Hacker News Reader

Comment by sixtypoundhound | Hacker News Reader

This.

Seriously, I run a bunch of FREE websites and I'm amazed by the stuff that shows up in my inbox. When did it become ok to harass someone running a FREE website?

If you don't like it, hit the frigging back button. And get a life.

View on HN

This reminds me of an article I read a long while back (I don't remember the title..) that basically argued that by lowering the barrier of entry to your content, be it a game, app, etc., you make it such that others have nothing to lose for slinging mud. IIRC the same article did a study on online free-to-play and subscription games and noticed that games with higher barrier of entry, be it with price or even a lottery system, tend to see more civility in their communities, since people have something to lose if they are banned.

It would be great if someone could link that article in or something.

In my experience the more people pay you the better behaved they are, people who get things for free are the most entitled and abusive.

I would disagree based on experience at a previous workplace. We were paying a Salesforce consultancy a lot of money, so our technically clueless founders thought that gave them a licence to act like arseholes. One consultant had a nervous breakdown after a couple of months.

That’s a bit of a different relationship. The ability to fire the consultant changes the power dynamic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com