Having gone through design critiques in architecture school and presented designs to clients in practice, I would say that taken individually the specific comments were largely constructive criticism when I last read through the thread (yesterday evening) and that the discussions of the problems with designers were largely consistent with my experience in a design discipline.
The project in general looked to me like the response to an academic design brief, and taken individually, the comments were largely consistent with the sorts of comments which might be made during a juried crit in a US architecture school. However and although piling on can occur in a juried crit, the pack mentality is constrained by time - unlike typing on the internet.
On the other hand, nothing in the comments when I looked at them stood out as even close to the limit of what a paying client or one's boss might say during a design presentation or review. Tptacek's top comment might have been conveyed as a Jobsian "This is shit," and perhaps accompanied by a discussion of whether or not the designer should seriously consider ever reproducing.
One factor I think led to the volume of comments is that unlike most "Show HN" threads, this one was not couched as an MVP (or in this case a minimum viable design), but as finished project. In other words, it wasn't "Here is the landing page with a new logo and a drop down menu for choosing the language," with changes to the editor left for version two.
What I think contributed to a more visceral reaction among HN'ers is that the designer as hero approach feels at odds with the particular ethos of Wikipedia which is iterative and collaborative - particularly telling considering that audacity and heroism are among the common fetishes of HN.
In my opinion, the level of criticism was not unusual for HN. I've read plenty of blunt responses (closer to "This is shit") on "Show HN:" threads. It was really the volume which was unusual, and that I attribute to the subject matter.
The project in general looked to me like the response to an academic design brief, and taken individually, the comments were largely consistent with the sorts of comments which might be made during a juried crit in a US architecture school. However and although piling on can occur in a juried crit, the pack mentality is constrained by time - unlike typing on the internet.
On the other hand, nothing in the comments when I looked at them stood out as even close to the limit of what a paying client or one's boss might say during a design presentation or review. Tptacek's top comment might have been conveyed as a Jobsian "This is shit," and perhaps accompanied by a discussion of whether or not the designer should seriously consider ever reproducing.
One factor I think led to the volume of comments is that unlike most "Show HN" threads, this one was not couched as an MVP (or in this case a minimum viable design), but as finished project. In other words, it wasn't "Here is the landing page with a new logo and a drop down menu for choosing the language," with changes to the editor left for version two.
What I think contributed to a more visceral reaction among HN'ers is that the designer as hero approach feels at odds with the particular ethos of Wikipedia which is iterative and collaborative - particularly telling considering that audacity and heroism are among the common fetishes of HN.
In my opinion, the level of criticism was not unusual for HN. I've read plenty of blunt responses (closer to "This is shit") on "Show HN:" threads. It was really the volume which was unusual, and that I attribute to the subject matter.