Patrick, this is condescending. I doubt you meant for it to come across that way, but that's how I read it. Most of the posts in the original thread could have conveyed the exact same information in a less dismissive, discouraging, and sometimes even hostile tone--it would have made them more valuable to our community.

You are right: It is condescending, and I downvoted it for that reason which has no doubt been cancelled out by like a hundred upvotes just because it is Patrick.

But, gee, how many other people get called by their first name instead of their handle? "Thomas" comes to mind, but I imagine it is a rather small club. Patrick is fairly introverted and gets super nervous when giving public speeches, even though he has experience doing so. On a much smaller scale, I have been in the kind of position he is in here on HN. I read his remark here as an attempt by someone with a lot of social pull and responsibility here but limited social savvy to affirm the good qualities of a forum he is very personally invested in. Yes, he did it less than smoothly. But his condescension is very likely a defense mechanism, knowing he is a big target and is very likely to be attacked. It is kind of him flinching, knowing it is coming and trying to steel himself for it.

I don't know what the solution is, either for HN or Patrick. But I do know how uncomfortable it is to be called out by my given name in public when most other people are hiding behind some anonymous handle or otherwise lower profile. I know how awful it feels to be delivered what amounts to a personal attack so very personally, by name, from semi-anonymous crowds. I don't think putting Patrick on the hot seat like that helps HN at all. In fact, it likely makes things worse.

One of the problems with HN is that it is a forum aimed at a largely socially awkward crowd. Most people who have the technical expertise to become influential here will be poorly equipped to perform crowd control duties, even though they essentially take that on as a de facto duty, like it or not. When they attempt to live up to that duty, it might help to cut them some slack and try to see the good intentions behind their sometimes mediocre execution.

I wish the leaderboard had 160 names on it. It is the top 150-ish people who have some hope of "fixing" the loss of quality that is so frequently lamented here. I don't know exactly how to do that on such a large scale, but I have a few clues about how to proceed. And trying to meet people like Patrick halfway is part of it.

(I apologize for how rambling this is. As is often the case, I seem to be running a fever.)

> "Thomas" comes to mind, but I imagine it is a rather small club.

I think this is a very interesting observation. One possible way to find this club might be to look at tptacek's profile:

"Must-read list: 'patio11, 'gruseom, 'anigbrowl, 'mechanical_fish, 'carbocation, 'potatolicious, 'grellas, 'dctoedt, 'yummyfajitas, 'tzs, 'rayiner, 'rprasad. Yeah, yeah yeah, 'pg too."

But even more interestingly, there's a way to social engineer yourself into the in-crowd. Open their profiles in separate tabs, click on "comments" and "submissions", and bookmark the lot of them. Instead of reading the Hacker News main page, open the tab group and read their comments and submissions. Agree with them for the most part, and take their side in arguments. Not 100%, or you'll come off like a sycophant. You're not looking for karma - submissions are much better for that - you're looking for acceptance by that group. When people call you by your first name, you've won.

I'm not advocating this, but I think it's interesting that it can be done.

:-) Though I have very serious doubts that would really work, at least not without having sufficient technical knowledge and intelligence to genuinely engage them in discourse. In which case you could join the in crowd on actual merit -- and probably would far prefer that method, for a variety of reasons. Some social circles you really can't fake your way into. This is probably one of them.

> And, as I have said twice already tonight on hn, I really need to go now.

> Later.

Go to wherever it is you need to go, Michele. By the way, I'm George, and I'm a hackaholic.

P.S. I'm social engineering you.

Mmkay, George.

(Though check the time stamp. I left, ran my errand, and came back. Though I will probably log off again soonish to sleep.)

My name is Dave :) I'm sorry about your fever.

I hold Patrick in extremely high regard, and I don't want anyone to read my previous comment as a personal attack or an attempt to place anyone in a hot seat.

I am Michele. I was not trying to put you on the hot seat either. It struck me as an opportunity to address some of the underlying issues in the forum, issues which sparked this submission. Please consider it a compliment that I thought your remark a worthy jumping off point.

And, as I have said twice already tonight on hn, I really need to go now.

Later.

I've read and re-read patio's comment and I don't see the condescension. Can you elaborate, please, as to what you find so condescending or derisive?

I don't find the comment derisive, in that it does not express contempt or ridicule. Rather, I find it somewhat patronising--it dismisses Peter's blog post as not specific enough by focusing on the question of content rather than tone.

The blog post was an exhortation to open our minds, to be more constructive with our peers and more creative as a community; I found it unfortunate that Patrick seemed to dismiss Peter's input by making that sort of detour in his comment. I probably would have ignored it except that the entire point of the blog post was to try being a bit less rigid with each other.

I didn't mean for my comment to become a "scrutinise Patrick" thread--it was just a comment.

Not sure who in the heck downvoted this, but I proposed a simple solution for the community that would help us explore these types of topics on each post.

Called - "Proposal: HWIGS HN: How would I get started".

You can find it in the New section - http://news.ycombinator.com/newest

Edit 1: For whatever reason, this comment seems to be a battleground. Been upvoted & downvoted so many times. Guess this comment symbolizes the struggle for those of us interested in preserving the quality of the community we have come to love, and with those that just love to downvote willy nilly.

I was under the impression you aren't able to downvote on this site. In the same way this site is Reddit except the fact you can't react negatively to anything (downvote), we now need to do the same for comments.

You either upvote or you do nothing. You either comment positively or you don't comment. Excellent job patio.

You can downvote comments, assuming you have enough karma (100? 500? something like that). You can't downvote stories themselves, however.

I believe the threshold is 400 karma

I keep hearing 500. It used to be 200.

As someone with 408 karma, I suspect 500 is probably more accurate.

Thank you. Have an upvote. It was 200 for me, so I was not sure.