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Comment by sjtgraham | Hacker News Reader

Your points are valid, although I fail to understand why you feel it's necessary to adopt such a condescending and superior tone both in your comment and in your article.

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It's hard to tell someone they failed at something basic without coming off as condescending or superior. I'll try to do better next time, though. I don't like posting negative/attacking stuff, generally. :-/

Instead of "terrible analysis" you could talk about where it has "room for improvement" -- you know "Glad to see you making an effort to figure out how to improve the site. That's a great start. I know you already know (because you said it in the article) that it wasn't a very well designed test run. Some suggestions on how you can do it better the next time around: (blah de blah, all kinds of intelligent stuff here). Thanks for sharing."

Or something like that.

I'm fond of the quote "I'm too truthful to be good". But I also am fond of the remark about how folks who "love the brutal truth love the brutal part more than the truth part". So I've spent a lot of years working on trying to develop some desperately needed velvet gloves. If I can manage it (er, at least somewhat -- though this post might not exactly be a good example), surely you can. :-)

Haha, you responded before my post, saying roughly the same thing. Cheers.

The "too truthful to be good" has a bit of danger in it; it seems to juxtapose goodness and truth, and I don't think they're mutually exclusive. I could just be misinterpreting it, though.

It's a tongue-in-cheek movie quote (that reverses the usual "too good to be true" saying). I am infamous for being excessively honest. I also have a history of having folks tell me what a "good person" I am and such, something I call "accusations of sainthood", which I am not fond of. I guess I liked the quote for the idea of suggesting that these folks who knew me to be politically incorrect and excessively honest really should lighten up on the accusations of sainthood because "I'm too truthful to be (that) good". :-)

Peace.

I have had a hard time with the tone thing in the past as well. One thing that worked for me is trying to think about how my favorite educators in the past would try and reach out to me to "lift up" my level of skill instead of "put down" the work that I had done. I know that you are correcting the OP because you'd like to help, but your help is more effective if it is seen as a helping hand and not a disapproving glance.

A basic formulae could be a) acknowledge the positive attributes of the attempt (it is great to see you trying to optimize, and you are right to keep detailed numbers about what was going on, your funnel analysis was also spot-on.) b) Point out that he could do better. This emphasizes the growth potential instead of the shortcoming (one has an implicit expectation that the person can and will do better, the other is frequently taken as a rejection of the person.) An example might be: "you ran the test, but your test would be more helpful if you did it in a more controlled way..." c[optional]) suggest additional resources so the person can follow-up at their own pace, in the manner they prefer. Ex: (see this great post about having a control when testing your site...)

Now, if someone has ignored your previous feedback and it is your obligation to help them, things get a bit more nuanced.

There is definitely scope for sentiment misinterpretation in written communication, and these are excellent pointers addressing the problem.

This is exactly why I love this community.

Says the guy who makes his argument with the phrase "I fail to understand." Let's face it, it's hard not to be condescending when we know we're right. For one thing, it has a lot of visceral appeal. For another, it's a strong rhetorical position for convincing people not familiar with the subject matter.

Would you have taken his comments as seriously if he would have adopted a style of communication where he would be more forthcoming? That other style would have included all kinds of 'nice' words, that distract from the message and provide all kinds of room for you to think that 'it wasn't as bad', 'I only need to polish/fix some details'. I think swombat has done you the favor of driving the seriousness of your mistakes home, making sure you don't forego thousands of dollars, just because he was trying to be nice.

In a face to face conversation, you can be nice all you want, because you have both time and non-verbal oppurtunities to make the point. The internet is different, for better and for worse.

I'll just chime in here and say "I agree 100%", since all replies to so far (excluding the OP's) are basically calling you a moron. :)

Yes, the test had some serious flaws, but I imagine that removing the free plan was by far the biggest factor in the results - especially because there's no demo and no trial. I can't imagine signing up for a pay-only service if I can't even try out a demo of it before entering in my credit card.

I found value from the post, even though, yes, it is flawed.

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