Why are there so many people here on HN to reflexively find Svtble pretentious and whatever similar adjectives they use??
When it was first shown, there was a common feeling in the posts of not being picked by a kid at school to play in the lunch time soccer team. :P
The internet, and I guess I'll say life in general, needs more curation and less dumping. We speak of design and other wonderful things yet we encourage mindless undesign dribble in apparent content creation, relationships and other ways—it strikes of me being partial whores.
That is not to disparage the platform itself -- I like the style and the emphasis it places on content -- nor Dustin, who I find pretty fascinating, but the blogs just aren't good. I don't mean 'not good' in the sense of 'oh, this is poor writing', but in the sense of 'the consumption of this content was not worth my time.'
A few examples:
- Dave McClure, who I admire and respect, writing a ridiculous blog post about 'hoping to be a late bloomer.' Dude, you have a Wikipedia article about yourself.
- Dalton Caldwell, who's proved himself time and time again to be prescient (his 2010 YC speech is wonderful in its truths), has been blogging about the importance of app.net. If I'm a developer, a tweeter, and a general tech enthusiast who, after three pretty lengthy blog posts, still doesn't understand what a "decentralized real-time feed" is -- let alone why its important -- then something is wrong.
- Dozens of fluff pieces which serve as little more than porn for the SV crowd.
I want Svbtle to succeed, and honestly think it will. I don't think that success is going to come when its definition of 'curation' involves what it currently does.
> A lot of the blogs on svbtle aren't very good. I want Svbtle to succeed, and honestly think it will. I don't think that success is going to come when its definition of 'curation' involves what it currently does.
I agree with you—there needs to be a lot more than just curating who posts or at least the seemingly main prerequisite being well known in an area.
Yeah, over time once the network matures, Dustin improves upon his idea, etc, it will be much better.
What do you think of museum and art curators? Do you find it pretentious and some dangerous assertion against you that they have better taste than you? Do you think all 'designers' are pretentious?
I'm thankful that there are people making concerted effort to improve or at least find some of the better ones. Maybe the person does have better taste than you in some regards? What's so wrong with that?
Admittedly, I find the notion of someone having better taste than someone else somewhat amusing and it's not something I particularly concern myself with and this perhaps explains some of the amazement I have with the knees of people around here. :)
I see curation as a necessary evil given that museums and galleries have limited space and funds. So I don't see the curators as pretentious; the job has to be done by someone, it wouldn't be feasible to let each viewer choose for themselves. And AIUI the curators are usually hired by a museum rather than self-appointed.
>Do you think all 'designers' are pretentious?
No, I exaggerated; there are good, humble designers out there. But a large proportion of both the HN crowd and designers in general seem to have a very inflated view of the importance of design, and their own abilities. If everything designers said here was true, amazon.com would have about 1/8th of a user.
> Maybe the person does have better taste than you in some regards? What's so wrong with that?
Something about this particular instance seems to cross my mental line between recommending me things to read (which I like) and telling me what to read. I think it's just that the policy seems unnecessarily exclusive; publishing a cool theme for anyone to use would be great, as would "here's a list of good blogs you might want to follow". But the undertone I'm picking up is "svbtle will contain everything worth reading". Maybe I'm reading too much into it.
When it was first shown, there was a common feeling in the posts of not being picked by a kid at school to play in the lunch time soccer team. :P
The internet, and I guess I'll say life in general, needs more curation and less dumping. We speak of design and other wonderful things yet we encourage mindless undesign dribble in apparent content creation, relationships and other ways—it strikes of me being partial whores.