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

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#191

Post by jrm2k6 » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 1:41 PM UTC

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…

Great job! It really fits the way I consume HN which is just once per day usually.

I like the outline.com article style, and also discovered outline.com in the process.

I am not a huge fan of the layout for the comments, it feels a bit too big for me and a bit hard to follow along, as it switches between authors and so on, but that might just be a personal preference.

You should probably consider making it open-source as it is definitely the type of project I would like to contribute to!

Thank you for building this!

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#192

Post by phjesusthatguy3 » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 1:46 PM UTC

TLDR people get on internet forums to debate topics, and leave because topics aren't debated, they're screamed about from opposing sides, and nobody is willing to say "I might be wrong, change my mind"

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#193

Post by ntsplnkv2 » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 1:48 PM UTC

parasubvert wrote: post #97

etripe wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

TBH that’s good moderation (And scalable algorithms to delegate such privilege) at work. there are plenty of flames and toxicity here, they’re just suppressed. Also the really controversial topics tend to get flagged.

Moderation is relatively easy with a community like HN.

Facebook and Twitter desperately need moderation - but they're built completely differently and much larger. Moderation there will immediately be compared to censorship, which Twitter and FB are afraid of because it threatens their money.

We're so afraid of one good idea being hidden by moderation that we allow thousands of bad ideas - which eventually create a hive-mind and drive out the good ideas anyway.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#194

Post by krapp » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 1:51 PM UTC

Timpy wrote: post #188

krapp wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't think that's a fair comparison. The Julian Assange saga is about hacking, privacy, three-letter-agency overreach in the tech sphere, etc. And every possible iteration of that has been hashed and rehashed to death at this point - Assange is a hero and should be pardoned, Assange is a traitor and should be punished, Assange is guilty of sexual assault, Assange was framed, Assange is being tortured, the entire…

The grandparent to my post was talking about politics, not repetition. I shouldn't have strayed and conceded that it's repetitive because this is my point: hacker-politics is on topic here.

"hacker politics" is in the eye of the beholder. There's no clear delineation between "politics" and "hacker politics" in an age when Facebook can be used to organize a genocide.

One could say that many Trump stories are "hacker politics" because of Trump's unprecedented use of social media, and the effect that social media as a whole has had on the American political landscape since his election, leading to the "fake news" phenomenon and controversies about the influence of social media platforms and their ability to manipulate public perception. The investigations into Trump's relationship with Russia, Wikileaks and the DNC leaks certainly touch on "hacker" themes and Assange specifically. And a strong case could be made that stories about gender and racial disparity in tech and programming count as "hacker politics."

Yet again, many such stories are more likely to be flagged than anything to do with Assange exclusively. "hacker politics" is not the standard actually being applied here, rather it's aggregate political bias. Do you think a story about, say, an Antifa or BLM hacking group would stand on technical merit alone?

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#195

Post by troughway » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 1:54 PM UTC

People in this thread have forgotten - or were not here when it happened, but there was an exodus of worthwhile, contributive people from 2010-2012 or so.

The fellow who kept bringing up how "everything is fine" with his ASCII chart of cyclical HN population graph trying to justify the onboarding of stupidity to this site hasn't showed up for quite a number of years.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#196

Post by corobo » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 1:59 PM UTC

goto11 wrote: post #136

LeCow wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Reddit have different moderation policies for the different sub-reddits. For example r/AskHistorians have amazing quality content due to very strict moderation.

Are there any other examples folks know about? This is the only subreddit I see suggested as being well moderated when this comes up, unfortunately I'm not into the subject

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#197

Post by animationwill » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 2:00 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #164

gherkinnn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter has to be the worst major platform. It is a rollercoaster of misery, disgust, and annoyance. And there isn’t even a proverbial nugget in the turd to make it worth it.

Nah, there's a lot of nuggets there. Keep away from the political trash and follow people who post interesting things that you like. For example, I like old video games, so I follow people who talk about old video games. This guy posts cool, obscure Mario trivia: https://twitter.com/MarioBrothBlog A wiki about cut content in old games retweets cool new finds: https://twitter.com/CuttingRoomWiki This non-profit posts…

Those are cool, but the problem is that Twitter shows you a load of turds for any nuggets. I just want it to click your link and read a thread, instead they minimize a thread and show me politics and celebrities below, and trending stuff on the right (desktop).

On the old reddit at least (stopped using after the new launch), if I went to /r/technology I’d only see /r/technology and that was pure nuggets. You could also unsub any default subreddits

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#198

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 2:02 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #164

gherkinnn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter has to be the worst major platform. It is a rollercoaster of misery, disgust, and annoyance. And there isn’t even a proverbial nugget in the turd to make it worth it.

Nah, there's a lot of nuggets there. Keep away from the political trash and follow people who post interesting things that you like. For example, I like old video games, so I follow people who talk about old video games. This guy posts cool, obscure Mario trivia: https://twitter.com/MarioBrothBlog A wiki about cut content in old games retweets cool new finds: https://twitter.com/CuttingRoomWiki This non-profit posts…

[deleted]

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#199

Post by dontcarethrow2 » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 2:06 PM UTC

This place definitely does not deserve any of my impulsive cynicism. I want to be able to read your discussions without my poor input, I've changed my pw on older accounts to gibberish just so I block myself from commenting.

HN has given me tons of hope for online communities, but every now and then, I run into what Yahoo article discussions looked like post 9/11(lots of whistling to the same tune, started by IC speakers). Don't go there, and you will not hear from me. These are my terms.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#200

Post by wildermuthn » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 2:08 PM UTC

To some degree, Reddit has addressed the problem of a large online community by subdividing itself and allowing each division to moderate itself (to some degree). However, what might be more interesting is an automated subdivision of users. For example, even if HN has hundreds of thousands of users, philosophic-types would only see links and comments from other philosophic-types. Trolls would get lumped with trolls. With a significant percentage of outside-your-demographic to keep things lively as well as gather further data about what kind of community a user truly enjoys engaging with. Especially important is identifying constructive conflict — the type of person you enjoy disagreeing with (if not in the moment, at least afterward).

So basically, instead of subdividing by interesting-content-type, subdivide by healthy-community-type. This might solve the problem of when communities get too large, without creating a lifeless echo-chamber of endless up-votes.