This is becoming a trend on HN where top comment points calls out the criticism in a thread. I personally feel there is nothing negative about critique and one of the reasons people broadcast their work here is to receive more feedback on it. Not every showcase automatically deserves a compliment. I think we should respect people for their opinions and the danger of applying negative pressure to criticism is we create a sheltered sphere where everything has to be "positive".
(Fwiw, I think most of the feedback in this thread is thoughtful and encouraging - speaking more generally below.)
I think the gap is the difference between giving feedback to a person and broadcasting superiority. The former is what we do in-person. It takes constant active effort to not do the latter.
Giving feedback in-person, you want to make sure your feedback land. Encouraging where possible by pointing out what works, discussing the ways it can or needs to improve.
When people don't give feedback to the OP as a person, and rather treat it like a faceless corporate entity, or go full-Slashdot, that does get a bit mean-spirited.
So far I am not seeing any comments that are not constructive, but I concur. There can be an disproportionate amount of people on Hackernews that think that its ok to give feedback without considering how it lands.
In my view, the fact that you are speaking on the internet does not mean you have license to be harmful or careless with the people you interact with.
I also like that the parent complains about the very thing (being able to speak freely) but doesn't want to apply that to people that disagree with his standpoint.
> This is becoming a trend on HN where top comment points calls out the criticism in a thread.
This is because some people have discovered that it's a great way to emotionally manipulate others into upvoting that comment out of guilt - the structure of this kind of comment is designed to bypass the logical reasoning centers of the brain and cause an emotional reaction. (I saw another comment a few weeks ago that had more detail on this, but I have no hope of finding it without my exobrain) It's also just barely far enough away from the "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." in the guidelines that some people can justify doing it.
I automatically downvote comments of this form whenever I see them. Comments should be written in such a way that encourages curious and thoughtful conversation and not emotional manipulation.
If you look at my account age and number of comment upvotes you'll see that I don't care about comment upvotes at all and have never made any effort to increase them.
My original comment was to highlight that I think the ratio of positive to negative feedback for what is an impressive effort by an individual seems unbalanced. There's lots of negative feedback and very little positive feedback.
I think positive feedback is important - it's good to know what you're doing well in addition to what you're not doing well.
As someone who has designed a product from scratch before I also think it's incredibly easy for people who haven't gone through that process to underestimate the time and effort involved.
>Not every showcase automatically deserves a compliment.
You're right. I do find, however, that the "default" reaction to showcases is to point out all the flaws, but not reinforce any of the strengths. To me that seems unbalanced.
I'm sure many HN users are content with this form of feedback - that's fine. I personally think that when receiving feedback, finding out what has been done well is as important as finding out what hasn't.
The "point out flaws but not strengths" thing is something that has always bugged me for one simple reason: If you only tell me what you don't like, I don't know what I need to try to maintain while fixing the flaws to keep what IS good/useful/etc.
As someone who lives in the negative hemisphere, right, not everything has to be positive. But hey, I think it was cool he did this, and he hit the HN jackpot in attention, I find merit in his effort to make something, anything.
^ agree, I mean did the OP expect to make a polarizing product like the keyboard without some criticism?
also, this thread is a gold mine of insight they can use to refine their product for the market. ie take off the stupid orange knob and hide the made in the uk nonsense and stop naming the product like a mars bound space rocket
“The Market” isn’t “readers of Hacker News.” It’s part of the market, but it would be foolish to let critiques here drive decisions. If we listened to Hacker News Dropbox potentially wouldn’t have been a thing.
I'm guessing it will be an expensive keyboard. As such, HN is probably the best market because we will be the early adopters, and our colleagues will see our awesome new thing and perhaps also want one.
Dropbox is a very useful thing for most people, and it's not expensive. That's a very different scenario than this keyboard+HN.
This is one product that I think HN might be "the market" (or at least a huge chunk of it).
The key IMHO is to sort through the comments/critiques and dismiss the overly negative grumpy ones from the people who crap on everything, but hone in on the ones that have a ring of truth to them. Those should be used to drive serious thought about improvements. At least, that's what I would do.
