At least one commenter figured out how we operate here:
Yep. Hilariously it was literally the first reply, which was promptly ignored by everyone.
If @scr4 is wondering why their link now has 1.1k hits… that’s why.
Somebody has a pretty clear insight to how this place works.
What exactly is “Hacker News”, and how do they work? It looks like someone started a discussion there just by linking to some random 15-year-old thread here. Why are they discussing it there instead of here?
It’s just a discussion site in a similar vein to Reddit or (going back further) Slashdot. It’s popular with IT-type people but has diverse content. Often just “I had a question and found this old link that discusses it. Maybe others will find it of interest as well. Discuss.” Probably someone searched for the exact question posed by the OP in the SDMB thread and found the answer there. And who knows, maybe we got a handful of users to stick around.
Is it a standing joke here that if someone posts the right answer it gets ignored? I have noticed that people often ignore me, is that because I’m always right?
I’m sorry, did you say something?
Here, we even ignore the OP.
I’m not sure that follows from the rules of logical implication, but I’ll let it slide.
There does seem to be something to the idea that concise and accurate answers are the most likely to be ignored. And that’s not even considering the people that read a thread title and nothing else (even the original post).
In particular, a link-only answer will likely be ignored. You’re expected to at least give a little bit of a summary.