A) The HN guidelines [0] specifically request discussions not be about tangential annoyances (like the format of the content) rather than the submission itself. Now this potentially interesting discussion has been hijacked by the top thread, and most replies, being to yet another boring rehash of "why isn't this a blog post".
B) In this specific case, the author has written a lot of blog posts about this domain (though not this specific subject), and those have been on HN frontpage occasionally. So whatever reason they had to use Mastodon for this writing, it at least wasn't coming from ignorance or a lack of a platform.
A) I'm a writer. The way something is written is a really important part of the meaning of a piece of writing. Style and formatting is meaningful and important, and isn't just window dressing. It is sometimes more important than the "content" of the message.
Arguable, but I don't think it's a slam dunk that replacing the multimillenial standard interface for connected text (ie. text!) with an entirely novel chain of multiple artificially separated UI widgets is either tangential or just to do with 'format'. Personally I won't read them, so at a minimum these links when unidentified merely waste my time, and presumably that of other irritated commenters here. Maybe they should be identified. My personal preference would be a large red banner with a phrase like ("Warning: this is not a real piece"). But a small less tendentious icon would also be fine!
The guideline is not that the form is not annoying - some people, like you, will find it annoying not matter what. It's that the complaints about it are boring, repetitive and corrosive to the forum just as any boring and repetitive thing is. That's very much a slam dunk of truth.
multimillenial standard interface for connected text
> The guideline is not that the form is not annoying - some people, like you, will find it annoying
I'm not arguing that the guideline can be breached when some people find it annoying. That would be silly.
I'm arguing that posting articles as trains of social media posts may not be tangential nor merely a matter of formatting. If that's the case (I agree it's 'arguable'), then complaining about them isn't in breach of the guidelines.
> This is pretty ahistorical.
Claiming that posting multiple social media objects is a mere 'formatting' alteration to our legacy of textual culture is pretty ahistorical.
complaining about them isn't in breach of the guidelines.
It is, the guideline was written specifically to address the repetitive twitter complaints - you can find this explanation in the mod commentary. Also, pretty much anything repetitive runs counter to the rubric of the forum and this complaint is very, very repetitive.
our legacy of textual culture
Our 'legacy of textual culture' contains a huge variety of formats and representations. The notion that some single one is a representative standard, let alone has lasted for millennia is not an accurate one.
> you can find this explanation in the mod commentary.
If the guidelines are unclear, and arbitrarily rule non-articles in as articles, then they must be rewritten to make the fiat clear.
> Our 'legacy of textual culture' contains a huge variety of formats and representations. The notion that some single one is a representative standard, let alone has lasted for millennia is not an accurate one.
Irrelevant, as no-one made that claim. Your unevidenced insistence on your personal take on a novel tech as inarguably part of a historical tradition is just quiet shouting. I disagree, but agree it's arguable. You think it's not arguable, because it's obvious to you, and you believe what's obvious to you should be enforced.
> Hence the clarification. Hopefully it's clear now
Nope. Just that you personally rule something as tangential that I claim is not. Your personal preferences aren't present in the guidelines (I've read them). If you wish them to be so, please rewrite the guidelines.
> You made the claim
I did not. I claimed that there is such a thing as textual articles, ie. an existential claim. I didn't claim that all text, or all articles, or all textual articles, share a single format. They exist, and claiming that something entirely different (a chain of social media objects) falls under the same head is false. Claiming that two different categories of things are, in fact, different, is not 'tangential', or related only to 'formatting'.
Oh I see the problem. No, I'm not personally claiming this, I'm trying to explain the context and motivation of the site guidelines. Here are some relevant comments from the site moderator:
The guideline is there because of the repetitive twitter complaints, I'm not making this up as a fun messageboard hypothetical. Complaining about tweets being on twitter is a well-established off-topic topic.
please rewrite the guidelines
That is impractical for a number of reasons (i.e. the guidelines can't be exhaustive and also aren't, by design) which, coincidentally is also a subject of much moderator commentary. Happy to dig it up for you if interested.
I did not.
I mean, you talked about this millennial-something standard but there's obviously no such a standard. That's all. I'm happy to accept it as a rhetorical flourish and move on.
As pvg won't permit a reply to his/her/its post, I'll reply to myself:
> The guideline is there because of the repetitive twitter complaints, I'm not making this > up as a fun messageboard hypothetical. Complaining about tweets being on twitter is a > well-established off-topic topic.
This is very obviously untrue. Almost every single thread in HN is littered with repetitive comments. Try posting anything about Linux, note-taking. Dare mention an Electron app, and if it's installed with an install.sh, then .. instant death. You'll be buried under an avalanche of near exact copies of comments that have been posted tens of thousands of times on HN.
This is manifest bad faith on the part of the mods in general or pvg in particular: an individual dislike on their part of this particular repetitive complaint, which prompted a vague guideline with plausible deniability in mind.
These aren't the kind of judiciously-applied guidelines I could willingly sign up to. Unfortunately we're not permitted to delete accounts here, so I'll remove my email address, log out, and stay out of the comments.
Comments about formatting tangents are especially repetitive and don't earn their keep by bringing anything valuable to the thread; complaining about tweet threading is pissing in the wind: people aren't going to stop threading (or boldfacing the wrong text, or setting things white-on-black background, or using 200MB font stacks, or breaking the back button) just because some person on a message board gripes about it. Beelow is a link to the 'dang comments about this, there's no uncertainty, and you should stop pretending like there's a live debate about whether HN welcomes comments about tweet threading on stories that aren't about tweet threading. It does not.
It's worth knowing that HN is a common law system, not a civil law one: there's the guidelines page, and then there's a long history of moderator interpretations and addenda, and to grok the totality of our rules, you need both. Think of the guidelines like the Constitution, and Dan as the Supreme Court.
Edit
This comment was originally snottier and stated that someone had already posted the mod comment link, but, nope, I was just wrong about that, and I do apologize. Chagrin is a powerful decongestant and so I'll be less snotty in the future.
I'm a regular user here, I don't permit or not permit things. Click on the timestamp of a comment next time to reply to it if the reply button is hidden.
This is very obviously untrue
I mean, complaining about things being on twitter is offtopic on HN which I've gone to exhaustive and exhausting lengths to explain. You can't just declare it untrue, that would be, as you say, a personal preference of yours rather than the reality.
Another good way to promote that guideline is to flag the bejesus out of such comments. It really needs a bit of a cultural push to stick, sort of like plainly rude yelly comments get swiftly flagged.
B) In this specific case, the author has written a lot of blog posts about this domain (though not this specific subject), and those have been on HN frontpage occasionally. So whatever reason they had to use Mastodon for this writing, it at least wasn't coming from ignorance or a lack of a platform.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html