Hacker News Reader

Definitely true. The author could have chosen differently and it would have probably led to more constructive comments.

However, I'll also point out that focusing on the snark and ignoring the rest of the article is also a choice made on the part of the commenters.

Given a choice, I personally prefer to take the strongest and most charitable interpretation of someones ideas before choosing to criticize them. At least the discussion is interesting that way...

View on HN

That things I write for the web usually go through a "lazy comment" filter where I pull out references that would lead to lazy comments. Things that often get stripped are one reference to a specific example when I'm talking about something general–because invariably the comments will focus on "how I don't get the software" or "how I singled it out" or "how what I wrote isn't even true if you look at this way so my point is now invalid". Either I mention no examples, and have the commenters come up with their own, or I have a few so that I don't get attacked by a specific group of people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com