points by pg 17 years ago

Ok, ok, enough Erlang submissions. You guys are like the crowdsourced version of one of those troublesome overliteral genies. I meant more that it would be better not to submit and upvote the fluffier type of link. Without those we'll be fine.

icey 17 years ago

This place was starting to look like λchan, thanks for putting the cork back on it.

alecco 17 years ago

Can that request to skim the fluffy links be permanent, please? :)

[edit]

  • bendotc 17 years ago

    I'm in total agreement. In the effort to become boring, Hacker News just became more interesting than it has been in the last couple weeks (silly links to Erlang Shen aside).

    I come here for this sort of stuff, or for thoughts on business, not to hear what computer nerds think about macroeconomics, politics, and flirting. If I wanted that stuff, I know Reddit's address.

    • jpwagner 17 years ago

      While I agree with the sentiment, I don't like the example used.

      I found the twittershouldhireme blog a good lesson: KNOW your audience. That girl was surely noticed by Twitter execs and she did something simple that no one else in her position thought to do.

      Erlang posts also belong here and politics usually does not, but don't pick on the twittershouldhireme girl. She's fantastic.

      • bendotc 17 years ago

        While I didn't find the twittershouldhireme lady very interesting, I don't know why you're complaining that you don't like my using it as an example, since I didn't.

        Was this reply was meant for another comment?

        • jpwagner 17 years ago

          PG said that the twittergirl had little value and you agreed, nothing personal, just saying I happen to have found value in it.

          What I will never understand about this community:

          I get negative Karma for defending an article that was clearly appreciated by some and this guy gets 10+ points for saying "what are you complaining about?" (something of zero value.)

          • thepanister 17 years ago

            This community is confusing me more than you...

            When it comes to up-voting and down-voting... you will see all of these crazy things!

          • bendotc 17 years ago

            Actually, I said I agreed to the post I was replying to, not to PG's post. Sorry you think it had zero value.

            For what it's worth, I never said nor meant to imply that I thought the website of the lady who wanted a job with Twitter isn't suitable for HN, though I don't find it to be exemplary. It's a whole lot more on target than (as previously stated) articles on macroeconomics, politics, or flirting.

            None of this is to say that I actually disagree with your point on the silly nature of what garners karma and what collects down-mods, but that is a topic for another time.

jasonlbaptiste 17 years ago

holy shit, i stepped away for like 30 minutes and the entire front page is Erlang. I just submitted the Innards of Erlang article as a response to PG's post/an inside lol for the community (the article is a decent primer though). Almost the entire front page is a bit much guys...

  • trickjarrett 17 years ago

    I chuckled when your story came up, and then I laughed out loud when, like you, I came back 20 minutes later and the entire front page is Erlang stories.

    Many Lolz.

    In the next few years we'll begin saying, "You remember when pg told us to submit Erlang stories?" "Oh yeah, good times."

    • markessien 17 years ago

      Or in a few years it could be - remember when HN was not only about Erlang?

  • joe_the_user 17 years ago

    Boring is fine. All Erlang, all the time is a problem

  • albertcardona 17 years ago

    As of 22:12 European time, it's the first page and the second page. Olé!

    • jacoblyles 17 years ago

      I've been driven to the new page for the first time.

    • gdee 17 years ago

      :) What's European time? I imagine we (you and me) share Central European Time (CET) but ET?

webwright 17 years ago

Ooooh, HackerNews meme. You realize how tempting it is to submit this to TechCrunch, etc., don't you?! TC Linkbait Headline: "Elitist Hacker News shuns the rest of us by pretending to be about Erlang! Oh, and somehow this relates to Twitter!1!!!1!!"

  • jibiki 17 years ago

    I don't think it's memeworthy. Too much of a "you had to be there" thing.

    I just can't think of a situation where it would be funny to say "quick everybody lets talk about Erlang."

    • oconnor0 17 years ago

      Quick everybody lets talk about Erlang!

rglullis 17 years ago

I checked the frontpage and had to look at the calendar: for a brief while I thought "Wow, March really flew by. Is it April already?"

Btw, I think you just got yourself an idea for April fools: accept only links about Java or Visual Basic.

russell 17 years ago

Hey, this was my first belly laugh at work in quite a while. The downside is that I will now have to skim every boring title to make sure I havent missed a gem.

  • crad 17 years ago

    I too suffered from this... both the laugh and then the concern of missing something good.

peregrine 17 years ago

pg the Problem isn't that fluffier stories are up its that people are hungry for more of everything. I read Hacker News, Reddit, and even Digg in that order mostly every day and if there was another site that provided interesting stories and or decent comments I'd add it. It is the pursuit of information that's driving me mad.

mattmaroon 17 years ago

You could probably do what Stephen Colbert does and direct everyone to vote for you in various contests around the net. The Paul Graham wing of the International Space Station perhaps?

gibsonf1 17 years ago

Seeing that many Erlang links is truly entertaining - a true phenomenon

  • ynd 17 years ago

    I have missed this side of HN. Feels like christmas.

    HN should have esoteric/alternative articles like that at all times.

albemuth 17 years ago

I've been laughing so hard at the extreme geekiness of these articles, for some reason the video on youtube was of the funniest things I've seen in a long time :D

shafqat 17 years ago

What were the mainstream publications that mentioned HN?

anc2020 17 years ago

It'd be interesting to see the stats on how much it affects the site's traffic!

siculars 17 years ago

i call collusion. somewhere there some back channel irc rolling...

doki_pen 17 years ago

Browsing from blackberry I thought I was on the wrong page. Lulz

mdonahoe 17 years ago

i love hacker news

ErrantX 17 years ago

phew :D so glad you commented this. I think some people were taking it too literally..... there is a limit ;)

mroman 17 years ago

pg, I have wanted to read about your thoughts on the Ruby programming language for a long time now, I have simply not wanted to impose or be a nuisance by clamoring for an essay . . . that would be absolutely great I think, I have gathered a few quotes from you about Ruby, and they are all positive (it is one of the reasons I developed an interest in the language) and I would love to read more: positive, negative, and neutral.

Thank you pg.