> "Be Nice" may dissuade commenters/potential customers from pointing out legitimate, immediate flaws.
I don't think HN users are going to have trouble doing that, but there are different ways to do it, and the nicer ways have the critical property of opening the discussion further instead of shutting it down.
We HN users are used to thinking of ourselves as the scrappy underdog, calling out incorrectness and badness with pristine honesty and with no particular effect on the situation, except occasionally a righteous one like forcing Google to do customer service. We don't think of ourselves as being in a position of power, but that's actually an illusion, as many who've walked into a wasps' nest of critical comments and come out stung can attest.
To me one interesting social aspect of this experiment, quite separate from who gets funded, is that it unambiguously puts the HN community in a position of power—a perspective that we're not accustomed to, and which requires developing different habits (edit: I mean a higher standard of conduct). Maybe those habits will end up translating to the community as a whole (yay!) Or maybe they won't show up at all (boo!)—but at least we can all keep reminding each other to be nicer in these threads.
"Hey, this looks really cool, but I notice you guys don't support TLS (i.e., if I change the 'http' to 'https', I can't connect). I know you have a million things on your todo list, but this one is extraordinarily important; your target users will simply close their browser windows once they see 'http'. Also, fixing this is easy! Just check out this tutorial [link] .. or let me know if you have any questions and I'll see if I can help you right here!"
That's fine, and for those who don't feel so gushy, there's a different thing you can do: simply re-read your comments and edit out anything that isn't nice. You can always set 'delay' in your profile to between 1 and 10 minutes to give yourself some editing time. Mine is 3.
>You can always set 'delay' in your profile to between 1 and 10 minutes to give yourself some editing time.
I had always seen this, but never actually looked into what it did. For someone like me who typically makes a litany of edits immediately after posting, this is revelatory. Thanks!
For whatever reason, the textbox just isn't as good of a preview when compared to viewing the actual post.
Not to get in the weeds too far, but I obsessively do this too. Have you tried CSS to make the input box look more like the final comment? I'd always assumed the current style was intentional and it's hard to say if it'd be a good idea, but just throwing it out there to see if it sticks. I know HN values its scrappy design.
I would be supremely interested (as a victim of this really aggravating compulsion myself) in an A/B on your end, to see whether people do this less if the box is visually very close to the final product. My gut says yes, and it'd be useful data for lots of designers. (Anybody reading that's tried it?)
Something unconscious about the flow of paragraphs, color, length of my lines, something drives me back to editing religiously until the software no longer lets me, on any site. It actually bothers me and I've already done it twice on this comment. (Make that five times.)
Haven't tried it. My assumption is more that the mind switches into a different mode once the comment is 'real' (because now it's public) and immediately sees different things. You're right that we could test that, but there are so many other things to test.
I mentioned this from the early days of HN, and it's in the guidelines: "don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation." is a great rule for most people. Imagine yourself saying your comment to someone you don't know. Does it sound ok?
I assume most times people submit a "Show HN" (or now "Apply HN") that, if not explicitly stated, there's an implicit "and please give me feedback" tacked on to the end. Sometimes feedback can be blunt and, to someone emotionally invested in the site / product, it may appear brutal. While feedback on someone's work should certainly not be mean-spirited, I don't think one should need to go out of their way to dress up their comment in order to emotionally shelter the reader.
A favorite expression of mine: "Sufficiently advanced political correctness is indistinguishable from sarcasm."
Your post does not disagree with the person you're replying to. You don't need to "dress up" your comments. If you just don't say anything you wouldn't say in person, to a person you've just met, you're probably okay.
I knew this thread would teach me something good. Had no clue about that feature. Might try it. Also, good comment upward in thread on seeing how people use this one with power difference. I might just watch at a distance to interfere less with the process. That's what I've been doing although not till now for the effect you mentioned.
Appreciate the feedback. There were a few interesting ones, esp gaming the system. I'll consider contributing something if next day is less exhausting. :)
I'd be curious how you'd approach it with something far more accusatory? Take Airbnb for example: I am very bothered by airbnb's approach to laws. I think they deliberately ignore laws in the name of making a profit. It's probably not "nice" to question why they look the other way in major markets where they know their listings are breaking the law, but it certainly isn't nice that they choose what laws apply to them and which ones they choose to fight a marketing campaign over.
"This sounds like a gigantic untapped opportunity -- it's such a waste that so many beds and couches lie unused for large chunks of the year, and there are lots of travelers that couldn't care less about concierge desks and bellhops, and would much prefer to save money or stay in more interesting lodging, but hotels don't seem interested in serving that market. However, I'm not sure I can upvote this proposal in good conscience; it sounds like you're planning to deliberately ignore laws, grow big, and then seek to have those laws overturned. Am I misunderstanding something, or is that really the plan?"
"I'm concerned that your business model relies on regulatory arbitrage and/or your hosts' willingness to violate local ordinances.
Not only would that make you vulnerable to changes in the legal / enforcement landscape, but there's also a growing backlash in some quarters (including on HN) against this type of business.
Can you provide any assurances that this business would be sustainable if you were forced to rely on 100% legal and taxed host properties?"
I don't honestly see anything not nice in what you said (and I've learned as a Midwesterner nice is very important to me). You didn't insult anyone, there isn't condescension dripping from the comment, you didn't trivialize anything, you didn't even throw shade. You made some direct statements without being a jerk. Sounds good to me!
I think the confusion is in whether conflict-avoidance is the same as nice-ness. I certainly was brought up to mostly think that way, but now that I've spent a lot of time arguing about math I have let go of some of that training.
We aren't necessarily giving advice, just choosing who to fund. It's hard to ask a group of developers for general feedback because it will be "here's how I would do your thing". Asking very specific questions might work though "our users are doing x and we want them to understand y, how do we make y intuitive".
I don't think HN users are going to have trouble doing that, but there are different ways to do it, and the nicer ways have the critical property of opening the discussion further instead of shutting it down.
We HN users are used to thinking of ourselves as the scrappy underdog, calling out incorrectness and badness with pristine honesty and with no particular effect on the situation, except occasionally a righteous one like forcing Google to do customer service. We don't think of ourselves as being in a position of power, but that's actually an illusion, as many who've walked into a wasps' nest of critical comments and come out stung can attest.
To me one interesting social aspect of this experiment, quite separate from who gets funded, is that it unambiguously puts the HN community in a position of power—a perspective that we're not accustomed to, and which requires developing different habits (edit: I mean a higher standard of conduct). Maybe those habits will end up translating to the community as a whole (yay!) Or maybe they won't show up at all (boo!)—but at least we can all keep reminding each other to be nicer in these threads.