I see great projects here on HN every day, but we are a species which loves cynicism. The comment threads can be especially hard on authors.<p>To all the creators out there, I salute you.
There are a lot of people who don't understand what this place is for. Hacker News is a cocktail party. It's a bunch of smart people getting together and shooting the breeze about whatever we see on the front page. If you understand that, you'll fit in fine.<p>Lots of new users here don't understand that.<p>If you spend any time on the internet, you're quickly trained that discussion forums are places for combat. The goal is to look as smart as possible while tearing everybody else down. To have an unrefuted comment is to win, and nobody is going to let you do that so they'll tear your comment apart line by line. Naturally, that person is a moron and needs to be told so, preferably by turning his own trick against him and tearing <i>his</i> comment apart. Stop me if this sounds familiar.<p>That explains why the hardened slashdot veteran gets such a strange reception here. Have you ever been at a party where there was a guy who just didn't belong there? The belligerent know-it-all butting into conversations? The drunk guy in a room full of sober people? The uninvited casual racist? We've all seen what happens. People drift away from him wherever he goes, sometimes stranding some poor soul talking to him, but generally trying as best as possible to continue the party as normal and hoping he doesn't disrupt it further. Nobody wants to confront him and ask him to leave directly, but they all sure hope he'd get the hint on his own.<p>That's where we are here today. Except it's a big room and there are quite a few uninvited intruders behaving badly. You'll notice that that guy at the party often doesn't realize that he's out of place. Look through this very thread and you'll spot a few of him, justifying their belligerent behavior and complaining that the rest of us don't get it because this is The Internet and that's how we're supposed to behave.<p>But we don't behave that way. That's why it's so good here.
In my experience so far, posting to HN is more like carving my name on a tree in a mostly uninhabited forest.<p>My various attempts to post an Ask or Show HN have mostly gone unnoticed. I think it would be great if there were a place that Ask / Show / Tell / etc. posts could get more traction in general.
<i>In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.</i><p>Just watching a feel-good cartoon flick with the kids (Ratatouille) and there's this little gem at the end. I'd like to meet the guy who wrote that in. It sums it all up right there.
Unless you are building something for hackers, HN feedback is generally just noise. You might be able to get some legit usability feedback. But for the most part, you're just going to get a bunch of people fixating on one or two likely irrelevant issues (like what programming language you used, what database, if you are integrated with Facebook/Twitter/Instagram, your choice of font color.) There is a tendency for HN commenters to spout opinions that can be readily rejected with real data, I'm surprised more authors do not present their work with a list of common criticisms and data to counteract them.<p>Really, the best thing you can get from HN is probably refining your skill at being able to separate useful criticism from non-useful. And a thick skin and confidence in your idea and execution, which is a pre-requisite for being able to digest constructive criticism and perceive who are just being Comic Book Guy haters.
I think we're all in agreeance that trollish snark ("Great, Facebook for [insert subgroup]", "This sucks", etc.) is not helpful (and is almost always downvoted, or at least I'll downvote)<p>But what about: "Why do I have to login to Facebook to see this?", "There are too many typos for this to be taken seriously?", "The font/colors are really hard to read", "It's broken in Firefox", "Facebook tried this in 2009 and they had [such and such] kinds of problems, what are you doing differently?"<p>I dunno...Maybe people have different expectations when doing a "Show HN?" If you've worked hard on something, of course you should be encouraged ...but if you're pitching it as a viable startup idea...then you, IMO, <i>shouldn't</i> just want "atta boy/girl" comments...constructive criticism now could save you a lot of pain later on.
I salute the cynics.<p>There's nothing worse than throwing good at a bad idea only to one day realize you've wasted your time, money, and effort.<p>If one cynical comment is enough to derail your ambitions, you shouldn't be doing a startup.
A lot of people recently try to enforce some back-patting culture. It's not what drives progress. Deal with it, you're not in pre-school anymore and nobody will give you a medal for participation. If you're unable to handle criticism and take out some value from people's opinions, you'll have a hard time in technology and in business.
To be honest, this isn't the place to be posting projects if all you want is for people to see what you're doing and you have a fragile ego. The feedback from here is very valuable if you take it objectively.<p>I feel that if you want to have your ego stroked and have some exposure for your project, the best place to post it would be somewhere like Reddit. If you want to show some good minds in the field and get valuable advice, then post it here.
You are right. When I first joined HN reading comments was my favourite part. I would be in awe of all these intelligent and insightful people, I would often skip entire articles and read the comments first. Things have really taken a major turn for worse in the last 6-8 months. Almost every single thing posted gets picked apart to bits and not in a good way. It has gotten so bad that I have actively started avoiding the comment section. My rule of thumb these days is only read comments in threads below 20 posts as these low comment threads are the ones with the highest chance of reading something interesting rather than just typical tired criticism of the of the article. I don't even consider threads with over 50 comments as these are almost always a complete cesspool of negatively.
