> Please don't complain about website formatting, back-button breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be interesting
I partially disagree with this rule. Complaining about crappy websites might be annoying for old timers and experienced techies, but let's say a 22 years old fresh web programmer joins HN to read some news and discovers that the framework/library/tool his PM suggested produces a pile of crappy code that renders every site slow as molasses, and the same product is used on a site getting hard criticism about that; he could actually learn something and ultimately find a better solution for his job, ultimately contributing to make a better web. I know I'm taking it to the extreme, but you get my point.
I would rather change that line to something like "keep concise and to the minimum all comments about site formatting, slowness etc. and don't reply to those comments unless you can recomment a better solution".
But it is a rule and as such should be respected whether we agree with it or not, for the same reasons we don't ignore the other rules in that list. You can email dang and try to convince him to change it, he's an extremely reasonable person.
I partially disagree with this rule. Complaining about crappy websites might be annoying for old timers and experienced techies, but let's say a 22 years old fresh web programmer joins HN to read some news and discovers that the framework/library/tool his PM suggested produces a pile of crappy code that renders every site slow as molasses, and the same product is used on a site getting hard criticism about that; he could actually learn something and ultimately find a better solution for his job, ultimately contributing to make a better web. I know I'm taking it to the extreme, but you get my point. I would rather change that line to something like "keep concise and to the minimum all comments about site formatting, slowness etc. and don't reply to those comments unless you can recomment a better solution".