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

Ask HN: Is anyone else tired of reading the same articles?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 31 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else tired of reading the same articles?

#21

Post by RiderOfGiraffes »

emilepetrone wrote: post #15

Why is this post falling? 7 pts in 28 minutes should be front page, and now its on the second page? I thought it was a valid argument to raise...

Since you ask, personal opinion only ...

Articles without links have a penalty applied. This site is about finding cool stuff, not about musing over the site itself. If it isn't a link to somewhere else then it's less likely (although not certain) to fall strictly in line with the site's original intent.

Yes, it's a valid point to raise, but a better way to raise it would be to write a proper article, discussing the issue, proposing possible solutions, weighing their merits, then making specific suggestions, and finally, submitting a link to the item to wrote. This is much to be preferred over just complaining.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else tired of reading the same articles?

#22

Post by emilepetrone »

RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #21
emilepetrone wrote: post #15

Why is this post falling? 7 pts in 28 minutes should be front page, and now its on the second page? I thought it was a valid argument to raise...

Since you ask, personal opinion only ... Articles without links have a penalty applied. This site is about finding cool stuff, not about musing over the site itself. If it isn't a link to somewhere else then it's less likely (although not certain) to fall strictly in line with the site's original intent. Yes, it's a valid point to raise, but a better way to raise it would be to write a proper article, discussing the…

Thanks- I am doing that right now +1

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else tired of reading the same articles?

#24

Post by LeBlanc »

kaffeinecoma wrote: post #12

You could try the "new" link up at the top, and up-vote things you find interesting. There are a LOT of worthy submissions that never make it to the front page.

Completely agree, often I find the best articles on /new and not on the front page.

I think a great experiment for pg would be to set /new as the front page for HN and see what happens.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else tired of reading the same articles?

#26

Post by Mz »

One issue you run into is that, in any field, the tried and true gets repeated a lot (for newcomers and for other reasons). Anything 'really new' tends to not be embraced because it's untested and no one knows for sure it will work...etc. Those are valid concerns. Even for areas where people are doing cutting edge stuff, you pretty quickly develop a few respected "experts" and anything which doesn't readily agree with their view will be dismissed, actively attacked, etc -- even in cases where it is a non-competing alternative which addresses, in effect, a different issue/niche. Also, those folks who already know all the tried and true stuff will tend to be fairly small in number. Trying to get a good conversation going among that small group will tend to be tough and not well-suited to a very public discussion.

If you can think of a way around some of those issues, more power to you. But it is an issue that tends to crop up to some degree on every forum I have ever belonged to, regardless of the topic in question.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else tired of reading the same articles?

#27

Post by calebmpeterson »

LeBlanc wrote: post #24
kaffeinecoma wrote: post #12

You could try the "new" link up at the top, and up-vote things you find interesting. There are a LOT of worthy submissions that never make it to the front page.

Completely agree, often I find the best articles on /new and not on the front page. I think a great experiment for pg would be to set /new as the front page for HN and see what happens.

I like your experiment of making /new the homepage for a trial run and see what happens

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else tired of reading the same articles?

#28

Post by emilepetrone »

pg wrote: post #6

I've been a user longer than you have, and I still learn things. I think the solution, as with any news site, is not to assume that everything on it will be stuff you don't already know. Which seems pretty obvious, really...

I think the problem isn't about learning new things - it is repeating information which may not even be as good as the original article.

I'm going to work on building a site that will be the Best of HN. Somewhere people can go to see the best article on AB testing or Design. If a better article comes along, it will receive more votes and become the new #1.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else tired of reading the same articles?

#29

Post by dholowiski »

JayNeely wrote: post #10

I think you're suffering from confirmation bias. Certainly there's a lot of repeating content, but there's tons of new stuff on HN constantly. An unfortunate habit I once noticed in myself was skipping over articles whose titles I didn't understand, even though if I want to learn about new things that's almost certainly the wrong way to go about it. You'll notice (and remember) what you're familiar with much more tha…

I like the new page better than the front page- sure there's some crap but there is tons of great stuff there.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone else tired of reading the same articles?

#30

Post by jamesbritt »

emilepetrone wrote: post #28
pg wrote: post #6

I've been a user longer than you have, and I still learn things. I think the solution, as with any news site, is not to assume that everything on it will be stuff you don't already know. Which seems pretty obvious, really...

I think the problem isn't about learning new things - it is repeating information which may not even be as good as the original article. I'm going to work on building a site that will be the Best of HN. Somewhere people can go to see the best article on AB testing or Design. If a better article comes along, it will receive more votes and become the new #1.

"If a better article comes along, it will receive more votes and become the new #1."

More votes than what? A previous article's votes on HN?

As time goes on, there are more people reading HN, so even shitty articles posted today may get more votes than stellar articles posted two years ago.

Post reply on HN