https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20250627 is a fine example of how to do this, by someone who has expertise and is close to the current situation. If you post like that instead, you satisfy readers' curiosity, which is the purpose of this site. Admittedly it's more work, but it sounds like you have something a lot to offer here.
What else but a shallow dismissal for people who are ignorant but hold forth on some technical issue? The Internet is right there, they could just as easily do their own homework as post something uninformed.
People always hold forth on things they're not expert in. That's humans being human. We can't change that. What is possible is for those who know more to share some of what they know with those who want to learn. Doing that leads to much better discussion.
Well do an AMA. I have questions for you. What do you think of the Safety Officer not having any idea what was going on when the Hazmat team showed up? His not having a plan of what to do. The crew not wearing safety equipment. The Hazmat guy having to be the one to suggest shutting down the HVAC. Do you think this company handled this well at any point in the removal operation or subsequent events? What should happen to them? Should they be liable for the clean up costs? Should they be decertified? What sort of training did anyone on their crew have to allow this all to go down this way? If even one person at the company knew what they were doing, wouldn't they have raised some objections or sent a memo at some point? If everyone at this company has no idea what they are doing, should the DoE be paying them millions to deal with radioactive waste removal and transport?
I made medical imaging software for treatment and diagnosis for a living. I suspect I have the same reaction to posts on oncology issues, or FDA issues that you are having to posts on this issue.
It's important to realize though, that some of the people commenting with obvious gaps in their knowledge are making a sincere attempt at learning more. Especially if the subject is technical rather than political in nature. Just jump in and correct them. If any of your corrections are received poorly by the user, well, just let them alone. But the curious, 'seeker' types will probably thank you and ask for more information.
> Comments are pointers, not destinations.
And from site guidelines:
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
Maybe we are blathering about something we know nothing about to the point where we just sound ridiculous to someone who does know, eh? Rather than shaking his head in exasperation and moving on, OP takes a moment to try to let us know that we're wasting our time.
If we really care, I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to find and perhaps read some authoritative document describing best practices for radioactive waste management, eh?
Some battles just aren't worth it.
It doesn't mean you have to get into tedious arguments with ignorant, indignant comments. (It's interesting how often those two go together.) It's enough to post a substantive top-level comment explaining what you know from the point of view of someone in the business. In the end, those tend to get upvoted; there's one at the top of this thread right now. And as moderator/gardeners we do what we can to give those more interesting plants a fighting chance vis-à-vis the weeds.
I wonder if a "badge" system could help HN. Validate professional work experience with a moderation team ("astrophysicist" because I have published papers there, or "radiation control tech" or "worked in the movie industrie" or "work at google" or whatever). You could even have more than one badge (say "work at google" and "race sailboats for sport"). And when you post a comment there is a list of all your badges below the text field an you can select one to be displayed noticeable above your comment to indicate "I have professional knowledge of this". Of course you can still post a comment without selecting any of your badges because "radiation controll tech" says nothing when discussing cookie recipes, but is an important thing to not when discussing a radioactive spill.
"man that seems really dumb to have a removal process that involves a cutting tool being anywhere near the capsule!"
Theranos and its ilk were all no surprise to me. The entire venture ecosystem is perfectly designed to catch charlatans, not experts.
On the other hand, I think it's common to see threads that have a high ratio of signal to noise. Like a link to a scientific paper will have one of the authors of the paper in the comments section answering questions.
So it is ironic and kind of funny when you realize that, apart from a few outliers, Hacker News is just as infested with trolls, fools, posers and Dunning-Krueger as the rest of the web.
It is just a more polite /g/ without the pictures and memes. That's not an insult, just an observation of how deeply the sets of users here, there, on Reddit and elsewhere overlap.
If only, at the least, because the guidelines for HN discourage pointless and inane commentary. Reddit is very likely 95% funny one liners on the most active threads.
There are observably obvious differences, even if you don't agree with any inferences made from them.
Also, Reddit is not 95% funny one liners in technical or programming forums, and the guidelines for those often also discourage pointless and inane commentary. Go look at /r/askhistorians for one example. Reddit does have a higher tolerance for humor and memes than HN, but humorlessness is not necessarily an indicator of quality.
To your first point, I also concede that this phenomenon certainly does happen, but would counter with the notion that this probably happens with every conversation ever, with it perhaps tapering off in materials science discussions amongst experts.
I'd assert that it's happening right now, given that neither of us are likely informed enough to empirically support our assertions here. We're merely sharing our rather vague impressions.
That's fair. A lot of what happens here can probably be described as anecdotes sparring with other anecdotes.
No, it merely hides the insults behind 300 words of passive-aggressiveness.