The worst thing that can happen to a Show HN post is people totally ignoring it. When I post something of my own here, I expect a certain amount of honesty and criticism, as long as it is constructive.
Being "constructive" does not mean being congratulatory, shoulder-patting, praising, or anything like that. It means that the feedback itself should provide some kind of value, preferably for the benefit of the project creator.
"What's the points of this? I've been doing the same thing since the 80s by piping four shell commands together?!?" - is not really constructive.
I think using the slightly formulaic "What I liked: X; What could be improved: Y" has a high chance of being constructive feedback.
Meta discussions can also be OK.
The infamous "does the world really need another X", almost invariably deserves the answer "yes, why not?".
Letting people know you are unlikely to use the code/product/gizmo is also constructive, especially if you can manage to tell why.
As the article stated, comments in the form of "Y U MD5 STOOPID" is never OK and generally don't do anything to raise the level of the discourse. As a general guideline, comments designed to make the commenter look good or smart or superior do not usually improve the quality of the discussion, even though mods sometimes tend to reward this behavior for some reason. They shouldn't.
> "What's the points of this? I've been doing the same thing since the 80s by piping four shell commands together?!?" - is not really constructive.
> Letting people know you are unlikely to use the code/product/gizmo is also constructive, especially if you can manage to tell why.
By my reading, these two statements contradict each other. The quote you claim is not constructive seems to me to be saying the author sees no value in the hypothetical contribution, as it offers no additional power and less convenience than what he already uses, and therefore he won't be using it. Isn't that exactly what say is constructive in the second statement I quoted? If I'm misunderstanding you here, can you explain what I'm missing?
That first example was from a specific thread that actually happened when someone made a command-line tool, and the whole discussion was incredibly unproductive and full of "look at me, I solved this eons ago, this developer sucks" messages. You're probably right there is a fine line between those two, but they are not identical. It's the difference between saying why you wouldn't necessarily use something on the one hand, and showing off while berating someone on the other.
Asserting that a project's existence is unjustified is a bold and unfriendly claim. Saying that it's simly not for you is another matter entirely.
As an example, this would be a constructive way of saying something similar in my opinion, though some may still find it close to the line:
"I have found my own solution to this problem that involves piping these commands together, so this project isn't for me, but good job for creating a simpler solution for people who don't necessarily need control over every step of the solution, but rather just care about the final result."
This indicates why it's not useful for the poster, but it acknowledges that not everyone is a CLI genius and that the new solution could work for people with different tools requirements.
> "What's the points of this? I've been doing the same thing since the 80s by piping four shell commands together?!?" - is not really constructive.
> I think using the slightly formulaic "What I liked: X; What could be improved: Y" has a high chance of being constructive feedback.
I think you're confusing critique with mentorship. What you're expecting is something wise to be said, or at least something useful to you. Critique is not necessarily like that. Critique is encompassing pretty much everything that others answer you freely, like it or not.
Being "constructive" does not mean being congratulatory, shoulder-patting, praising, or anything like that. It means that the feedback itself should provide some kind of value, preferably for the benefit of the project creator.
"What's the points of this? I've been doing the same thing since the 80s by piping four shell commands together?!?" - is not really constructive.
I think using the slightly formulaic "What I liked: X; What could be improved: Y" has a high chance of being constructive feedback.
Meta discussions can also be OK.
The infamous "does the world really need another X", almost invariably deserves the answer "yes, why not?".
Letting people know you are unlikely to use the code/product/gizmo is also constructive, especially if you can manage to tell why.
As the article stated, comments in the form of "Y U MD5 STOOPID" is never OK and generally don't do anything to raise the level of the discourse. As a general guideline, comments designed to make the commenter look good or smart or superior do not usually improve the quality of the discussion, even though mods sometimes tend to reward this behavior for some reason. They shouldn't.