The owner of this site, pg, helpfully provides that thread for
feature/meta discussion, and kindly requests for feature/meta discussion
be placed there.
If you had searched for and read all of the previous meta discussion on
potential HN features, then you'd know your suggestion has already been
proposed many times and debated to death in near endless variations.
The only important question is why you decided to ignore the polite
request of the person who created and pays for this site with your
attempt to grab attention for your feature request proposal?
You probably had good intentions, and were overly excited by your idea,
but you just didn't stop to do the needed homework and think things
through completely. Don't feel too bad, everyone has "Fire Aim Ready"
moments.
I have never seen this, thank you for pointing it out - I will use it, but to be honest this is precisely the kind of valueless bureaucratic comment that irritated me enough to write the blogpost.
This is an internet forum, not a hashtable; uniqueness is not a design requirement, conversation, discussion and thought are, so I intend to have many more "Fire Aim Ready" moments.
If I think about something strongly enough I will write about it, often post it and if people are interested enough in it, they will discuss it. I'm sure most ideas problems and potential solutions have been mentioned somewhere in mankind's 4000 years of written words, but context changes over time and many conversions are worth having as many times as necessary before a problem is solved.
So you are part of the problem - repetitive content - that you seek to eliminate? The suggestion you made was also made over 1600 days ago. The problem you claim is new was happening before you joined!
Maybe the hints and tips for new users could repeat every couple of months?
Yes, your post does sound "grumpy". If you're aiming for civil discourse, then there's no reason for you to phrase your attacks as condescending rhetorical questions.
I hope you've cooled down a bit in the last two days. I pointed you
towards a resource that you didn't know about, and I gave you the
benefit of the doubt on your intent, but you still replied as if I had
intentionally stepped on you puppy. I didn't deserve that.
I probably should have recognized your frustration with HN and been more
empathetic in my response. I was also suffering from my own perspective;
when you have a deep fascination with the design and implementation of
discussion forums, finding and researching all of their features is a
lot of fun. I just couldn't imagine someone caring enough to write a
post like yours never seeing or reading or researching the docs/features
already available on HN.
Another part of the problem is HN itself; many people here tend to be
contentious rather than helpful. Many ask tough questions in impolite
ways, but others take the time to make sure there are no barbs present
in the tough questions they ask. Taking a bit of time to look through
the posting history of the person before responding to will give you a
lot of insight, and will often identify those who are just looking for a
pointless brawl. --There is a good reason for the 'delay' field in user
profiles. It makes your posts not show up for "X" minutes to give you
even more of a chance to think and edit rather than responding too
quickly, and often, too harshly. Personally, I actually don't bother
with setting the 'delay' since I learned to take my time long ago.
If you are interested if forum design and the group psychology behind
it, I'd be happy to share with you the resources I've collected over the
past few decades. Some of it, like this whole submission, are tough
reading with a lot more noise than signal. Other parts are far more
succinct and better researched. My email is in my profile if you're
interested.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363
The owner of this site, pg, helpfully provides that thread for feature/meta discussion, and kindly requests for feature/meta discussion be placed there.
If you had searched for and read all of the previous meta discussion on potential HN features, then you'd know your suggestion has already been proposed many times and debated to death in near endless variations.
The only important question is why you decided to ignore the polite request of the person who created and pays for this site with your attempt to grab attention for your feature request proposal?
You probably had good intentions, and were overly excited by your idea, but you just didn't stop to do the needed homework and think things through completely. Don't feel too bad, everyone has "Fire Aim Ready" moments.