If you have something substantive to say on the topic, including constructive criticism, please do share. If it's just gratuitous negativity disparaging the community you choose to be a part of, please refrain.
Why are there so many negative comments? And most of these aren't even constructive criticisms.
Do you have any suggestions to give the founding team? Any constructive criticism to offer? I'm sure they'd like to hear it. On the other hand, snide remarks provide hardly any value to anyone.
If we're going to assume that people agree with the post, then we should also be assuming that people agreed with OP's general tone, which really doesn't read as negative criticism so much as constructive criticism. Again, OP's second post was basically, "Appreciate your response to my feedback, best of luck!". Heck, if we're looking at "people who agree based on upvotes alone" then "This is genius, because so many people have this problem," is the second highest-voted comment.
There's constructive criticism (the Dropbox thread) and unconstructive criticism (the Monkey Island thread).
Whether or not the core of your criticism is legitimate, I have a certain distaste for this kind of negativity and I don't feel that it adds to the quality of discussion on this site.
No matter what is built you'll have people complaining about any aspect of it they can find. Most of them won't so anything more than that. They won't contribute a single thing, pat themselves on the back and call it a day.
There's not even a hint of constructive feedback in that post. Not even an attempt at resolving any of the identified problems or thinking further about implications of possible changes.
This is the first place where we received such negative feedback. Even if we're a bit surprised, I think some of them might be quite useful and interesting. However, some of them are just not even worth responding, to use kind words ahah
Are you suggesting that only positive critique should be allowed? If I was the developer I'd love to hear that user's honest take on my creation rather than the "oh, cool!" type of input.
Where's the constructive criticism? It's a community, you can take your ball and go home but if you actually want better feedback start by giving some.
I'm sure this is an emotional reaction to receiving overwhelming negative feedback, not a calculated one. I'd direct my comment toward the site rather than OP.
More seriously, I think the tone of the comments on HN is not supposed to be binary: we don't aim for solely critical or supportive feedback. We try to improve things by offering suggestions. That my comment made it to the top means my suggestions were widely viewed as useful, or at least my criticism was accurate.
The magnitude of the negative sentiment isn't really important. It's the fact that, if the creator values HN's input, he should accept suggestions more-or-less from the top down, and weight them appropriately. If he scrolls to the bottom to see some generic 'Good work man, way to hustle', he doesn't really get it, does he?
"X is rubbish and whoever came up with this is stupid"
To be clear, I agree that this is awful feedback. It contains no useful information and personally insults the creator, both of which are bad. There is a world of difference between saying "this design is bad" and "you are a bad designer". Even good designers come up with truly terrible ideas constantly--it's part of the process. (I certainly have more than my share!)
Obviously people get emotionally attached to their work. I certainly do. But you have to be able to let go of that while you're receiving feedback, or there's no point in you getting any.
Again, to be clear, I would not say "this is rubbish" or "this is awful" while critiquing a design. I would say "this is not working at all because you're ignoring considerations A and B". There are many, many design ideas that just do not work. As a designer, you are much better served by someone telling you "this is not working at all, you need an entirely different approach" than you are by someone trying to hint you towards evolving a design that's based on a faulty premise.
Many people here seem to be commenting on the quality of the code in question - they are clearly missing the point.
Others are offering advice on how to deal with negative criticism on the Internet. They, too, miss the point. The point of this post isn't to complain "people trashed my work and now I feel bad, make me feel better", it's a call to action - "as a community, we should be better than this". Of course there will always be trolls and negative comments on the Internet. Instead of just preparing ourselves to deal with them, we need to be proactive about creating a community where everyone feels welcome to share what they're working on, even novices who don't write perfect code. (my previous thoughts on the matter: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4700490 )
There is always room for feedback, but please make it constructive.
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