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Happy 15th birthday Hacker News

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Re: Happy 15th birthday Hacker News

#131

Post by wilmoore »

Happy birthday HN. I absolutely love this community. Once I started reading HN somewhat frequently, there is no question that I became a better developer, thinker, researcher, and writer. The topics shared here seem to have no rival anywhere else on the internet ... at least, not as far as I am aware of.

I think this is a good time to admit that when I first came here, I was a bit shy to post anything about tech or programming, but by hanging out here and practicing what I learned here, I eventually felt worthy of contributing.

Thank You.

Re: Happy 15th birthday Hacker News

#134

Post by cakeman »

drumhead wrote: post #83

HN is what reddit used to be like when it first started. Links to interesting Tech, programming and science stories and high quality discussion compared to something like Digg. Thankfully HN hasnt dropped in quality on that front unlike reddit. Its still so good I dont even click on the link I click on comments to get a HN summary which gives me a pretty good idea if its worth reading or not. Most of the time the com…

I have to agree with berkut. I had to stop using a previous hn account because it was so incredibly frustrating when people would downvote me with no explanation. I would cite my comments with reputable sources but that never helped.

It was enough to prevent me from contributing to the discussion until recently.

Certain beliefs or opinions in the minority are not very well tolderated here. It's still certainly better than other sites, but from my perspective it is slowly sliding downwards.

If I do post, it likely would not be anything remotely controversial.

Re: Happy 15th birthday Hacker News

#135

Post by Minor49er »

minusSeven wrote: post #81

Maybe an unpopular opinion here but I am finding HN to be more and more like Reddit everyday. I normally only read HN articles that have atleast 500 points or more and have notifications setup for it. In the past I used to get only 1 or 2 notifications a week. Now I get atleast 4 a day. I find it hard nowadays to keep up.

The New section also has plenty of interesting submissions that don't make it to the front page, though it would be easy to lose hours reading them

Re: Happy 15th birthday Hacker News

#136

Post by gambler »

streamofdigits wrote: post #43

It feels like HN still upholds the early promise of the internet (along with Wikipedia and very small number of other websites). But what will the next 15 year bring about?

I disagree. HN is definitely less insane than Reddit these days, but it's not representative of what Web 1.0 was like and felt like.

Everyone here would do well to read and understand this essay by Jaron Lanier:

https://www.edge.org/conversation/jaron_lanier-digital-maois...

I also recommend people revisit archives of some high-quality web forums and websites like Geocities. There is a lot of revisionism going on in tech sector right now. Conveniently, it's nearly impossible to challenge in a space where a handful of people can disappear your posts by downvoting and a conversation stays "relevant" only for a few hours.

Re: Happy 15th birthday Hacker News

#137

Post by fouc »

larrik wrote: post #117
berkut wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to disagree... Things aren't that bad, but I've definitely noticed a lot more cases of downvoting of "against the grain" comments or opinions with often very few responses in the last couple of years. Previously, I rarely noticed heavily downvoted comments, and in the cases they were, there were almost always reply comments explaining the opposite side, leading to IMO much better disc…

Maybe, but 5-10 years ago Apple-bashing was a karma death sentence (never guess how I learned that). Now it seems to be more of an active discussion (mostly due to the MBP keyboard situation I guess?).

When I see a lot of downvotes I usually ask myself "what do they know that I don't?" I would assume some portion of downvotes are due to a knowledge disparity. And if there's a lot of downvotes against my comment, then there's a chance I'm missing some key knowledge.

Re: Happy 15th birthday Hacker News

#138

Post by ineptech »

Covzire wrote: post #118
berkut wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to disagree... Things aren't that bad, but I've definitely noticed a lot more cases of downvoting of "against the grain" comments or opinions with often very few responses in the last couple of years. Previously, I rarely noticed heavily downvoted comments, and in the cases they were, there were almost always reply comments explaining the opposite side, leading to IMO much better disc…

I've only been browsing here for about 10 of the 15 years, but I remember a time when the discussions closely matched what I and the public at large could discuss in private without fear. But there has been a chilling effect in recent years where more and more topics become verboten and someone will get downvoted, at a minimum, for even bringing them up. Interesting topics and child threads go missing on the regular.…

"Verboten" is a strong word; to my mind that refers to things that can't be discussed because they would challenge the power structure, like how you can't talk about Tank Guy in Chinese social media.

That's not HN. When you get downvoted for hot-button political stuff, that's like getting shushed for talking about football in church. It's not censored, but this isn't the place for it.

Re: Happy 15th birthday Hacker News

#139

Post by jgwil2 »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #106
zzleeper wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought it was the opposite. That subreddits allowed the community to expand without catering to the lowest common denominator, and reddit would have fallen off the cliff faster without those.

In my view Reddit and Twitter occupy the same rung with respect to discourse. There’s a lot of variation between the subreddits and between the various pockets of Twitter, but on average the lowest common denominator is not an inaccurate characterization of those communities.

I think that Reddit is a degree better than Twitter: it's still possible to find long, substantive discussions on Reddit, but the artificial length constraint on Twitter really pushes all users toward pithy "burns" and other toxic forms of discourse.
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