How about a "No posts on the economy and/or politics" month? Say, November? :D
Anyone posting on said topics and ignoring the rule will get their karma points reset to 1.
Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.
31–40 of 114 posts
Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.
#32It's interesting that you mention "black swans", as one of the reoccurring themes in the book is about "experts" being too close-minded and focused in their own field.
To me "hacker" is more a synonym of "curious" than of "coder", so if someone implies a rule of only submitting "coder news" they should maybe think of changing the name of the site too.
Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.
#33I agree leave the Politics and Finances at Reddit!! I miss the hacking!
Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.
#34This is our site, if we want more hacker news and less reddit, follow the new page and consistently vote up geeky articles.
The site has thousands of page views every single day, but the top stories routinely get less than 100 votes. The moral of the story: submit good articles and vote up on them. The ratio of voters to lurkers is probably from 1:100 to 1:300. Your votes count. The only way to avoid having an Eternal September is to participate and keep it from happening.
I agree with you, Prakash, I was really surprised to see a "pics" link make it to the front page. I thought about flagging it, but I don't know if that is appropriate or not.
Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.
#35A 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?
It could be that the incessant worry has kept it at bay for 600 days. It's hard to tell.
Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.
#36On-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…
I have been flaging things like crazy. People just ignore flagging off-topic submission, the same way people don't upmod enough.
Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.
#37I kinda agree with the politics.
It seems HN users like US politics, thats fine. But as a guess I'm sure most like p0rn too, it doesn't mean HN should be full of it...
(OK thats a pretty bad example, but you get what I mean...)
Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.
#38Wrong approach! Appeal to people to start UPVOTING hacker news instead of appealing to people to stop SUBMITTING political news. You see the subtle difference? One dedicated bad apple can submit a lot of political news, but it will go nowhere if the average opinion of the CROWD is that political news should not be voted up.
Good point. People should upload a lot more often.
Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Does a submission count as a post?
Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.
#40A 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?
I've definitely seen a gradual shift in the last 600 days. If the shift continues gradually, then yes, this site may be Reddit-lite in 600 days. If the shift accelerates, it could happen sooner than that.