As a low-karma, long-time lurker, I'm not sure I've ever really seen the kind of submissions he is looking for. Can someone provide examples of submitted content that would meet his criteria of deeply technical discussion worthy news?
Solving The Hacker News Problem
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Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#52Ah yes, the cycle of website life. * Hot new community forms at Site X. * Site X residents refer to themselves as the New Wave of whatever. Much better than older Site W because of features/members/dynamic/demographics 1, 2 and 3! * Site X's reputation spreads to former hot new sites T, U, V and W. Site X begins to attract more and more new users. * Site X denizens begin linking articles at T, U, V, W and vice versa.…
How about, instead of a single community, the site runs as a set of "cohort" communities that each only allow direct sign-ups for their first year in existence, but then run a bit like leagues thereafter? If people like you on HN/2011, you might be invited into HN/2010, then HN/2009, etc. It could also be automatic/karma-based: if you earn enough karma on HN/2011, you start again on HN/2010 with 1 karma point (though you can also stay on HN/2011, marked as an alumnus/boddhisattva.
Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#53For what it's worth: I feel safe saying that most high-karma users of HN have a variety of severe concerns with it. My experience asking this question over email has generally been one of getting gigantic essay-length responses. In my official capacity as "representative of people dorky enough to have karma this high", we do officially declare: stuff's broken. Needs unbreaking.
In my official capacity as commenting wind-bag, I'll second that.
HN started as a way for YC guys to communicate. It was about startups, the tips and techniques to make one, to grow one. Once PG opened it up, it became "stuff hackers like", which meant cool deep tech stuff. But the tech stuff was there because after a while, all the startup stuff just ran together.
Then "stuff hackers like" kept drifting wider and wider. I was happy with that, but now that the traffic numbers are through the roof, what I'm seeing is the 1% snark factor is out of control. If each member of HN said something truly snarky only once a month, there would still be thousands of snarky comments a day on here. It's just too much noise.
HN has always been driven by emotion: the only reason to click that button is to express your emotional response, good or bad. Sure you can rationalize that in various ways, but in principle it's about how the thing makes you feel.
Now we have the love-fest stories, the hate-fest stories, the snide jokes that get upvoted, the trashing of "rate my startup" posts (I still can't believe how some of the startups are treated). It's becoming less of a community and more of a mob.
I think maybe the story titles might look mostly the same, perhaps, but the quality of the stories and the quality of the conversations have changed quite a bit.
Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#54Ah yes, the cycle of website life. * Hot new community forms at Site X. * Site X residents refer to themselves as the New Wave of whatever. Much better than older Site W because of features/members/dynamic/demographics 1, 2 and 3! * Site X's reputation spreads to former hot new sites T, U, V and W. Site X begins to attract more and more new users. * Site X denizens begin linking articles at T, U, V, W and vice versa.…
>I've been watching this same story play itself out since Slashdot circa 1998. And every social subculture in history. See: the constant evolution of the social scenes around music genres. It's just a fact of social psychology we have to live with. "Dubstep was sooo good back in 02 before the students found out about it! I mainly go to future-garage raves now man..."
Let's not forget it happens in the actual cities we live in as well! Hipster-ism gives way to gentrification and then the cool kids move because there are way too many yuppies. Same things happens with suburbs - they get too crowded and people start moving to the country to make new suburbs.
This is just human nature, it manifests itself in the clothes we wear, the cars/bikes we drive, the places we live, it certainly also applies to social websites. I'd be surprised if it doesn't - we'll see how facebook fares, or if there will be a coolkid exodus as the rest of the world gloms on.
It's basically a (sub)cultural arms race that everyone fights in.
Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#55I think if we could see random frontpages from days a few years ago, we'd find that the top stories weren't that different, and that there was the same "jack of all trades, master of none" aspect to the site that Alex complains about. It may be that a site whose design spec is to satisfy hackers' intellectual curiosity would necessarily feel that way. Maybe I'll write something to regenerate past front pages, so we c…
A diff of past front pages would be interesting. Some historical front page entries:
2007AUG15 ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/1119991071/
2008FEB08 ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/2250089864/
2009JAN18 ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3205568708/
2009MAR12 ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3347109733/
2010JUN24 ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/4728476663
Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#56For what it's worth: I feel safe saying that most high-karma users of HN have a variety of severe concerns with it. My experience asking this question over email has generally been one of getting gigantic essay-length responses. In my official capacity as "representative of people dorky enough to have karma this high", we do officially declare: stuff's broken. Needs unbreaking.
Agreed -- I've always enjoyed my debates with you. I'd go so far as to say I sort of miss them. But I've now grown so frustrated by the pedantic replies that I get on HN nowadays that I've had to start deleting my comments after I write them. And I've stopped visiting as often because it takes too much effort to write a response that I feel avoids the trollish responses I fear I will get.
One of the final straws for me was when the title of my submission about being replaced as CEO was changed -- a topic of significant relevance to this audience I think. What frustrated me most was that I had picked a useful title and the not only was the new title worse in my eyes, but it was surrounded by rather inane posts about the "top X reasons for Y" or something about Apple or Google. It just didn't add up for me.
And on a tactical level, there is unquestionably a tendency for people to respond to the top post rather than start a new top-level thread. The lack of collapsing of threads is quite frustrating on long topics.
For now, I'm mostly done here.
Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#57I think if we could see random frontpages from days a few years ago, we'd find that the top stories weren't that different, and that there was the same "jack of all trades, master of none" aspect to the site that Alex complains about. It may be that a site whose design spec is to satisfy hackers' intellectual curiosity would necessarily feel that way. Maybe I'll write something to regenerate past front pages, so we c…
Maybe you should compare random /active pages from years back. I don't know, I only found out about /active this last month, but I'm guessing the problem will be more visible there.
Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#58Perhaps pg is too busy these days to really tend to HN? God knows I would be if I were carrying his load.
Did you forget all about the "More" debacle? Gods know it was a terrible decision, but it showed some active participation by pg.
I must show my HN immaturity here by admitting I don't know what that is :)
Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#59Well, obviously posts/discussions like this can actually be contributing to the "problem" as some see it, but I'll make one point I don't see made here.
For me personally, I've learned a lot and grown a lot over the course of the 4 years I've been lurking and occasionally contributing here. So for me, a smaller percentage of the stories/articles/posts/discussions appear as insightful as they once did. I don't mean to knock HN in any way, in fact my point is that that fact is not a "problem" to me. New users are joining everyday and everybody who makes the effort to learn and contribute gets something out of HN.
It's what brings me back 17 times a day.
Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you forward those essays to the powers that be?
If there is one thing that causes an internet community to break down, its when a subsection of that community has too muh communication out-of-band in another medium that the rest of the members are unaware of. Especially if that other medium is more synchronous than the primary medium. Many forums have been driven to civil war by a clique plotting on a secret IRC channel. (Note: I am not suggesting that is happenin…
What was the point of this comment? (I'm asking seriously; I want to know what it is you're specifically trying to communicate here).