Hacker News Reader

I feel postscripts like that are not appropriate in general. I think it's the "should" that grates me most. It sounds arrogant to me. I know they do it to get a following. But please just let your content do the talking. And then give your readers the option to read more without being so pushy.

View on HN

The "you should" formulation is a Dustin Curtis invention from several years back:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=704738

It was an experiment with results that he told everyone not to blindly copy. But tons of fools copied him anyway, tweaking the wording to be more grating and obnoxious, littering the Internet with trash.

Well, as long as those fools are littering their own pages I think the problem isn't as bad as you make it look.

As for whether it works or not: yes, it works. A 'call to action' as it is called has been proven to work long before Drew Curtis added his to his twitter button.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com