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Re: Hackernews.com

#211

Post by rdiddly »

kristopolous wrote: post #196
clusterfish wrote: post #113

It is already a lot more like Reddit than it used to be just a few years ago. For example, the comments on some submissions are full of stupid jokes now, gradually drowning out actually interesting discussion. IMO HN was better when it was dry, boring, and insightful. It is less and less of that every year. Example from this very submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28962122 I'm sure there are more people…

> I'm sure there are more people who want to see these content-free comments than not Two rules of thumb about how this stuff works: * Never underestimate the number of children on the internet * Never underestimate the number of people intoxicated/high on the internet Using those as a guide, lots of popularity metrics make sense. It's mostly like real life, if your community can avoid attracting children or people a…

I'm neither high nor a child, yet I like making and reading jokes. Human beings like them. They reflect well on the jokemaker's creativity, spontaneity, and ability to improvise. They test the reader's ability to tolerate ambiguity and the unexpected. You will tend to like them less, the worse you are at it, the more you're caught up in playing a status game ("I'm way too mature and serious for these 'jokes'") and the more closely you resemble the machines we work with.

Re: Hackernews.com

#212

Post by ycconflict »

dang wrote: post #209
tofukid wrote: post #182

What’s the justification for spending money on this? So many more useful things to do than buy an expensive domain to redirect it here.

I can tell you my personal reasoning: it's a risk mitigation. There are weird long-tail scenarios (unlikely, but impactful if they did happen) under which HN might need to be spun out from YC. In such a case we'd need a different domain name and this is the only one that makes sense for that. To be clear, it would be bad if HN had to split off from YC - bad for HN, bad for YC, bad for the community here. The feedback…

> To be clear, it would be bad if HN had to split off from YC - bad for HN, bad for YC, bad for the community here.

To be clear, it would be extremely good for the community if YC and HN were not the same company. The conflict of interest is stark and a violation of every tenet of journalism. I cant tell if you're purposely lying for the sake of profit motive or just very ignorant of the history and foundation of journalism.

I've never, ever before seen someone claim that a conflict of interest was "good for the community"!

Re: Hackernews.com

#213

Post by dang »

ycconflict wrote: post #212
dang wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tell you my personal reasoning: it's a risk mitigation. There are weird long-tail scenarios (unlikely, but impactful if they did happen) under which HN might need to be spun out from YC. In such a case we'd need a different domain name and this is the only one that makes sense for that. To be clear, it would be bad if HN had to split off from YC - bad for HN, bad for YC, bad for the community here. The feedback…

> To be clear, it would be bad if HN had to split off from YC - bad for HN, bad for YC, bad for the community here. To be clear, it would be extremely good for the community if YC and HN were not the same company. The conflict of interest is stark and a violation of every tenet of journalism. I cant tell if you're purposely lying for the sake of profit motive or just very ignorant of the history and foundation of jou…

We're not journalists, and HN isn't journalism, so this seems a bit askew.

Re: Hackernews.com

#214

Post by philosopher1234 »

Y_Y wrote: post #203
philosopher1234 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but, if you’re deeply committed to capital, you probably don’t like a revolutionary dialogue thats got capital in its sights. I don’t think characterizing my position as somehow wrong and inherently unappealing is accurate, I think my position is unappealing to those who feel threatened by it. But threatening dialogue isn’t bad.

I don't know if you're speaking in generalities or not, but I'm absolutely not a capitalist, although I do respect that position. Personally try to be open to any good argument, but it's easier for one that's close to an opinion I already hold. It wasn't my intention to attack your position, in fact I'd bet it's not far from my own. What I wanted to convey is that it can be unpleasant to have a discussion with someon…

Yes I was speaking hypothetically, not about you specifically.

Re: Hackernews.com

#215

Post by GekkePrutser »

dang wrote: post #208
GekkePrutser wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. The funny thing is, these people heard from people like me about this great website "hacker news", and didn't want to miss anything, so they went looking for it and probably came here first. Thought "?? This can't be it ??" and kept on looking. They then find the blogspam site and think they found it. Only the real techies I know, read this site. A lot of wannabe techies read the other one :) It's almost bec…

This community is most certainly not just for "techies". That's really important. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Good point, sorry. I was aware of this. I didn't mean it in a bad way.

But what I mean that in general it does tend to attact 'techies', or at least those interested in technology. The compact style and topics just seem to gravitate in that direction. More 'mainstream' readers will not align with it in my experience. For example, the design fits in much better with users that are spending their day in terminal windows than those that just have computing on a phone. Some exceptions will occur of course :)

Again this is one of the things I love about this site so please don't change it :) What really speaks to me in the guidelines is the 'curiosity' bit. And I totally agree. This site actually offers me things to read about which I didn't know on a daily basis. Whereas the algorithms of the big guys like Facebook seem to be intent on showing me more of the same constantly. Which is the opposite of what I want.

Also, the discussions here are more friendly and open than on most other sites. Probably due to the guidelines and also the community. It feels more like the "old" internet of the early 90s when we were all friends and thought we were building something great.

PS: When I mentioned reddit, I didn't mean to say that this site is heading towards reddit. I wasn't aware of this item in the guidelines and I'm sorry for having mentioned it. I just meant that this site would not be as valuable to me if it were more mainstream, and I used reddit as the closest example of something which is.

