Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What would it take for you to stop using Hacker News?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 51 posts

Re: Ask HN: What would it take for you to stop using Hacker News?

#11

Post by muzani »

The community in Ask HN is far too pessimistic and sociopathic. I think there's a lot of very ambitious and intelligent people here who have become cynical and narrow focused.

There are certain topics that have to be avoided. Ironically the attitude is very anti-startup and against newer, unproven technology.

I'd actually love to see a community where we could discuss startups and new tech. Subbreddits tend to swing too young - opinions are strong but unfounded, and there's a strong bias against the tried and true. Something like Indie Hackers attract the idealists who have big dreams but do not act on them.

Re: Ask HN: What would it take for you to stop using Hacker News?

#13

Post by busymom0 »

Nicksil wrote: post #9
sfgweilr4f wrote: post #6

The "downvote due to disagree" thing really annoys me. That and making the text become washed out. I hate it. Especially when I've seen excellent unpopular comments disappear because they were simply unpopular due to politics. Its anti-intellectual. I want to see unpopular comments because they often reveal something interesting. People should be downvoting because its not appropriate intellectually (adds nothing, eg…

>The "downvote due to disagree" thing really annoys me. Absolutely. I agree with everything else you bring up as well. I would love to see down-voting vanish completely and the flagged/dead threshold increased dramatically. It is too easy to drown out otherwise thoughtful, quality contributions to discussion. Instead we see two to three word witty quips float by unscathed. It is the antithesis of the type of discussi…

Is there any details on what the current flagged/dead threshold is?

Re: Ask HN: What would it take for you to stop using Hacker News?

#15

Post by busymom0 »

eucryphia wrote: post #7

As soon as the whole front page is links to paywalled MSM sites, I already check the (source) before clicking. If I wanted to read the headlines and first paragraph of articles in the NYT I'd just sign up for their daily email digest.

I am surprised HN doesn't have an auto-link to archive.org and archive.is for all the link posts. I used it often to bypass the paywalled sites.

Re: Ask HN: What would it take for you to stop using Hacker News?

#16

Post by Nicksil »

busymom0 wrote: post #13
Nicksil wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The "downvote due to disagree" thing really annoys me. Absolutely. I agree with everything else you bring up as well. I would love to see down-voting vanish completely and the flagged/dead threshold increased dramatically. It is too easy to drown out otherwise thoughtful, quality contributions to discussion. Instead we see two to three word witty quips float by unscathed. It is the antithesis of the type of discussi…

Is there any details on what the current flagged/dead threshold is?

>Is there any details on what the current flagged/dead threshold is?

No idea. I suspect the details are kept so as to avoid abuse, but I've not read either-or from an authoritative source.

Re: Ask HN: What would it take for you to stop using Hacker News?

#17

Post by muzani »

sfgweilr4f wrote: post #6

The "downvote due to disagree" thing really annoys me. That and making the text become washed out. I hate it. Especially when I've seen excellent unpopular comments disappear because they were simply unpopular due to politics. Its anti-intellectual. I want to see unpopular comments because they often reveal something interesting. People should be downvoting because its not appropriate intellectually (adds nothing, eg…

I disagree to an extent. There's a Facebook bot that reposts things from HN to FB and you can see the significant drop in quality. When people can't downvote, they yell at each other. There's a similar effect on HN main page where you can't downvote submissions, only flag. So disagreements with the submission float to the top of the comment list, whereas the people who agree give it a silent upvote. One of mine in the past got about 70 upvotes and 20 disagreeing comments, but few people write comments in agreement because a comment like "Well said!" adds nothing to the conversation.

However, the fact that this comment was downvoted into negative numbers without any criticism is quite disappointing. It's a good demonstration of where the system doesn't work.

Re: Ask HN: What would it take for you to stop using Hacker News?

#18

Post by sfgweilr4f »

muzani wrote: post #17
sfgweilr4f wrote: post #6

The "downvote due to disagree" thing really annoys me. That and making the text become washed out. I hate it. Especially when I've seen excellent unpopular comments disappear because they were simply unpopular due to politics. Its anti-intellectual. I want to see unpopular comments because they often reveal something interesting. People should be downvoting because its not appropriate intellectually (adds nothing, eg…

I disagree to an extent. There's a Facebook bot that reposts things from HN to FB and you can see the significant drop in quality. When people can't downvote, they yell at each other. There's a similar effect on HN main page where you can't downvote submissions, only flag. So disagreements with the submission float to the top of the comment list, whereas the people who agree give it a silent upvote. One of mine in th…

Yeah, the downvote I got for this comment kind of proves my point. Which is why I rarely post or comment.

This is not stopping me from using HN as such but there are plenty of posts I'd otherwise comment on. But what is the point if they just vanish? If the goal is to only be seeing the approved groupthink, what is the point?

A possible solution is to force people to comment if they want to downvote.

I think I'll resurrect my old reader tool and ditch the HN web site as such. This little experience has reawakened an old gripe.

Re: Ask HN: What would it take for you to stop using Hacker News?

#19

Post by da39a3ee »

c3y wrote: post #4

Less transphobia and general lack of social consciousness. I'm often on the edge of not reading HN as it is for those reasons, but unfortunately there isn't anything else like its better sides.

Can you link to some examples of transphobia on HN? I read HN a lot and don't think you're correct to make that claim.

Re: Ask HN: What would it take for you to stop using Hacker News?

#20

Post by abnercoimbre »

sfgweilr4f wrote: post #18
muzani wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree to an extent. There's a Facebook bot that reposts things from HN to FB and you can see the significant drop in quality. When people can't downvote, they yell at each other. There's a similar effect on HN main page where you can't downvote submissions, only flag. So disagreements with the submission float to the top of the comment list, whereas the people who agree give it a silent upvote. One of mine in th…

Yeah, the downvote I got for this comment kind of proves my point. Which is why I rarely post or comment. This is not stopping me from using HN as such but there are plenty of posts I'd otherwise comment on. But what is the point if they just vanish? If the goal is to only be seeing the approved groupthink, what is the point? A possible solution is to force people to comment if they want to downvote. I think I'll res…

I think HN staff must be aware this is a point of contention in the community. It's brought up too regularly for them to not look into it?

It's worth staying optimistic; this is overall a great place.

Post reply on HN