This place turned more pedantic than I remembered 5 years ago. The benefit is that sometimes the tangential discussions bring about something interesting but most times the pedantry is a negative as it just gets people riled up and nitpicking to death.<p>It's also more hostile than I remembered, but oddly people use politeness as some weird passive-aggressive pulpit to combat each other. Replies and comments get seen as personal attacks and others quickly get dismissed as trolls. And when the simplest solution to dealing with anonymous people on the internet vying for fake internet points is just to leave well alone, some -- especially nicks I've seen around from five years ago -- have decided the best way to react is to respond. And poorly at that.<p>It's very much the same catty atmosphere I've encountered when hanging out with my art school friends and their cliques that they endure for their art.<p>But then again, it's the same eternal september problem that was discussed back then, regurgitated every year, and now we're here.<p>That said, there are good signals here and I keep seeing the same advice that people give: ignore the noise. But the challenge is two folds: what is noise and should you really be ignoring it?<p>The first is relative, you decide you own level of involvement but I do have opinions on the second question. I don't think it's right to ignore the negative comments. You can't improve your craft living on good vibes and hugs. So understanding that this place, relative to the rest of the world, is different place, it's both a sanctuary and a padded room. So take the inputs, review them, filter them, and prioritize them. Never internalize the hate but at the same time don't be naive.<p>PS: 17 is young but it's not that young. When I was in the Marine Corps we gave 17 year olds guns and entrusted them to be men and women that can get a job done when need be.
> I am never going to play the "I'm-a-kid" card, because in my opinion my work (not just articles from my blog, I also develop software that I like to show around on HN) are a result of my hardwork, and I think they deserve competing with set standards, and it'd be belittling to have them receive positive feedback just because they were submitted by a "kid"<p>Brilliant. I've just come from the linkbait thread where a 14 year old who's never been part of the HN community and is still only posting in that thread is playing the just a kid card pretty hard.
HN is a smorgasbord of "strong opinions held loosely". The best advice is not to take <i>anything</i> that goes on here in the echo chamber personally. Relax, sit back, and enjoy your accidental tour of the human zoo.
The best discussions and comments on HN are the ones based off technical and constructive submissions. The discussions and comments based off any submission that is someones opinion or is politically/culturally charged will be far less insightful and more about 'winning'.<p>As can be seen, most of the comments on this submission are now about discussing the age of the poster and how 17 is or is not a kid. Real enlightening stuff.
A couple of observations, for what they're worth.<p>"Tell them you're only 17!"<p>If you do, you'll only self-identify as one of them. Average age is high teens to low 20s, if I remember correctly.<p>"People seemed to have a problem with everything."<p>To me this is the result of a large number of people participating. It makes the commenting system rather challenging. Basically anything that <i>can</i> be misinterpreted <i>will</i> be misinterpreted. Sometimes it's so bad I wonder if people aren't being purposefully idiotic, just to score some karma.<p>From reading your article, I imagine you found the attention worthwhile, though frustrating. Welcome to the club. In a strange way it's very seductive to have 10K fellow hackers come by and look at your work, even if they do miss the point, wander off on tangents, and generally posture for each other. Just be careful you're not subtly sucked into writing just for the HN crowd, unless you have an idea you want to sell to a lot of nerds.
I liked how you put your perception about HN and in particular this part of your post -<p><pre><code> In my opinion, it’s not the fact that people here are
skilled enough to comment on the various topics that
makes it special. That people here have the ability to
think in more creative and vivid ways and have diverse
opinions (some not always correct, as seen in the case of
'misfits') makes Hacker News an interesting place.
</code></pre>
I also think you are quite mature to play "I'm a Kid" card (take this as a compliment). Good luck!
I know you explicitly don't want to play the "I'm a kid" card, but you're <i>kind of</i> doing that just by mentioning it in this follow-up post. I think 17 is probably the age when you just don't have that card to play anymore.<p>I released my first OSS project (here) at 17, and mentioning my age didn't even cross my mind. You just take the feedback and criticism and reiterate like everyone else, because you won't have an excuse forever.
My biggest complaint about HN is the users with enough karma to down-vote that do so just because they disagree with you.<p>I've had legit discussions here about real tech topics (for example web apps vs standard EXE apps), and the guy who continually disagreed with me clearly down-voted every comment I made, and replied with out-dated counterarguments. I wound up losing almost all my karma from one discussion, all while remaining civil.<p>It's very discouraging to be new here, and try to openly express an opinion. It should take more than one to down-vote a comment successfully.
You're sad because people disagreed with you? Have fun in the OSS world.<p>Your original post is a bit ridiculous too. OSS isn't for the commonfolk? I guess android isn't the most popular smartphone OS and ubuntu isn't grabbing huge market share.
You might be "only" 17 years old, but with emotional intelligence higher than some 40 years old I've known (and much more than I had when I was 17).
p.s. thanks for introducing rhok.org via your post, sounds like a great initiative.<p>p.s. I have read your original post's comments (<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5016620" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5016620</a>) and I completely agree the comments were nastier than they should have been to make the same point.
If you don't want to play the "I'm only 17 years old" card, how come your main blog landing page says so very clearly =), just kidding, I oddly agree with your point. You can get some good feedback by posting on HN, but there will be the occasional troll that might ruin your day. Give it some time and you'll build up a thicker skin and learn to let them go.
HN is the herd mind. There are outliers but there are more who mindlessly vote up the karma leaders just because they are karma leaders - and there is nothing you can do to stop them.<p>It's why I read comments from the bottom, up.<p>Learn to have a healthy disdain for HN, I do, but every now and then a thoughtful comment or submission will sparkle like a gem in this muddy noise and being here may even seem worth it.
Suggestion: Put comments on your blog. You might get better feedback that way. There are many people who have given up on hacker news but still use it to find links. (I mean how many times do you want to put up some cogent information only to have it mindlessly attacked by idiots? Either its the fashion of the time, or hacker news is overrun with narrow minded anti-intellectuals.)