I also second this. I mean recent news about economy is important but I'm not interested in it. Likewise, for politics I can turn to so many other sources. So if there are more people like me then we should see a reduction in frequency of economics/politics related submissions. Lastly, Prakash, I don't think it was a true Black Swan.
Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.
21–30 of 114 posts
Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.
#22A continued focus on political articles will attract people who enjoy endless and mostly pointless arguments about politics. It is a path to HN becoming another reddit. Political articles are like junk food. Tempting while they're right in front of you. A little bit of indulgence is OK. Not good as a steady diet. PG has said that he thinks he can prevent deterioration of content on HN. I think this problem is actuall…
While I don't think HN's been too bad in this area at all, the threat of a slippery slope bringing in the trolls is pretty real.
Perhaps an accepted convention of downmodding any discussion of the political aspects of the economic stories is in order? IMHO the economic discussions are pretty relevant to us (esp. things like the capital markets for our VC-loving industry), but this isn't an economics or political site, so the links back to public policy don't really fit here.
Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.
#23I just checked and could not find a single article about politics on the main page. Not counting those about political reactions to the financial markets crisis, but even those where only one or two.
Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.
#24On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
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 probably off-topic.
Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or egregiously offtopic, you can flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link.
http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Seems to me there's room for the posts you're complaining about, but no room for this post complaining about those submissions. If you don't like them your charge is clear: Use the the 'flag' feature.
Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.
#25A continued focus on political articles will attract people who enjoy endless and mostly pointless arguments about politics. It is a path to HN becoming another reddit. Political articles are like junk food. Tempting while they're right in front of you. A little bit of indulgence is OK. Not good as a steady diet. PG has said that he thinks he can prevent deterioration of content on HN. I think this problem is actuall…
In almost 600 days, it hasn't happened yet. Even as this worry has been constant, I have seen little to no evidence of this shift.
So how long before we can can the incessant worry? Another 600 days, perhaps?
Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.
#26Asking others to vote differently and submit different content is lame. It's like complaining about getting down modded. If you want better content, submit it yourself and upmod it on the new page.
While it may seem lame it's entirely within the system. Voicing your opinion with a comment/submission is as acceptable as up and down voting - as far as I am concerned. Though I do not like to read complaints that much, either.
Actually, it's not supposed to be in the system:
Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or egregiously offtopic, you can flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.)
Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.
#27Don't let the comments dissuade you from voicing your opinion. I notice that you have 50+ upmods as I write this. Remember that people who agree with you tend to nod. Some nod and upmod. A very, very few write a comment. Whereas people who disagree with you are much more likely to write a comment.
p.s. The only thing more lame than a meta-post complaining about posts are the meta-comments complaining that meta-posts are lame. GET A LIFE, PEOPLE!!!
Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.
#28I totally agree that posts have lately strayed far from the original idea(as I understand) of this site. Last week I was actually tempted to remove it from my RSS reader due to the flood of political and other news stories totally unrelated to startups/programming/hacking/etc. We don't need another reddit/digg/...
Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.
#29On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. 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…
Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site.
Well said, worthy of an upmod for that one line ;-)
Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
While it may seem lame it's entirely within the system. Voicing your opinion with a comment/submission is as acceptable as up and down voting - as far as I am concerned. Though I do not like to read complaints that much, either.
It is indeed within the system. I wasn't saying he shouldn't be allowed to post it. I'm saying it's a lame post that I won't upmod.
If the "system" includes the guidelines, then it's not within the system.
Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html