Comment by npsimons

The thing of it is, I'm of two minds on this: yes, it seems that HN (and the Internet in general) can be overly harsh, especially considering that many of the harshest critics will probably never do anything substantialy close to a lot of what gets submitted. OTOH, it's sort of like boot camp: if someone can't handle mean things said about their idea, then they probably won't survive the slings and arrows of the market (and yes, I know not all of the "Show HNs" are business related). Also, many people, when they see something that seems obvious, already done, or simply wrong, tend to have a bad reaction (see http://xkcd.com/386/). Still, criticisms could be phrased better; OTOH again, but many of the originators of "Show HNs" that seemed like the most likely to suceed were the ones who show up, acknowledge valid criticism, and fix faults with their projects. Some of the best even thank polite critics for input.