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The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss

(daringfireball.net)
479 points jgruber | 5 comments | 27 Mar 25 00:18 UTC | HN request time: 0.039s | source
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SanjayMehta ◴[27 Mar 25 00:35 UTC] No.43489157[source]▶
> What bothers me isn’t so much that Daring Fireball is shitlisted at Hacker News — even though I really did enjoy reading the commentary on my posts back when they regularly surfaced there, and still do when one slips through the cracks.

Did DF ever allow comments on its own website? I vaguely remember gruber once saying: “If you want to comment on my blog, write your own blog.”

> What bothers me is that it’s unexplained. Which, ultimately, seems not so much censorial as just cowardly.

Huh.

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wezm ◴[27 Mar 25 00:43 UTC] No.43489208[source]▶
> Did DF ever allow comments on its own website?

Not that I'm aware. There's some discussion about it in this post from 2010:

https://daringfireball.net/2010/06/whats_fair

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SanjayMehta ◴[27 Mar 25 00:49 UTC] No.43489256[source]▶
This is the one, thanks.

> You write on your site; I write on mine. That’s a response. I don’t use comments on Wilcox’s site to respond publicly to his pieces, but somehow it’s unfair that he can’t use comments on my site to respond to mine? What kind of sense is that even supposed to make?

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1. spiderfarmer ◴[27 Mar 25 01:18 UTC] No.43489456[source]▶
In this case I agree with Gruber. Responding by blogging and citing is better for both websites.
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2. SanjayMehta ◴[27 Mar 25 12:43 UTC] No.43493001[source]▶
Seems hypocritical to me. He admits wanting to see the comments here while not supporting them on his own site.
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3. nuthinking ◴[27 Mar 25 13:42 UTC] No.43493569[source]▶
Can you blame someone for not having any hateful comments on their website? Even if 98% were positive, that 2% could annoy the hell out of you.
4. jgruber ◴[27 Mar 25 14:06 UTC] No.43493822[source]▶
How is it hypocritical to hold the view that some places are intended to be open forums for comments from anyone, and others are not?

Also, by not hosting my own comments, all public commentary on my writing is thus out of my control. I don't get to block comments I don't like here, or on Mastodon, or Twitter/X, or Bluesky. I think that's actually for the better.

5. mturmon ◴[27 Mar 25 23:49 UTC] No.43499632[source]▶
I see your take, but I disagree.

DF is a blog and was conceived that way. HN is a discussion site. The two forms (blogging and internet discussions) are different. They serve different purposes and require different management styles.

The discussions here do seem to be tamped down in some ways, and as a user, that takes something away from the experience.

Relatedly: in general, I think "hypocritical" is not a big gotcha that ends discussions. Different things serve different purposes.