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Comment by ianbutler

2 months ago

That's awesome! I love that energy, it's the opposite of the energy I was trying to talk about in the post actually, you're not trying to tell me why your app is the best thing in the world and spamming it everywhere when it has nothing to offer me or other people, and having not considered other people.

Where by "spamming" you mean daring to post it to HN under a "Show HN" title.

  • Among other places sure, I pivoted off the Show HN strictly, but it's fair for you to raise this given your thread was inspiration.

    Posting something to SHOW people without considering how people may want or need what you're showing is just bad etiquette anywhere frankly. If you're building for yourself that's great, maybe qualify it in your post because otherwise it's free game to judge poorly. Spam is inherently unwanted content, you don't get to decide what is wanted content the collective community does.

    It's something many of us have learned building software for years that all the new people building are going to figure out for themselves. Just because you can build it doesn't mean anyone will care if you're trying to show it off and with the flood of new apps, it's fair game to discuss.

    Edit: all of us -> many of us on the last paragraph

    • This is exactly the sentiment I detected in the previous thread, where a small group of people seem to have decided what the etiquette of daring to post a Show HN is. I'm not sure I remember being consulted on whether you should be keeping these gates for the rest of us. My reaction is the same as it was when people tried to argue Show HN was only for open-source software: says you.

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    • What’s wrong with just posting and then taking the feedback and improving? Why is taste or for that matter any arbitrarily decided “in thing” necessary for posting in show hn? Who is the arbitrator here?

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Why don’t you tell them that they have no taste?

Seems to be what the essay implies.

  • Because right now they are actually being tasteful?

    • I suspect because it’s harder to defend your thesis to a person who is excited about what they made.

      It’s super easy to talk about who has taste or not in the abstract. A lot harder to tell someone straight up they have no taste because of some idea you have.

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