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Would this community prefer to be under the radar?

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Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?

#11

Post by astrec »

jey wrote: post #7

Yes, because TechCrunch has nothing to do with hacking. But the other posters are definitely right: this is an inevitable problem and it would be nice to have a more organic solution. I've been trying to read and vote on the "new" page more.

Me too. Typically I'd just follow any interesting headlines from the rss feed, but since the first TechCrunch mention I've been interacting with the site quite a bit more (hopefully in only positive ways).

I think ultimately hacker news is a coterie of sufficient specialisation that it will survive multiple techcrunchings, or at least fare better than digg - as Yogi Berra said, "Nobody goes there any more. It's too crowded".

Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?

#12

Post by murrayh »

Security by obscurity is not really security at all. Perhaps the TechCrunch exposure has hurt the site in the short term, but if Hacker News can get through these growing pains it will be presumably better off in the long run.

The problem as I see it is not the size of the community but the concentration of thinkers. It doesn't really matter what articles make it to the front page; if the comments start filling up with cheap one liners and unreasoned opinions I know that I for one will lose interest.

Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?

#13

Post by prakash »

You are a tad bit late in asking ;-). In any case, you can't control the kind of folks that read your website and decide to show up and participate here.

That said most of the folks here (at least the ones that have been using this website from the earlier days) don't want this site to go the way of other communities online, where the quality of shared articles and conversations go down the drain.

From my time on many online communities, it's not the question of if the quality will go down, but when, and I would rather see an algorithmic solution to reduce the noise.

Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?

#14

Post by trekker7 »

I think the influx of new users is good; there are probably people out there with great things to contribute, that don't even know Hacker News exists. But of course the characteristics of the front page posts are going to change.

There is a somewhat controversial solution here... just make a sub-section of HN where only users that signed up X days ago or earlier can post and vote. If X = 250 and guys like me get screwed, then so be it; if old timers are actually better voters, then at least I'll get to read the better articles. And you don't lock out new users either, since the original front page will still exist without any vote weighting.

Personally I don't know if the quality of the "old timers" section would be any better or worse than the normal front page, since "interesting" is a subjective concept. But if you miss the Hacker News of the good old days, then maybe it makes sense to bring that HN back to the future this way.

Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?

#15

Post by jhollingworth »

since the demographic of this community seems to be smart entrepeneurs, what would people here think is the best way to protect their community from the morons of the internet? I remember in olden day's when digg was a friendly place full of interesting news, nowadays its, well it's digg... Keeping a social news site under the raydar is not the solution to this problem, there should be something more elegant, any ideas?

disclaimer i am not looking for ideas for a news site, personally i feel the market is saturated, and anyway i have far better ideas to work on ;)

Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?

#16

Post by [deleted] »

SwellJoe wrote: post #8

It'll grow regardless. And, the kind of people that will actually stick around tend to be the kind of people we want to be here. The rest will wander off...back to digg, over to reddit, whatever. Thanks for asking, though. Now it's pg's job to figure out how to programmatically maintain the high quality of results. I still want one down-vote per week for stories...sometimes a story shows up that makes me feel ill to…

[deleted]

Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?

#17

Post by cousin_it »

When the programming language site Lambda the Ultimate was going through the same transition, the admin asked long-time members for their opinions. The discussion is here:

http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1550

My answer from there:

For me, read-only access to "old LtU" would be more pleasant than read-write access to "new LtU". In other words: I don't think bans are "extreme", my vote is for a lot more bans, and I wouldn't mind being banned myself if this improves the signal-to-noise ratio.

Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?

#18

Post by staunch »

jey wrote: post #7

Yes, because TechCrunch has nothing to do with hacking. But the other posters are definitely right: this is an inevitable problem and it would be nice to have a more organic solution. I've been trying to read and vote on the "new" page more.

> Yes, because TechCrunch has nothing to do with hacking.

Techcrunch is read by a huge percentage of all hackers working on tech startups. This site was previous called "Startup News". I think the TC audience is very well suited.

Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?

#19

Post by SwellJoe »

cousin_it wrote: post #17

When the programming language site Lambda the Ultimate was going through the same transition, the admin asked long-time members for their opinions. The discussion is here: http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1550 My answer from there: For me, read-only access to "old LtU" would be more pleasant than read-write access to "new LtU". In other words: I don't think bans are "extreme", my vote is for a lot more bans, and I…

Bring Back Snacks (he of the hasty banhammer).

If you have no idea what I mean, be grateful.

Re: Would this community prefer to be under the radar?

#20

Post by derefr »

murrayh wrote: post #12

Security by obscurity is not really security at all. Perhaps the TechCrunch exposure has hurt the site in the short term, but if Hacker News can get through these growing pains it will be presumably better off in the long run. The problem as I see it is not the size of the community but the concentration of thinkers. It doesn't really matter what articles make it to the front page; if the comments start filling up wi…

When it comes to so-called "public knowledge," obscurity (and more largely, apathy) is the only kind of security there is. All websites eventually die (or, at least, all that I have observed); you can't "keep a community alive" so much as you can just let it die peacefully, leaving its children (perhaps under the same ownership!) to continue its legacy.
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