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Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

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Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#51

To me, feels like more pressing issue would be to increase the ease of tagging, grouping, filtering, ranking, etc. Specifically, if you see existing coverage of a topic, it’s easy enough to revive it if you’re aware of how HN handles duplicate detection, but there’s no way to enforce users having to vote on comments with fresh eyes, hide comments that don’t have significant new sub-comments, discover significant new…

YC and dang's approach to HN seems to be more or less this: "Somehow we stumbled upon a system that really works. We don't know why it does, but it does, and so we don't want to change things too much too fast lest we break it." And honestly, I love that approach. In my time on HN features have rolled out slowly, and you can tell that they were selected very carefully as being important quality of life improvements t…

My impression is dang makes a lot of behind the scenes changes, but few public changes. As such, they’re hard to notice and really become a topic. There a lot of features HN has that most users don’t know about and/or use too.

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#53
When I read some of the suggestions here in these comments, some of them exist already in Reddit.

Now at the risk of getting downvoted, my experience is that Reddit is awful: spiteful posts, tons of short sentence replies that litter the eyes, circular meme-like self-referential wink-wink behavior (i.e. repeating the same joke with slight modification).

There are some thoughtful subs (star something codex) but overall it has a culture of people who write well but their reasoning stinks. They have strong opinions and make assertions speculatively. I can't read any real estate investment, market or nerdy thread on Reddit without encountering armchair bullshitisms from people who happen to write well but don't research anything, and respond with hostility when questioned.

So maybe this is my way of saying, don't change HN too much.

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#55

When I read some of the suggestions here in these comments, some of them exist already in Reddit. Now at the risk of getting downvoted, my experience is that Reddit is awful: spiteful posts, tons of short sentence replies that litter the eyes, circular meme-like self-referential wink-wink behavior (i.e. repeating the same joke with slight modification). There are some thoughtful subs (star something codex) but overal…

Rant: I was banned from Reddit once again yesterday (for the 100th time) because of my harassing behavior. The comment that caused this was about "daily Scrum meetings that were way too long in most companies." I'm dumbfounded about who would have reported this, and who confirmed that this was harassment.

Reddit may be fine for very specific subs, but overall it's a real mess where power hungry mods have fun without any kind of accountability.

HN does not have this kind of behavior and I don't really miss the lengthy conversations that can be found in other forums.

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#56

When I read some of the suggestions here in these comments, some of them exist already in Reddit. Now at the risk of getting downvoted, my experience is that Reddit is awful: spiteful posts, tons of short sentence replies that litter the eyes, circular meme-like self-referential wink-wink behavior (i.e. repeating the same joke with slight modification). There are some thoughtful subs (star something codex) but overal…

Rant: I was banned from Reddit once again yesterday (for the 100th time) because of my harassing behavior. The comment that caused this was about "daily Scrum meetings that were way too long in most companies." I'm dumbfounded about who would have reported this, and who confirmed that this was harassment. Reddit may be fine for very specific subs, but overall it's a real mess where power hungry mods have fun without…

>daily Scrum meetings that were way too long in most companies.

I've said far more hostile things out loud about Agile at my workplace to senior management.

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#58

When I read some of the suggestions here in these comments, some of them exist already in Reddit. Now at the risk of getting downvoted, my experience is that Reddit is awful: spiteful posts, tons of short sentence replies that litter the eyes, circular meme-like self-referential wink-wink behavior (i.e. repeating the same joke with slight modification). There are some thoughtful subs (star something codex) but overal…

There's a videogame subreddit that frequently downvotes comments from top tier players. It has gotten to the point where most good players will no longer engage with reddit because of the extreme hostility and incompetence.

Top tier players aren't always going to be right about everything, but the things for which they often get downvotes are absurd.

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#59

When I read some of the suggestions here in these comments, some of them exist already in Reddit. Now at the risk of getting downvoted, my experience is that Reddit is awful: spiteful posts, tons of short sentence replies that litter the eyes, circular meme-like self-referential wink-wink behavior (i.e. repeating the same joke with slight modification). There are some thoughtful subs (star something codex) but overal…

Rant: I was banned from Reddit once again yesterday (for the 100th time) because of my harassing behavior. The comment that caused this was about "daily Scrum meetings that were way too long in most companies." I'm dumbfounded about who would have reported this, and who confirmed that this was harassment. Reddit may be fine for very specific subs, but overall it's a real mess where power hungry mods have fun without…

Trash mods really do hurt that place. I reported a physical assault, some punk kid with an airsoft taking potshots at pedestrians, to my local sub to warn others. Turned out the guy had been at it for weeks all over town.

Three months later, somebody didn’t like a political comment I made, went through my history, reported that earlier post, and voila. Banned for threatening violence because I warned people about a criminal’s behavior. Heh.

Re: Ask HN: Longer Discussions in HN?

#60
One part of HN’s success is the addictivity. Having to be-here-now-or-don’t-participate is certainly part of it, it makes people open HN many times a day. The drawback is that participants are often dopamine-high people, not the wise CEOs with developed opinions that we had 10 years ago.

A long-form HN would involve another audience than the dopamine-high people.

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