1. I haven't commented on HN in a while and didn't want to dig up my password. Throwaway accounts are a tradition.
2. I don't want people to see my disparagement of the quality of prose in this article as indication of personal agreement or disagreement with any of the points in the article. I have no horse in this race. I just want to read high-quality material. I love HN, but I'm not sure how much longer HN will be a place I can frequent in this respect. Have the hills not eroded? What of childlike curiosity?
3. My comment is nothing special. Others also point out portions of this article may be AI generated. People can verify the contents of my comment independently and come to their own conclusions. It does not require that I lean on implied authority of some form.
I read a lot, it's basically all I do. I wish writers maintained the contract of spending at least as much energy writing out ideas as they expect their audience to expend while reading them.
I will now log out of this account and lose the password. I hope this was helpful. I intend no malice; I'm sure the author of this piece is a kind person and fun to hang out with. I hope they take this feedback the right way.
The problems with #2 and #3 are they are equally, if not more, valuable points to those wishing to hide their identity for nefarious reasons instead. I.e. that nameless "just makes you think, doesn't it" kind of farming. Identity (as in an account history) provides not only a community here, but easily rules out a lot of malicious wordsmithing concerns. Not that I place any of that on you in this case, just the general use of throwaways as perhaps not as net-good for the site as advertised above.
Nothing wrong with #1 on its own of course, but if we're talking about what we'd like to see here then I'd lean more towards the value in discussions with individuals in the community than the value in the prose of the articles/comments.
On that note, if anyone ever suspects a certain account/comment set as actually being nefarious, the note to reach out to hn@ycombinator.com in the guidelines is no lip service - they really do look right into it and get back to you (often with speedy action about it too). It's by far the best action you can take to keep the community feeling in the comments when you think it's actually occuring!
>I love HN, but I'm not sure how much longer HN will be a place I can frequent in this respect. Have the hills not eroded? What of childlike curiosity?
Culture shifts, even If you want to pretend you're beyond trends. I know HN wants to say "we're not Reddit" but cultural osmosis from Reddit and the internet at large will change how you interact even here.
That said:
>I wish writers maintained the contract of spending at least as much energy writing out ideas as they expect their audience to expend while reading them.
Maybe they did. Thing is that it's rare to be a skilled orator and a highly technical person (AKA the audience here). I could spend 20 hours writing this piece (after researching) and it'd be worse than someone who spent 2 hours writing it up but basically write full time. Don't let aptitude be confused with effort.
I felt the same, but then I read the full comment and thought: "Damn, this is good analysis!" I will say this: I highly encourage this person to get a "regular" account, as it sounds like they will have many interesting thoughts to post here.
