone pointed out an inconsistency in something I
| wrote, and they were right -- I have updated the page to resolve
| it. Before that, someone pointed to an emacs package that might
| make my life easier, and it looks like it will indeed partially
| solve the problem I had posted about.
|
| I spend almost zero time moderating, because I've outsourced it
| to blogger/disqus. I'm not a big fan of disqus but the comments
| provide so much value to me, and disqus does the moderation so
| well, that I keep using it for now.
|
| I think of it like giving a talk at a conference, and having
| questions afterwards. At some conferences, the questions are a
| waste of time. But at other conferences, the questions are quite
| valuable. I think comments don't work well on all sites. But they
| work well on mine.
| thibaultamartin wrote:
| I've had similar thoughts and decided not to embed comments on my
| blog, but to link to social media where people can still give me
| feedback.
|
| One of the most positive things I've done though is to generate
| "Comment by email" links at the end of each post. People who
| reach out directly and only to me behave much differently than
| people who do performative commenting on social media.
|
| The overall rationale for not having comments on my blog is here
| https://ergaster.org/posts/2024/03/06-welcoming-feedback/
| stillpointlab wrote:
| I hade a comment section on a blog in the early 2000s. It was a
| spam nightmare. Never again. I would not have one even with the
| products that claim to handle that spam for you.
|
| As for the "I thought about this problem for 10s let me tell you
| all the things wrong with it" - yeah. Engineers do that. I'm
| constantly pointing it out in relation to LLM coding agents.
|
| Lately I've been stuck in YouTube court cases recommendations.
| There are live trials and many archives for all sorts of real
| court cases at every stage. I have grown an appreciation for what
| a judge does. A judge listens and makes sure all information has
| been provided before making a judgement/ruling/order. The
| patience those folks show is significant. I can only imagine how
| tiring that amount of active listening must be. I have found it
| personally inspiring and educational.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| I killed Comments on my Blog because of Spam. In its early days
| (2000s), comments on my blog made my day and hours. I made many
| friends, got many projects/contracts, along with the occasional
| threats and trolls. I even got a girlfriend who found it hard to
| believe that the visitor counter on my website increased non-
| stop. She commented that I'm cheating. I showed her my Web
| Analytics. That's how I got a girlfriend (I think 2005-2006).
|
| Spam killed it, and let go of blog comments in 2021.
| https://brajeshwar.com/2021/brajeshwar.com-2021/
| throw-qqqqq wrote:
| Off-topic: Same experience for me. I ended up spending too much
| time fighting the spam.
|
| The way the spammers got past even hard CAPTCHAs and anti-spam
| measures convinced me there were humans involved at least some
| of the time. It made me so sad..
| bechaubs wrote:
| > Talking face to face changed everything, because they could
| draw diagrams, pull out specs, and give concrete examples.
|
| The original programmer should have included all that (design
| docs, specs, diagrams, examples) in the commit messages, or at
| least made references in code comments / commit messages, and
| included this design material in the same repo. It's good if you
| can talk to the original author; it's better if you can read
| their original thoughts in their absence.
| tristor wrote:
| Weirdly, I feel the same way as the author still in 2025. Flickr
| is much more niche now than it used to be, and has way less
| activity, but I still actively post my photography there and find
| it to primarily be a place full of positivity and some truly
| excellent photography. On any given day, if I go to Flickr, I can
| see photos that would win awards in times past (although I feel
| there is much less societal interest in photography since
| everyone has a camera in their pocket now). Despite that, I can't
| give up my addiction to going on technical sites and reading
| about the stuff, even though I also no longer write code daily.
| dcminter wrote:
| This reminds me of one of my favourite exchanges in a detective
| story:
|
| _' Dear me!' said Miss de Vine, 'who is that very uninspired
| young woman? She seems very much annoyed with my review of Mr.
| Winterlake's book on Essex. She seems to think I ought to have
| torn the poor man to pieces because of a trifling error of a few
| months made in dealing, quite incidentally, with the early
| history of the Bacon family. She attaches no importance to the
| fact that the book is the most illuminating and scholarly
| handling to date of the interactions of two most enigmatic
| characters.'
|
| 'Bacon family history is her subject,' said Miss Lydgate, 'so
| I've no doubt she feels strongly about it.'
|
| 'It's a great mistake to see one's own subject out of proportion
| to its background. The error should be corrected, of course; I
| did correct it--in a private letter to the author, which is the
| proper medium for trifling corrections. But the man has, I feel
| sure, got hold of the master-key to the situation between those
| two men, and in so doing he has got hold of a fact of genuine
| importance.'_
|
| -- Gaudy Night, D.L.Sayers (1935)
|
| I think comment sections tend to bring out the "feels strongly"
| responses where the "private letter" ones would be more
| appropriate.
|
| While Gaudy Night is a detective story, it's just as much a love
| letter to Oxford academia (the author being an alumni).
| Arch-TK wrote:
| Tangential: There might be a perfectly good explanation for why
| something was designed the way it was, but that doesn't mean that
| it should stay like that in retrospect.
|
| On a daily basis I encounter code written by people who have
| skills in one area and are trying to solve that problem within
| the context of another area they do not have skills in. These
| people will make poor decisions which are intended to solve
| problems I can easily imagine but which should have been solved a
| wholly different way.
| tomhow wrote:
| Discussed at the time:
|
| _No Comment_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1057133 -
| Jan 2010 (65 comments)
| ColinWright wrote:
| Yes, already referenced in this posting:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44798572
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I miss the dadgum blog. Full of short, readable, but insightful
| articles about sometimes very obscure technological stuff. He was
| in my inspiration in trying very hard to write short posts this
| year - because I realise almost no one wants to read long blog
| posts, including me.
| dsotm17 wrote:
| The problem is someone posts a comment and there's an immediate
| response from a spergy contrarian having to interject ( _wink_ )
| for a moment AKKSSSSHHHHULLLLY and point out how every single
| thing you wrote is incorrect. If they'd written the opposite, the
| contrarian would spout the opposite also. Contrarianism. The
| internet has always been this way - before and after the normie
| invasion.
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