I submitted the links because there had been a discussion about how many politics and economics articles there were on the front page. So, I noodled around and found some articles on language features that might stimulate an interesting discussion here on HN.
And, even though I'm a python programmer, there were one or two elements on the list that made me want to go read up on them in the documentation.
I originally found the articles on javascript.reddit, not on stack overflow. It's not an attempt to boost stack overflow at all. These are the first few posts from stack overflow that I've actually read.
If people would like to see different kinds of articles, or more interesting articles, I'd be thrilled if others would take the time to find them and submit them: http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=BrandonM
Sorry about the unwarranted criticism. I think that one annoyance was that the titles presented programming in a way that someone would present video game cheat codes or easter eggs, when they were (of course) nothing of the sort. I realize that those were the original titles and you can't really be blamed for that; it is a reflection of the current population of stackoverflow, though, and is one example of why I don't exactly rate its submissions highly.
I am also sorry that I made a false assumption about the reason for the submissions, especially since that is what bothered me the most. I had assumed that you were a "loyal" member of stackoverflow and were trying to encourage us to join in on the discussion over there, which seems somewhat counterproductive as far as the community here is concerned. Coupled with the numerous stackoverflow comments I've seen to the effect of, "If something is wrong, why don't you go fix it?" (also not your fault), it just touched a nerve I guess.
I applaud your efforts to improve the community and to help shift it away from its recent politics/economics trend. As you can see from the link you gave, I submitted an article today, too, so I am in the same boat that you are (in terms of trying to improve the HN community). I am not much of a blog reader and don't often have much of value to submit, but since I did today and I had improving HN on my mind, I was glad to have something to contribute. I am certainly grateful for members like you who get the ball rolling with many good contributions, I just get disappointed when I feel that the community is overvaluing a submission without a lot of substance. (For example, I liked your "PHP vs. Lisp?" submission, however slanted it was, better than the stackoverflow ones.)
Also, I realize that your link was mostly a swipe at my lack of submissions, but that does not mean that I am not an active, contributing member. Nearly all of my 800+ karma has come from commenting, and I feel that buried in there are some gems with useful personal experiences, educated opinions, etc. In addition to that, I spend a decent amount of time lurking... reading submissions and voting them up if I feel they are "Hacker News"-worthy, reading countless comments and voting up/down based on my opinion of their value to me and to the community as a whole, and heading over to the "new" page when I have some time to kill.
Surely there is something to be said for members who contribute not as a primary filter (initial submitter) but as a secondary filter (up/down-voter who reads and votes on the submissions and comments) or as a commentator, adding insights to the discussion provoked by the article. After all, many of us are here at Hacker News for not only the low signal-to-noise ratio but also the unparalleled quality of discussion, and there are many non-submitting members who are doing this work behind the scenes without a lot of recognition.
I'm sorry about the swipe, Brandon. I was just annoyed, because there were a couple of disparaging comments about the stack overflow articles. I should have handled that a bit more tactfully. My bad.
I submitted the links because there had been a discussion about how many politics and economics articles there were on the front page. So, I noodled around and found some articles on language features that might stimulate an interesting discussion here on HN.
And, even though I'm a python programmer, there were one or two elements on the list that made me want to go read up on them in the documentation.
I originally found the articles on javascript.reddit, not on stack overflow. It's not an attempt to boost stack overflow at all. These are the first few posts from stack overflow that I've actually read.
If people would like to see different kinds of articles, or more interesting articles, I'd be thrilled if others would take the time to find them and submit them: http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=BrandonM