Quote Investigator has basically trained me to reflexively assume that if a quote is pithy and timeless, then it probably didn't originate from someone famous.
One of my favorite quote investigations: whether Stalin said, "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."
Same thing with etymologies: if it has a funny story and not "from the PIE kwa* or possible borrowed during the late 5th century meaning basically the same thing" then it's probably false.
My reflex is to go the Quote Investigator first whenever I see a quote I would like to share. If I don't find it there, then I rather not reshare it.
Yes, the site doesn't cover all quotes. But the large number of mis-attributed quotes I've seen shared has made me conservative in what quotes I reshare.
As someone who has quoted it on HN recently, I don't think that misattributing it is going to get anyone into trouble. What's going to get them into trouble is not having any life experience that validates the sentiment.
Yes, and people want to be listened to and attributing what you are saying to someone with better credentials is essentially a way of increasing the power of what you are saying.
We've asked you numerous times not to post like this, so we've banned the account. We're happy to unban accounts if you email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we believe you'll stop breaking the guidelines.
The andrewclunn character has some spiky opinions and a sometimes edgy tone, but certainly doesn't appear to sabotage any discussions here, give or take the odd misplaced facetious comment. More than once, he has initiated long perfectly readable subthreads, meaning his input has got someone thinking. So here's my one worthless vote to reinstate him ASAP.
It's pretty easy for someone to get unbanned if really they want to use the site as intended. Failing that, the vouching system gives banned users' good comments a fair shot at being restored, so even the worst case isn't that bad.
In your options there's one called "showdead". That allows you to see any comments that have been killed by the HN software or by user flags.
If you then click the timestamp of a dead comment you'll see a [vouch] link. If enough people click that it'll change the post from dead to live. Mods get to see vouches, and people who get enough vouches I think get converted from banned to unbanned.
I think there's a karma threshold four vouching, but I don't know what that is.
One of my favorite quote investigations: whether Stalin said, "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/21/death-statistic/