Why I stopped reading HN (2010) • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#71

Post by etripe » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 9:32 AM UTC

LeCow wrote: post #5

dwrodri wrote: post #3

I uninstalled my 3rd party reddit app the other day for very similar reasons. I love reddit as a way for getting my tech news, but there's just so much about the platform that I don't like which is becoming harder and harder to avoid. The communities I really enjoy (r/cpp, r/MachineLearning, r/DataScience) are still for the most part wonderful communities and they provide killer feeds that let me stay up to date with…

Ditto. On Reddit even a percieved differing opinion results in hate mail, insulting and shouting. It's one of the reasons I never signed up to Twitter.

I'm relatively new to HN but a reddit "senior", and one of the things I really appreciate about this place is the relative lack of toxicity. To me, it seems people really come here for civil discussion and default to asking questions instead of flaming. Well, that and more people source their claims.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#72

Post by mola » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 9:32 AM UTC

cryptica wrote: post #28

I think one of the problems may be that many people on HN have moved from the lower and middle class to the upper class and so their attitude of fighting for innovation has morphed into an attitude of defending the status quo and suppressing innovation while shunning the contrarian 'hacker' ideals which they used to harbor. Unfortunately, for those of us who fell through the cracks of the system and are left behind (…

I grew up middle class, still am (although middle class has almost vanished), and hope to remain middle class. Infact, my moral compass says striving to be rich is bad.

I consider what is now considered innovation and entrepreneurism, overrated juvenile, and mostly hurtful.

The fact that people don't agree with you, doesn't mean they are against you, or try to protect their power by holding you back. They may just think differently than you.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#73

Post by RubenvanE » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 9:33 AM UTC

okamiueru wrote: post #64

RubenvanE wrote: post #32

These sentiments are quite familiar to me. That's why I've been building my own HN copy ( https://hackerdaily.io ). It shows all posts per day, which has a few benefits: 1. It doesn't become an addictive slot machine that updates every minute. 2. The conversations have already happened, which makes it easier to see which threads are interesting and informative and which are not. It also uses an outline.com like style…

I like the idea, but I'm wondering about the legality of copying the contents of news.ycombinator. Do you have any thoughts on this?

HackerNews has an open API (https://github.com/HackerNews/API). It doesn't say anything specific about the legality and there have been many HackerNews clones in the past. So as far as I know it should not be a problem, but if anyone can correct me I would love to hear so!

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#74

Post by nabla9 » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 9:33 AM UTC

kstenerud wrote: post #33

All forums ossify after enough time has passed and the initial population has been crowded out. People come to these places for various reasons: - To debate - To learn - To engage intellectually with other people - To be heard/validated - To gain social standing The problem is (like all human forums) that as the included population rises, you need to make a bigger and bigger splash to be heard, and that means that af…

> initial population has been crowded out.

This is called Eternal September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September If everyone is allowed to join, and there is little moderation, there is reversion to the mean aka reversion to mediocrity.

You need really strict moderation to keep the quality up. One of my favourite subreddits is /r/AskHistorians It's generally useless to post anything but question into the comments there because the quality of discussion is so high.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#75

Post by codegladiator » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 9:33 AM UTC

teekert wrote: post #50

After this I already zoned out: "Every community deteriorates over time. Every community gets new members who don’t understand the rules (or the rules just change), and things just deteriorate." People change, communities change, they grow apart. To call it deterioration is blatant narcissism and failure to look at the situation objectively without judgement.

I don't know, rest of the post goes on to describe comments like the one you make here.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#76

Post by teekert » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 9:34 AM UTC

kstenerud wrote: post #33

All forums ossify after enough time has passed and the initial population has been crowded out. People come to these places for various reasons: - To debate - To learn - To engage intellectually with other people - To be heard/validated - To gain social standing The problem is (like all human forums) that as the included population rises, you need to make a bigger and bigger splash to be heard, and that means that af…

I've said this before but, given time, the HN comment sections always sort themselves nicely.

I may encounter a nice article that I want to send to the management of my company for example, I refrian from doing this immediatly. Instead I leave the tab open and after a couple of hours I refresh en the top comment are almost always insightful and either reinforce my choice to send the article or make me decide not to.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#77

Post by wraptile » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 9:35 AM UTC

Real question here is whether HN a community or a glorified news feed? I think it's the latter and there's nothing wrong with that, I actually don't want a forum community, just a place where I can read the _news_ and some related comments. I don't think the design of this website is intended for extensive discussions people try to have here.

My actual problem with HN is clear astroturfing. The forums is clearly being gamed the same way reddit is, if not more and it's awfully offputting and honestly - scary.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#78

Post by pjc50 » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 9:35 AM UTC

Ma8ee wrote: post #48

foldr wrote: post #8

Given the focus on arguments that are alleged to be purely semantic, it would have been helpful to have a good example of such an argument. He describes the debate over abortion as a canonical example. The idea here seems to be that the debate over whether a foetus is 'alive' is a purely semantic dispute over the definition of the word 'life'. This strikes me as simply a mistake. It's certainly very difficult to have…

I actually agree, and have thought so for a long time, that the discussion about abortion is very much about the meaning of the term life. One side is convinced that a human life starts at the conception. And if you think that, it is very simple: Abortion is taking a human life, i.e., killing a person. Then nothing else matters. We can bring up all social, economic, feminist, psychological, health, etc. arguments in…

> We all agree that we don't go around and kill people

Well, except for the police.

(Flippant comment, but the number of people who think abortion should be illegal under all circumstances but also that the police should never face any consequences for killing someone, no matter how gratuitously, is astonishing)

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#79

Post by netcan » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 9:37 AM UTC

kstenerud wrote: post #33

All forums ossify after enough time has passed and the initial population has been crowded out. People come to these places for various reasons: - To debate - To learn - To engage intellectually with other people - To be heard/validated - To gain social standing The problem is (like all human forums) that as the included population rises, you need to make a bigger and bigger splash to be heard, and that means that af…

>> As a species, we're not fully evolved for big crowds

I think we may be starting to overstate the "Dunbar argument." In some sense, including the position in "Sapiens," operating in large groups is the key trait of Homo Sapiens... That which eventually made us unique and allowed us to become what we are. It is in YNH's view what

These aren't really opposing views. Large groups are suboptimal. We obviously struggle with the downsides of large group size and these dynamics are often our bottleneck.

The nuance is: An organism can be highly evolved to tolerate something that is outside its optimal range. A fish might be evolved to tolerate really low oxygen. That lets them live where other fish can't, less competition. But... that same fish's "optimal range" for health or whatnot might be different. Same with temperature, where I think most of the research is.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#80

Post by Ma8ee » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 9:40 AM UTC

foldr wrote: post #62

Ma8ee wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually agree, and have thought so for a long time, that the discussion about abortion is very much about the meaning of the term life. One side is convinced that a human life starts at the conception. And if you think that, it is very simple: Abortion is taking a human life, i.e., killing a person. Then nothing else matters. We can bring up all social, economic, feminist, psychological, health, etc. arguments in…

You're then talking about 'meaning' in a deeper sense than just the arbitrary definitions of words, so it's no longer a purely semantic dispute. (Note that the author characterizes semantic disputes as disputes over arbitrary definitions.)

I reread the relevant parts of the text again, and I don't find anything that supports that the author meant anything else with "semantics" than I do. Semantics is about "meaning", not only on a superficial level.