Personally, I'd rather have "the eye" than posting something and expecting positive feedback. If I wanted that, I'd ask my mom what she thought. At least here, I know that if I get positive feedback, I'm either doing a really good job, or I'm just really good at riding a fad.
When to my surprise my creation made the front page of HN a couple years ago (and Gizmodo, Crunchgear, Engadget, ...), the second most disappointing thing was that there was <i>no</i> criticism on HN. Has HN become so much more critical since then?<p>The <i>first</i> most disappointing thing was that I failed to capitalize on the attention to the extent that I had hoped.
I was much more cynical about new technology products before I tried to build and market one myself. That shit is hard, and most of the peanut gallery here one HN has no idea what it takes.
In general, I see a lot of cynicism on HN, but there's more positivity than other sites and overall a super smart audience. For example, you have to wade through a lot of crap to get a good YouTube comment on a high-trafficked video. Here you don't have that problem. You'll get some quick-to-judge comments but you'll also get great feedback (or at the very least, devils advocate type feedback that's worth discussing). Everything: with a grain of salt.
I salute the creators as well.<p>As someone who goes out of his way to comment on every Show HN thread he sees, I believe most users are <i>not</i> cynical. I can see why most people could be considered harsh; this is why I try to specifically say I'm being constructive.<p>I think the best way to go about giving feedback is to start with the negatives (the most glaring, preferably) and then end on a positive note with what the developer is doing properly. This tells the creators that they're doing good work and that they shouldn't abandon their babies (yet), they might just need to tweak things here and there.<p>Conversely, tearing someone to pieces is mean and not productive, even if the points are valid. There are arguments for this that generally go along the lines of some Darwinian thinking where they shouldn't even be trying if they can't take criticism - that's unrealistic and unfair to expect of people. We all need to start somewhere. Help out fellow members.<p>Hacker News is not a trial by fire - nor is it meant to encourage a death march. Those are two extremes. A comfortable middle ground where both criticism and praise are given is optimum. And I find there is rarely a submission so bad there's nothing good to be said about if at all.
I got more views, comments, and backlash on Reddit than on HN for my project. The HN community is analytical; they will always find a problem with your solution--sometimes people will offer answers and that's where this community shines.
I think the question you have to ask yourself when posting a project to HN is are you ready to receive blunt and sometimes uncivilized responses to your work(?). I think as long as you submit with that filter in full view that even when your work is chided relentlessly for some already obvious gap you can still sort through and determine legitimate criticisms. Say what you will about HN and its strong convictions and shallow snide callouts, but there are not a lot of avenues like it on the internet today for getting actionable feedback.
IMHO you should try your best to ignore what people say unless it's constructive to your work and life. Not everyone will love you and your work and that's okay. Because this is serious business. Stand up for yourself and learn to defend your work, your decisions, and your statements. If they are just trying to get to you identify this and ignore them. But ultimately accept that it's up to <i>you</i>, not them, to change how it all plays out. I know that is probably a tune you've heard before but it's true.
Yea i posted a project on here[1] and got completely ignored, i then posted the same project on /r/gamedev and spent all weekend as the top post with a steady steam of thank you so much this is awesome comments. I really would like the validation of the HN community, but that seems super hard to achieve, if not impossible. Doesnt mean im gonna give up, just gonna keep working hard and hope to get a little lucky.<p>[1]<a href="http://calhoun137.github.com/animator" rel="nofollow">http://calhoun137.github.com/animator</a>
This is a reflection of humanity as a whole. No matter what you make, no matter how great it is, everyone will try to tear it down and maintain the status quo. It's human nature. The trick is to parse through the criticsm to find what is legit (and make changes accordingly) and what is just complaining and ignore it. Being able to judge feedback like this is an invaluable skill.
I've written up some tips on handling HN feedback on your apps - <a href="http://hrishimittal.com/post/45360001796/google-reader-alternatives" rel="nofollow">http://hrishimittal.com/post/45360001796/google-reader-alter...</a><p>Discuss here - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5831504" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5831504</a>
I agree with you, but the people on HN much nicer then on other forums.<p>Its hard when you've worked on something and then your post gets trolled to death by a 12 yr old who has a strong opinion.<p>As much as I hate how direct they are, the comments are often true. I just wished the criticisms were more constructive at times.
I cant think of my day started without reading the HN posts, I am so addicted to it because of the articles published here. its like precious to me.
!!!!MY PRECIOUS!!!
Other than this being the internet and developer-brain (read: I-could-have-built-that syndrome), maybe people do it to make up for the fact that you can't downvote<p>"fair and balanced"?
Community, not species.<p>Ok, so I'm snarking a bit, but I always say that resorting to "human nature" in conversation means you've given up on actually finding out.
There are times when I've taken it upon me to believe that if I post something I've worked on to HN and it doesn't draw any attention (good or bad), that what I'd assumed to be 'important' in the judgement of my 'peers' is actually no. That way, I get myself simple, but effective feedback...