Re: Hackernews.com

#216

Post by ycconflict »

dang wrote: post #213
ycconflict wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be clear, it would be bad if HN had to split off from YC - bad for HN, bad for YC, bad for the community here. To be clear, it would be extremely good for the community if YC and HN were not the same company. The conflict of interest is stark and a violation of every tenet of journalism. I cant tell if you're purposely lying for the sake of profit motive or just very ignorant of the history and foundation of jou…

We're not journalists, and HN isn't journalism, so this seems a bit askew.

The site is literally called Hacker News. The conflict of interest of a venture capital firm running a "news" site is not even a grey area of ethical violations. It's clearly problematic, and your refusal to even acknowledge it is a great example of how the contents of this site are highly untrustworthy.

Re: Hackernews.com

#217

Post by dang »

ycconflict wrote: post #216
dang wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not journalists, and HN isn't journalism, so this seems a bit askew.

The site is literally called Hacker News . The conflict of interest of a venture capital firm running a "news" site is not even a grey area of ethical violations. It's clearly problematic, and your refusal to even acknowledge it is a great example of how the contents of this site are highly untrustworthy.

You're misinterpreting the word "news" in the name to mean the same thing as journalism / news reporting, which HN plainly is not. It's a place where readers post and discuss links they find interesting. Sometimes those are articles from news publications, sometimes they're blog posts, sometimes they're a lot of things. HN is a conversation place—an online watercooler, basically. That's not a journalistic operation. If anything it's more of an entertainment site.

There's certainly a conversation to be had about how we manage YC's interests vis-à-vis community interests—I've discussed that with many users over the years [1, 2], the principles have been well-established for a long time, and I'm always happy to explain more. But not on the basis of a giant non sequitur!

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Re: Hackernews.com

#218

Post by dang »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #215
dang wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This community is most certainly not just for "techies". That's really important. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Good point, sorry. I was aware of this. I didn't mean it in a bad way. But what I mean that in general it does tend to attact 'techies', or at least those interested in technology. The compact style and topics just seem to gravitate in that direction. More 'mainstream' readers will not align with it in my experience. For example, the design fits in much better with users that are spending their day in terminal window…

> the design fits in much better with users that are spending their day in terminal windows

pg specifically designed it to look like `top`, so you hit the bullseye with that one!

Re: Hackernews.com

#219

Post by kristopolous »

rdiddly wrote: post #211
kristopolous wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure there are more people who want to see these content-free comments than not Two rules of thumb about how this stuff works: * Never underestimate the number of children on the internet * Never underestimate the number of people intoxicated/high on the internet Using those as a guide, lots of popularity metrics make sense. It's mostly like real life, if your community can avoid attracting children or people a…

I'm neither high nor a child, yet I like making and reading jokes. Human beings like them. They reflect well on the jokemaker's creativity, spontaneity, and ability to improvise. They test the reader's ability to tolerate ambiguity and the unexpected. You will tend to like them less, the worse you are at it, the more you're caught up in playing a status game ("I'm way too mature and serious for these 'jokes'") and th…

Absolutely. The problem is one of dominant forcing not of constituent coexistence.

Digital spaces are like physical spaces. Intentional social rules dictate that say, punching people is ok at a boxing gym and not a library.

Spaces are always created through a stochastic collaboration of randomness and intent

The randomness part is controlled by who's coming in and staying through the physical or digital door and part of the intent is what kind of randomness is being actively invited.

Alright, back to the brass tax. Most people with the capability of building such communities and dictating such rules surround themselves in their physical spaces with a narrow range of people that completely misrepresent the internet audience as a whole.

Because nobody knows if you're a dog on the internet, the creators can go quite a long time before realizing the community they've built is populated by say middle school children.

Keeping in mind that Everyone is on the net and what that actually means is a really important part of creating such spaces.

One of reddit's aha moments happened about maybe 8 years ago and I wish I could find the article. After a site wide audit they banned a number of child pornography subreddits that had become quite popular. But after further investigation they discovered it wasn't adult pedophiles posting photographs of others but teenagers posting their own self produced content. It was a big self reflection for them on the question of "who have you brought on your platform and what are they doing in it?" Is it a boxing gym, a brothel, a bar, a bureaucracy? Better figure it out

Re: Hackernews.com

#220

Post by ycconflict »

dang wrote: post #217
ycconflict wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The site is literally called Hacker News . The conflict of interest of a venture capital firm running a "news" site is not even a grey area of ethical violations. It's clearly problematic, and your refusal to even acknowledge it is a great example of how the contents of this site are highly untrustworthy.

You're misinterpreting the word "news" in the name to mean the same thing as journalism / news reporting, which HN plainly is not. It's a place where readers post and discuss links they find interesting. Sometimes those are articles from news publications, sometimes they're blog posts, sometimes they're a lot of things. HN is a conversation place—an online watercooler, basically. That's not a journalistic operation.…

> You're misinterpreting the word "news" in the name to mean the same thing as journalism / news reporting

That's laughable, you don't get to redefine "news". It's right there in the name. If this place was honest, it would be called yc-announcements.com or something with transparency as to the goals of the site's owners.

You're really trying to dodge this, but again, it's cut and dry. Here I'll help you and any reader that actually want to learn about the media's responsibility to not hold conflicts of interest:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest#Media

Again, there is no excuse for this. You're arguing a point that's been well decided by people far brighter than those running this VC firm.

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