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A comment on “Default Position Should Be Skepticism” and other advice for data journalists. Parent comment

Re:“Default Position Should Be Skepticism” and other advice ... by smt88 on Tuesday June 11, 2019 @11:17AM (#20156178)
I doubt many people here are "against" profanity. From only my own anecdata, my assumption is that it makes your comment sound emotional or childish to people.

For example, I agree with what you wrote recently[1] about diet fads, but you did yourself a disservice by starting the comment with, "What? No! Fucking hell."

Your position is reasonable, but it begins like a lot of angry, irrational rants that we see on HN. I assume some people downvoted without getting past the first sentence.

I think something similar happened when you railed against reddit[2]. I agree with you, but you come across as cranky.

Finally, I see some examples of personal comments that are often downvoted. In one case, you say someone is a libertarian without knowing them (and seemingly in a dismissive way)[3]. You also have at least one post flagged for being personal[4].

My overarching suggestion is this: HN has a very different implicit culture than reddit. While I agree with you on almost all of your ideological positions, I also agree with HN's downvotes most of the time.

The culture of "unemotional, value-add comments only" gives HN a much higher signal-to-noise ratio than reddit. There are also surprisingly few flamewars here.

If you find your emotions appearing in your comment, take a few more seconds to re-read and edit them out. I think that in the marketplace of ideas, yours are fairly reasonable and popular, but the tone seems to rub people here the wrong way.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20141441

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19572278

3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18781643

4. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18781789

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:“Default Position Should Be Skepticism” and other advice ... by stillbourne on Wednesday June 12, 2019 @11:57AM (#20165993)
Conversely, do you understand how petty it sounds me? "Ew, he used a cuss. Better down vote him." Does swearing detract from the formulation of my argument? No. Does it add a little spice to conversation? Maybe. However, the idea that I should not use a tone of voice that conveys shock when someone states something outrageous is beyond ridiculous. Yes the emotion and swearing is extraneous, but I'm not going to respond in plebeian fashion just on the off chance I might offend someone. We're a bunch of grown ups here, no need to pretend like this is some sort of library where we can't raise our voices a little.

I will admit that perhaps I got too personal on occasion. Also I was not aware of the rules for comments as I had not previously read them.

[ Parent | on HN ]