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Hacker News Guidelines

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446 points tonmoy | 1 comments | 24 Aug 23 16:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.25s | source
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naillo ◴[24 Aug 23 17:24 UTC] No.37251836[source]▶
The only one I subtly disagree with is "comments should be substantive". What it discourages I think is comments like "thanks" or other really 'unsubstantive' comments. It's true that maybe it adds noise, and in many cases are maybe supposed to be inferred without explicitly saying. But I think discouraging this slightly leans behaviour towards snark vs not. (If you see comments like "thanks" you're less likely to be snarky than if you see 'substantive' but maybe too harsh critiques in the comments that appear because "cool project!" isn't allowed.)

Personally I like to make it a point to break this rule from time to time to reduce this pattern.

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1. burnished ◴[24 Aug 23 18:04 UTC] No.37252434[source]▶
You can be substantive in your thanks making or praises. And if you cannot then maybe its OK that it doesn't get expressed as a one word 'thanks' post.

I personally don't think this causes the community as a whole to lean snarky - that one might be a pre existing condition rather than the format.

I also think the occasional rule breaking is good, 'I don't have anything substantial to say but your project means a lot to me and I'm grateful' is substantial in a way that default 'thanks' is not anyway.