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

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#201

Post by aembleton » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 2:12 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…

> It also uses an outline.com like style for the articles,

I don't see that. When click on the articles, it is just going to the articles. Otherwise ,it is really nice and I do like the idea of it not becoming an addictive slot machine.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#202

Post by Chris2048 » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 2:14 PM UTC

elorant wrote: post #108

benjaminjosephw wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, diversity is incredibly important when we're talking about different kinds of "intellectually curious" people. When diversity means letting in the trolls, the marketers and those less inclined to input constructively, that's when conversations start to degrade and loose value. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to encourage first type of diversity without becoming vulnerable to the second.

That's why we have voting. You start trolling, you're getting the boot.

You need a precise conception of trolling. going against the norm (or groupthink) and questioning them can also be seen as trolling.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#203

Post by natmaka » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 2:16 PM UTC

ozim wrote: post #189

ChefboyOG wrote: post #175

The fact that this was posted ten years ago underscores that this is not an HN problem, but a perennial challenge of any large community. I don't think most people grok exactly how difficult moderation is, and how that difficulty doesn't just scale, but rather evolves fundamentally as a community grows. Moderating a smaller community is sort of like setting a certain tone within your group of friends and figuring out…

I think it is expectations failure "the more the merrier" is not the case. Having tight 10 person group is so much better than having 100 people group. You probably don't want to get new ideas directly from 100 of sources but new ideas filtered trough trusted people. From time to time it is good to get someone new and give it a shot, but most of the time it is better to stick to known group. Unless your group is abou…

The Evaporative Cooling Effect hits hard.

https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2015/10/14/the-evaporativ...

... and, more generally, "Wherever something is wrong, something is too big" (L. Kohr).

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#204

Post by webo » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 2:17 PM UTC

augusto-moura wrote: post #170

names_are_hard wrote: post #106

To me a large part of the value of HN is the back-catalog. When I'm researching something I frequently do a site:news.ycombinator.com search on DuckDuckGo to see what HN users have to say about the topic. I've been doing this for a long time, only recently I decided to get over my fear of participating in the internet and created an account to comment now and then when I have something to say. And I can see how parti…

Tip: DuckDuckGo has the !hn bang for searching in the algolia page, so just stick it to the end of your query instead of site:news.ycombinator.com and you are good to go!

I noticed the algolia search is not very good and doesn’t go back as far. I think it limits results to 6 years or so.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#205

Post by threatofrain » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 2:24 PM UTC

Rochus wrote: post #135

narag wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting for me, because I didn't realize at the time that the things that bother me now were present then. The author seems to be more sensitive than me like ten years more.

No doubt that some people consider it interesting. I personally would have appreciated a brief specific list of recommendations of the author of the post on what to improve. Maybe you can give such a list. But still I ask myself why I see an increasing number of posts (at least a third) where I don't understand why they should be relevant for me as a hacker. There are platforms like reddit where you can debate about…

HN isn't obviously more focused than Reddit unless you're browsing the front page; for example, the Rust subreddit.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#206

Post by augusto-moura » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 2:24 PM UTC

webo wrote: post #204

augusto-moura wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tip: DuckDuckGo has the !hn bang for searching in the algolia page, so just stick it to the end of your query instead of site:news.ycombinator.com and you are good to go!

I noticed the algolia search is not very good and doesn’t go back as far. I think it limits results to 6 years or so.

Weird, because the front page with the most popular of all time show posts from 9+ years ago, but if you search something popular like "microsoft" and sort by date it only goes back a few months. I think it truncates by a 1000 results or so

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#207

Post by hackerfromthefu » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 2:28 PM UTC

Pick-A-Hill2019 wrote: post #138

self_awareness wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBH on Hacker News it's also a problem. If you have a point of view that is consistent with the majority of users (or with the users who write lots of comments), then everything is fine. But if your point of view differs, then you're often downvoted into oblivion. This is often not a good place for discussing things.

Karma points are both a blessing and a curse. They are good as a form of gate-keeping but bad because I too have found myself deciding not to post a comment in case it got down-voted to oblivion. In fact I debated whether or not to post this comment for those same reasons. I try to take down voted comments on the chin (and one of mine at -4 was absolutely warranted) but at other times it can be dis-heartening to see…

I kind of think about it like the karma attained buys you the ability to occasionally say something that wrests the narrative back from the crowdmind a bit .. at least until it disappears due to the downvote pileon ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#208

Post by mentos » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 2:30 PM UTC

wildermuthn wrote: post #200

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.…

What about HN experimenting with tabs in the comments so if you want to have a more philosophical discussion click on the ‘Philosophy’ tab or if not maybe the ‘Technical’ discussion is more your speed. I could even see supporting an ‘Offtopic’ tab as a place where you can share ideas inspired by the post that are not exactly relevant but could spark inspiration in others.

It would allow posts with hundreds of comments to be a bit more organized?

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#209

Post by RubenvanE » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 2:31 PM UTC

aembleton wrote: post #201

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…

> It also uses an outline.com like style for the articles, I don't see that. When click on the articles, it is just going to the articles. Otherwise ,it is really nice and I do like the idea of it not becoming an addictive slot machine.

It depends on the webpage, if the webpage is not an article it just redirects to the webpage. If there is a book icon before the the title the webpage has been converted to an article.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#210

Post by craftinator » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 2:34 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #169

m463 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was surprised that trump being hospitalized for covid hadn't been posted and submitted a link, but it was flagged. Puzzled I checkd the FAQ, which led me to the guidelines and there I found the magic: Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's p…

>So politics is mercifully off-topic by design. And yet, in spite of Hacker News' disdain for both politics and repetition, any story about Julian Assange, including daily posts about his hearing, will remain untouched[0]. What's really off topic isn't politics, but politics HN doesn't agree with. [0] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Gray area boundary. There is enough overlap with technology related news in that story that while it is political, it's also tech. HN errs on the side of inclusivity here.