Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 114 posts

Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.

#81

Post by robg »

jon_dahl wrote: post #78
swombat wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're failing to see the positive feedback cycle at work here. 1) Political articles creep in 2) Political articles draw more of the politics crowd 3) Voting power of hacker crowd decreases as a percentage of total votes 4) Submit power of hacker crowd decreases as a percentage of total submits 5) This leads to a slow but steady increase in political articles 6) Go back to 1) This is not a self-correcting system. It…

Agreed. As it stands, all it takes for Hacker News to become Reddit is for the hackers to be outvoted by the Reddit crowd. The wildcard factor is PG, who will probably step in more aggressively if and when he thinks quality has slipped too far. Remember that "hacker" can mean a variety of things. For YCombinator, a "hacker" is a smart person who likes to build great things, usually using the medium of software. For o…

He has said he monitors for drift. That he hasn't "stepped in", speaks volumes to me that it isn't necessary - yet.

Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.

#82

Post by robg »

biohacker42 wrote: post #80
robg wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What evidence is there for this feedback loop? The one in a hundred political articles? To me, their relative lack, in the current climate, is proof of the opposite conclusion: The strength of this community. Your loop falls apart at #2 because the posts at #1 seldom make it to the front page. Still, the point remains, the solution isn't fleeing to somewhere else (where the problem will likely repeat). It's sticking…

What evidence is there for this feedback loop? It is self evident.

Really? If it were, I'd think you could point to some actual evidence instead of relying on self-evidence.

Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.

#83

Post by prakash »

simplegeek wrote: post #21

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 .

What would be a true Black Swan in your opinion?

Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.

#84

Post by biohacker42 »

robg wrote: post #82
biohacker42 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What evidence is there for this feedback loop? It is self evident.

Really? If it were, I'd think you could point to some actual evidence instead of relying on self-evidence.

Reddit, Digg, every other community site which started out with a narrowly focused group and then slowly become popular.

Is that enough actual real world evidence? I can keep listing social sites, that this has happened to, all day long.

Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.

#85

Post by robg »

biohacker42 wrote: post #84
robg wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? If it were, I'd think you could point to some actual evidence instead of relying on self-evidence.

Reddit, Digg, every other community site which started out with a narrowly focused group and then slowly become popular. Is that enough actual real world evidence? I can keep listing social sites, that this has happened to, all day long.

You haven't pointed to evidence of it happening here. One political post every hundred or so (if that - I doubt it) doesn't tell me the sky is falling.

Testing the predicted feedback loop, especially for #1 and #2, would seem to required actual evidence of #1 and #2 happening here.

Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.

#88

Post by cmos »

iamelgringo wrote: post #34

This 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 Eterna…

I was thinking for the last couple weeks "oh man, now hn has jumped the shark". And as I was reading through some of the comments here, and it occurred to me that while I do keep tabs on the 'new' articles (not trusting the good ones to make their way up) I would only upvote if I thought it was a truly amazing article.

I will change my upvoting habits. I believe the system can indeed work. I will upvote a little bit more often on articles that are very pertinent to this group.

Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.

#89

Post by raganwald »

comatose_kid wrote: post #52
pmorici wrote: post #20

I think you forgot one major sub category... ...submissions about submissions being off topic. I don't think business is off topic seeing as this site is half about starting a business Economics effect those businesses so in a particularly bad week esp. one in which events that haven't happened to the great depression transpire you are going to see some stories about it. What political news are you talking about? The…

Business submissions can dilute the front page. For example, take articles about the current economic environment (mergers, banks dying off) - they suck because: 1) You can read about that stuff everywhere right now (news.google, front of popular magazines). 2) It doesn't really help start my business as it provides little actionable advice. 3) Look at 1) again. I'm not interested in reading about current events on H…

You can read about that stuff everywhere right now (news.google, front of popular magazines). => The existing guidelines hint at this by suggesting that if you can find it on certain other sites, it explicitly doesn't belong here.

It doesn't really help start my business as it provides little actionable advice. => Very insightful.

Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.

#90

Post by biohacker42 »

robg wrote: post #85
biohacker42 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit, Digg, every other community site which started out with a narrowly focused group and then slowly become popular. Is that enough actual real world evidence? I can keep listing social sites, that this has happened to, all day long.

You haven't pointed to evidence of it happening here . One political post every hundred or so (if that - I doubt it) doesn't tell me the sky is falling. Testing the predicted feedback loop, especially for #1 and #2, would seem to required actual evidence of #1 and #2 happening here .

I agree, let's not continue arguing on the internet.

My hypothesis is: As this place continue to gain in popularity it will continue to become more generic and reddit like.

I hope to be proven wrong.

Post reply on HN