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YC Annual Letter 2017

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#31

Post by matt4077 »

mbrock wrote: post #7

I think it's a mistake to conceive of Reddit as a place to "waste time." It's also the new platform for lots of important online communities to discuss and disseminate information.

Or, alternatively, a place for mediocre minds to meet and become truly terrible, together.

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#32

Post by minimaxir »

kevinmannix wrote: post #9
icpmacdo wrote: post #4

"Hacker News has 3.4 million users per month and 350,000 users per day, with 4 million pageviews a day. There are just under 1 million registered accounts, with several hundred added each day. Users post around 1,000 articles and 6,000 comments to the site per day." First time I have seen those numbers, very impressive. I thought there were a lot less users.

I am sure there are many more lurkers than active participants

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#33

Post by danvoell »

Hi sama, great letter. The only thing I would suggest for the next round is to identify some misses. What are some RFPs that you tried to solve and didn't and what are your insights on this? The two annual letters I like the most are Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. From Bill Gates, I don't mind the endless optimism since it is a foundation. From Warren Buffet, I expect the ole hoe hum, we'd be trillionaires if we had seen this trend or we were totally wrong about this ...

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#34

Post by yawgmoth »

On the HN front - I would like to see a discussion and then the implementation of measures to encourage meaningful discussion, discourage low-effort comments, but also to discourage "negative lurking". Like other users noticed, there are a lot of lurkers -- some of which downvote and move along. Because frequently I do not understand why a post has been downvoted (my own or otherwise), I am discouraged from contributing. A byproduct of both negative lurking and the fact that HN has concluded itself to be an intelligent community is that some readers, including myself, feel judged by the score next to our comments. There is someone out there reasonably asking "why do you care?" but it is also important to acknowledge that this phenomenon exists. Part of the longevity of a user's participation is the willingness of the community to accept it.

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#35

Post by nsgoetz »

icpmacdo wrote: post #4

"Hacker News has 3.4 million users per month and 350,000 users per day, with 4 million pageviews a day. There are just under 1 million registered accounts, with several hundred added each day. Users post around 1,000 articles and 6,000 comments to the site per day." First time I have seen those numbers, very impressive. I thought there were a lot less users.

Those numbers surprised me to, but I don't think they should have. I rarely meet anyone in software that doesn't know at least know about HN, if not actively read it. In fact, my sister's boyfriend is in tech even though she isn't. When I met him for the first time, my sister felt a little left out because we immediately got into a deep discussion about an article we read on here. We live across the country from each other, but reading hacker news is almost expected for both of us.

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#36

Post by alok-g »

gregoire wrote: post #8

Is there a reason why this is published on Sam's blog and not on YC's blog? Oh and a remark on the letter's typography: the double spaces after periods should be single spaces.

Double spaces help make it easier to read. Perhaps a matter a preferences...

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#38

Post by asperous »

yawgmoth wrote: post #34

On the HN front - I would like to see a discussion and then the implementation of measures to encourage meaningful discussion, discourage low-effort comments, but also to discourage "negative lurking". Like other users noticed, there are a lot of lurkers -- some of which downvote and move along. Because frequently I do not understand why a post has been downvoted (my own or otherwise), I am discouraged from contribut…

You're not given the ability to downvote without reaching a certain karma threshold, so there are already some thoughts in place there.

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#39

Post by notatoad »

>I expect that people will talk about software as one of our secret weapons.

can you give a broad overview of what software YC creates? What does it do? is it internal tracking and stats, or exclusive libraries that YC-funded companies get to use to build their products?

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#40

Post by nsgoetz »

yawgmoth wrote: post #34

On the HN front - I would like to see a discussion and then the implementation of measures to encourage meaningful discussion, discourage low-effort comments, but also to discourage "negative lurking". Like other users noticed, there are a lot of lurkers -- some of which downvote and move along. Because frequently I do not understand why a post has been downvoted (my own or otherwise), I am discouraged from contribut…

Maybe just making the downvote button more like the "report" button on facebook. Force people to either select from a few common reasons, or leave a comment to explain their downvote. This could also gently enforce norms for what the downvote is for, since some people new to HN might not realize it isn't the same as reddit. Obviously there are details to iron out, but I think it would be helpful.
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