Comment by Wowfunhappy

3 days ago

> Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.

> If you flag, please don't also comment that you did.

I don't understand why you cut these, they seem important! (I can understand the others, which feel either implied or too specific.)

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Wowfunhappy

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dang  3 days ago

Of course they're important, but they're also implicitly encoded into the culture. Cutting something from the guidelines doesn't mean the rule is canceled. HN has countless rules that don't appear explicitly in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

I think I'm going to put that one back, though, because it's not a hill I want to die on and I know what arguing with dozens of people simultaneously feels like when you only have 10 minutes.

  • Wowfunhappy  3 days ago

    > Cutting something from the guidelines doesn't mean the rule is canceled.

    Understood, but I feel like I see people breaking these ones frequently, so removing the explicit guideline feels to me like a bad idea.

  • andai  3 days ago

    I seem to recall a rule about "don't downvote something because you disagree with it", but I can't find anything like that.

    Not sure if that's really solvable with rules, though.

    My experience with downvotes is that people mostly use it as a "I don't like this" button, which is proxy for "I couldn't think of a counterargument so I don't want to look at it."

    (I noted recently that downvotes and counterarguments appear to be mutually exclusive, which I found somewhat amusing.)

    Whereas I will often upvote things I personally disagree with, if they are interesting or well reasoned. (This seems objectively better to me, of course, but maybe it's personality thing.)