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Comment by didgetmaster | Hacker News Reader

I can really relate to this. I posted something earlier this year about how a number of file system problems are directly related to an archaic architecture that was designed when hard drive capacities were measure in MBs. I offered a possible solution in a hobby project that I have been working on for years.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30449263

While there were some really good comments, the vast majority were very negative and critical. (BTW: the comments on HN were much more civil than on Slashdot where the story also got picked up) Still, I didn't ignore the criticism but tried to learn from it and there were some encouraging comments mixed in as well.

View on HN

I read through most of those comments and while a lot of them are critical or negative I would still say most of them are "good" as in that they are constructive and give feedback on the idea or it's execution.

When you say "While there were some really good comments, the vast majority were very negative and critical" it sounds like you think that negative or critical comments cannot be good.

I took another look at the HN comments and I think you are right, there were a lot more constructive comments there. I guess I just remembered the toxic comments on Slashdot a lot more and mixed the two in my memory.

> I just remembered the toxic comments

We tend to pay more attention to the negative and dangerous -- a survival thing, right (from when we were hunters and gatherers)

>(BTW: the comments on HN were much more civil than on Slashdot where the story also got picked up)

Slashdot stopped being a worthwhile place to frequent at least 10 years ago. It's devolved into an utter cesspool, since all the quality people fled for greener pastures ages ago. I recommend ignoring its existence altogether at this point, along with any comments from that site.

I don’t remember the Slashdot comments ever being valuable. It was flooded with troll comments, and once you got past the troll comments, there were low-effort jokes, “first”, etc. Dig through the Internet Archive and you’ll see old Slashdot comments in all their glorious mediocrity.

Or search for “gnaa”, but not if you’re on a corporate network.

Maybe I'm wearing rose-tinted glasses, but I remember Slashdot comments being full of highly insightful and informative comments back in the early 2000s.

Insightful comments, long ago. Yes wasn't it a bit like HN is today, back that long ago

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