> If you want to say otherwise, you'll have to take issue with that argument.
Meta is death. Some meta discussion can be interesting and lead to useful discussion, but in general meta discussion sucks.
Imagine a content free meme-spew post.
Either it gets downvoted by the community (down vote ability appears after 500, maybe 750, maybe higher karma), and the poster knows what they did wrong.
Or it gets downvoted and the baffled new user asks why, and someone then posts "TINR; but here's our guidelines so that's why you got the downvotes". I'd suggest that the TINR in this case is useless, and the rest of the post is of dubious value. If a person is unable to grok the style of HN from the faqs and existing posts without someone having to handhold them then maybe they need to lurk more. But at least it's welcoming and helping people become productive. Notice that this is a tiny subset of TINR posts.
Imagine the content-free post gets a TINR comment before it gets a downvote. It antagonises other communities, it adds no value to the thread, it makes people think that TINR posts are acceptable, it clutters threads, it encourages meta-discussion, etc.
Meta is death. Some meta discussion can be interesting and lead to useful discussion, but in general meta discussion sucks.
Imagine a content free meme-spew post.
Either it gets downvoted by the community (down vote ability appears after 500, maybe 750, maybe higher karma), and the poster knows what they did wrong.
Or it gets downvoted and the baffled new user asks why, and someone then posts "TINR; but here's our guidelines so that's why you got the downvotes". I'd suggest that the TINR in this case is useless, and the rest of the post is of dubious value. If a person is unable to grok the style of HN from the faqs and existing posts without someone having to handhold them then maybe they need to lurk more. But at least it's welcoming and helping people become productive. Notice that this is a tiny subset of TINR posts.
Imagine the content-free post gets a TINR comment before it gets a downvote. It antagonises other communities, it adds no value to the thread, it makes people think that TINR posts are acceptable, it clutters threads, it encourages meta-discussion, etc.