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Hacker News Guidelines

(news.ycombinator.com)
446 points tonmoy | 3 comments | 24 Aug 23 16:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.722s | source
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nologic01 ◴[24 Aug 23 18:08 UTC] No.37252485[source]▶
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

This is one of the more serious pain points I notice (thankfully only occasionally).

Obviously getting some visibility is important for people launching new projects. Sometimes adversarial comments seem to be motivated by commercial rather than technical reasons.

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antisthenes ◴[24 Aug 23 20:32 UTC] No.37254176[source]▶
A shallow article written in bad faith only deserves a shallow dismissal.

Don't force me to fight an asymmetric warfare battle against malicious authors to participate.

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gingerbread-man ◴[24 Aug 23 20:38 UTC] No.37254231[source]▶
Does a ‘shallow article’ even merit a dismissive comment? Wouldn’t it be better simply to ignore it and find another thread on which to engage?
replies(2): >>37254418 #>>37254516 #
1. antisthenes ◴[24 Aug 23 21:03 UTC] No.37254516[source]▶
Ignoring/Flagging it is akin to shallow dismissal.

I make no distinction between the 2.

replies(2): >>37254547 #>>37256988 #
2. post-it ◴[24 Aug 23 21:05 UTC] No.37254547[source]▶
But the guidelines do.

> Please don't post shallow dismissals,

3. kbenson ◴[25 Aug 23 02:01 UTC] No.37256988[source]▶
The rule is not to force you to be a better person by making you consider all comments you see, it's to keep discussion useful and help the site continue to provide a high level of usefulness for all users, including yourself.

In that respect, ignoring, flagging, and shallow dismissals replies are three distinctly different outcomes with different utility to the users of this site.