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HN: The Good Parts (2016)

danluu.com

41–50 of 52 posts

Re: HN: The Good Parts (2016)

#41
post #13

If you find yourself writing an informative comment on HN that will likely get buried. Urge yourself to write a blog article instead.

I've done this a few times, and it's amazing how much better (according to myself, that is) the content is than a comment. Proper length, formatting, images, inline links, and things like ‹abbr› and ‹key› elements just make for a superior reading experience. Unfortunately this means the answer might be years in the making, as I keep accumulating drafts.

Re: HN: The Good Parts (2016)

#43

Many people on HN are wrong, but it's the quality of wrong on HN that is vastly superior to the wrong you'll find anywhere else.

I'm not so sure about that. On HN it can be harder to spot the bullshit because people can sound very authoritative even when they are completely wrong or clueless. I experienced this a couple of times with topics I happen to know very well.

[deleted]

Re: HN: The Good Parts (2016)

#44
post #31

Many people on HN are wrong, but it's the quality of wrong on HN that is vastly superior to the wrong you'll find anywhere else.

Indeed. As a gentleman of intellect I insist upon only the highest quality, artisinally crafted bullshit. No mere pedestrian mind-muffins will satisfy the refined palate of the HN sophisticate.

I'll have my bullshit served only on the highest quality silver platter. Please and thank you.

Re: HN: The Good Parts (2016)

#46

HN has a very interesting “vocal minority” thing going where certain articles will have VERY predictable comments. ShowHN - “this doesn’t work if JavaScript is disabled” or “you should explain this product better I don’t want it” Any hardware device: “I’ve noticed declining quality because the space bar is a very specific type of plastic now” or “I can’t even ssh into this. I miss the days when I could ssh into my sh…

More than a vocal minority: HN has a vocal individual thing.

Relative to other sites, the commenting body of HN is small. The frequent commenters represent an even smaller group. Combined with an interface that deliberately draws attention away from who exactly you're reading with desaturated text, and you've got pretty ideal situation for the opinion of one frequent commenter to produce what appears to be a somewhat popular view.

Re: HN: The Good Parts (2016)

#47
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did Slashdot's voting system work?

Never used it but afaik you could vote along different axis. So you could vote "+1 insightful" for instance, so if a comment had a lot of votes, you had a more idea why it was upvoted.

There was also meta-moderation, which allowed the community to deal with bad upvote/downvote behavior - brigading, stalking, etc. It wasn't perfect, but it did avoid the near-universal ills of moderator bias (including unconscious/cognitive bias), burnout from over-exposure, and flat out anti-empirical theories about how to do moderation properly. I wish more experiments like that had been tried (kuro5hin also made some efforts and Advogato took it even further) instead of basically reverting to a Usenet-era model.

Re: HN: The Good Parts (2016)

#48
post #32
post #13

If you find yourself writing an informative comment on HN that will likely get buried. Urge yourself to write a blog article instead.

Something I appreciate about HN is having the opportunity to make a case to dozens or perhaps hundreds of my peers, without the burden of having and maintaining an audience. I don't think people recognize my name from one thread to another, and if they do I don't think they have much of a parasocial relationship with me. I don't see any evidence people "follow" my comments, for instance; the people I talk to more fre…

Ah this is such a succinct description of the real value of the town hall discussion format. I don’t care or want to maintain a subscriber list, but I absolutely do want to contribute and actively participate in my area of interests. HN is the best area I’ve found for that.

Re: HN: The Good Parts (2016)

#49
post #13

If you find yourself writing an informative comment on HN that will likely get buried. Urge yourself to write a blog article instead.

I've posted some blog type content over the years and don't know any good way to get anybody to read it (or really even a reason why they should). Posting on HN gets way more interaction and views than most people's blogs would

You should submit the article to HN. If you just make a comment it will likely only be seen by people reading that particular comment section that particular day. But an article you can link/reference and re-submit. (you can also link to specific comments on HN, but a standalone article is a more expressive medium)

Re: HN: The Good Parts (2016)

#50
post #2

HN is the least worst internet forum

But by a very large margin. If dang started his own for-pay forum I would join in a heartbeat. The moderation is phenomenal. And I fear for his health. If he went solo he could hire a backup person or three. You think he couldn't get 10,000 people paying $5/month for this kind of content?
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