Downvote me if you want to but I honestly can't believe that this article got 50 upvotes (at the time of this writing), while some really thought provoking articles get 2 or 3 upvotes. I know that whining about how HN content has dropped in quality is frowned upon here, but I can't just stand beside and say nothing while content like this slowly ruins HN, turning it into a caricature of it's former self.
So, at the risk of getting heavily downvoted I'm still going to express my opinion: This. Doesn't. Belong. Here.
I came to HN because the articles were interesting and USEFUL. If I wanted digg or reddit or slashdot, then I'd go to those sites. Totally agree, this doesn't belong here.
If something violates the guidelines, flag it don't bitch and moan and violate the guidelines yourself, twice.
Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.
If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)
"user: Sandman
created: 161 days ago"
Please, read the guidelines before you double-violate.
Electromagnetic, as you already know, there is a karma threshold for flagging. I didn't have enough karma to flag this article. This was the only way for me to point out that this article, in my opinion, doesn't belong on this site.
I am a new user, yes. However, I have read the guidelines and the articles that I posted were, in my opinion, in accordance with those guidelines. On the other hand, I believe that some of our newest users haven't read the guidelines and regard this site as something of a Reddit or Dig clone. My comment was simply meant to raise awareness of those users about what isn't regarded as a suitable article for HN.
To quote the guidelines -
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Anyway, I'm not the kind of person that constantly whines on about how some of the articles don't belong here. Actually, this is the first time I said that something doesn't belong here. If there was another way for me to express this belief instead of writing that comment, I would have done it.
The problem with flagging is that it doesn't kill the submission once that has hit 10 points. So at this point you're only flagging to attract moderator attention to it.
This article has been around all day now, and if moderators haven't seen it yet, they probably will once they get online. And if they have seen it, well, that would make it an okay article, I suppose... (Wouldn't be too happy with the latter, so I'm hoping that they just haven't seen it yet.)
Doesn't matter; that's like saying there's no point in calling the cops once the bank robbers are running off with the money.
The Mod's aren't going to nail it if they think it has favourable attention. They'll mistakenly believe it has favourable attention when no one is flagging it.
There's no point complaining, it's a violation of the guidelines. The article violates the guidelines, so why not flag instead of expose yourself to moderator attention yourself, it's stupid.
Yeah this won't last much longer. It's still against the guidelines to make a post saying "flagged". In controversial articles with interesting discussions, the thread about "flagged" is incredibly uninteresting.
Yeah, shows how fast communication can make things happen. If someone droodled something like on a piece of paper 100 years ago it would probably only end up in the fireplace after the family have had its amusement of it.
But then its ashes would spread the carbon of its amusement into the soul of everyone through their breathing and eating . . . you know, in hippy theory at least.
This reminds me of my new compression algorithm. Start with this dictionary:
WORKMAKEDO ITS USHARDBETTFASTRONGERMORE THANHOURNEVAFTOV
Then encode each line of the lyrics as ordered pairs of start index and length values:
(0,4) (10,3)
(4,4) (10,3)
(8,2) (10,3)
(4,4) (13,4)
(17,4) (33,2)
(21,4) (33,2)
(25,4) (33,2)
(27,6) (33,2)
(35,9)
(44,4)
(45,3)
(48,3) (33,2)
(49,2) (33,2)
(51,3) (33,2)
(0,4) (10,2) (13,1)
(54,2) (33,2)
Since the dictionary is 56 characters long, this compression scheme is amenable to base64 encoding of the start-length pairs for 7-bit ASCII transmission channels, or packed binary representation for an even more compact representation.
As Gene Hackman told Willem Dafoe in Mississippi Burning, "This was fucked up before we got here."
Nothing wrong with a little fun before it gets flagged.
I really love the connection between popular culture and things only we can appreciate, flow charts, Venn diagrams, bar charts, etc. In addition to the laughs, makes the world seem a little smaller.
OK, it is just a bit of fun and maybe not very HN-like, but I can imagine it did take quite a bit of thought to make and it is a powerful representation.
If only every business/technical illustration I saw at work was as clear and concise as this was...
