alt Hacker NewsI like this guideline, at least in principle.
But I have some concerns about suppression of comments from non-native English writers. More selfishly, my personal writing style has significant overlap with so-called "tells" for AI generated prose: things like "it's not X, it's Y", use of em-dashes, a fairly deep vocabulary, and a tendency toward verbosity (which I'm striving to curb). It'd be ironic if I start getting flagged as a bot, given I don't even use a spell-checker. Time will tell.
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I think translation should be the only exception. It might even need to be, given how all automated translators use LLMs these days. The only alternative I see is to have people post in whatever language they're most comfortable in and then everyone else has to translate for them which just feels inefficient.
And of course, a more limited exception for posts about LLM behavior. It might be necessary for people to share prompts and outputs to discuss the topic.
This is for their own good. Nobody cares about imperfect language online so long as you are trying to express real human thoughts. But if it smells like AI then everyone will hate it, rule or no rule.
The rule just makes the will of the community clear to those who want to respect it.
Almost the entirety of the technology world is English-native. That ship has sailed a long time ago. One can’t learn about any new technology without English, whether it’s a new algorithm, a new library, or a new SaaS service. I don’t think HN should be that exception. Just learn English. (English isn’t my first language either, but then I look back at my parents forcing me to learn English from a young age and really appreciate that.)