Re:“Miss Shilling's Orifice” helped win the war (2020)
by dang on Thursday May 20, 2021 @03:00PM
(#27225574)
I understand the provocation, of course, but the problem with posts like this is that they duplicate what they denounce and end up creating what they're complaining about.
On HN it's important to not to react reflexively, but rather to pause long enough for one's reflective circuits to kick in [1]. Then one can assess what's actually going on instead of snapping to the grid of the nearest pattern-match. That lets one consider the options for making a valuable contribution.
In this case, a quick look makes clear that this is a serious article full of interesting historical material. It's true that there's (presumably) a crude double entendre in the title, but that's there for historical reasons. It's not gratuitous. Unless I missed something, the article doesn't exploit it, and indeed is entirely respectful of Miss Shilling.
Commenters here need to be reflective enough to handle that sort of distinction. It's not difficult, if you're playing in the key of curiosity, which is the intended spirit of this site [2, 3].
On HN, it's best to leave shallow provocations in place and respond to what's interesting. We generally edit shallow provocations out of titles to help with that. This case was an exception, because of the historical angle. We could have replaced that specific name with some euphemism that would be nicer for contemporary ears, but that would be anachronistic and, I think, anti-intellectual. We try not to be Bowdlers here [4].
What I did instead, with the help of a reader who emailed, was put the term in quotes and capitalize it—to try to convey that it's a name with a specific historical meaning—and rely on the intellectual maturity of the readers for the rest. The latter is not always the best bet, but it worked out pretty well in this thread.
On HN it's important to not to react reflexively, but rather to pause long enough for one's reflective circuits to kick in [1]. Then one can assess what's actually going on instead of snapping to the grid of the nearest pattern-match. That lets one consider the options for making a valuable contribution.
In this case, a quick look makes clear that this is a serious article full of interesting historical material. It's true that there's (presumably) a crude double entendre in the title, but that's there for historical reasons. It's not gratuitous. Unless I missed something, the article doesn't exploit it, and indeed is entirely respectful of Miss Shilling.
Commenters here need to be reflective enough to handle that sort of distinction. It's not difficult, if you're playing in the key of curiosity, which is the intended spirit of this site [2, 3].
On HN, it's best to leave shallow provocations in place and respond to what's interesting. We generally edit shallow provocations out of titles to help with that. This case was an exception, because of the historical angle. We could have replaced that specific name with some euphemism that would be nicer for contemporary ears, but that would be anachronistic and, I think, anti-intellectual. We try not to be Bowdlers here [4].
What I did instead, with the help of a reader who emailed, was put the term in quotes and capitalize it—to try to convey that it's a name with a specific historical meaning—and rely on the intellectual maturity of the readers for the rest. The latter is not always the best bet, but it worked out pretty well in this thread.
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
[4] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...