Yes, even http://news.ycombinator.com/classic has been affected.
Ask HN: Glut of Mainstream news on HN?
11–20 of 25 posts
Re: Ask HN: Glut of Mainstream news on HN?
#12Mainstream media is ok, mainstream articles are probably not (Google glasses, Instagram for Android etc.).
I'm not sure why - Google Glasses are certainly relevant to Hacker News, and I think few people would argue about Instagram.
Re: Ask HN: Glut of Mainstream news on HN?
#13Yes, even http://news.ycombinator.com/classic has been affected.
wow, never heard of it. what is this 'classic' exactly?
Re: Ask HN: Glut of Mainstream news on HN?
#14Perhaps a more interesting question to ask is: where are the HN submitters getting the articles that they post here? My hunch is that a lot of us are grabbing our news from social networking services (LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.) moreso than we used to. In fact, the percentage of our total news discovery from those outlets -- as opposed to, say, from regularly following a handful of blogs and aggregators -- has probably increased dramatically. So, what we might really be seeing is a representation of the sources most frequently shared on social networks.
LinkedIn, for example, routinely offers business articles from the same sources that have been appearing on HN more frequently. In fact, it's not uncommon to see an article shared by LinkedIn make its way to HN shortly thereafter. (The correlation/causation dynamics are unclear, however, so we should keep that in mind).
Re: Ask HN: Glut of Mainstream news on HN?
#15What bothers me personally is that original valuable content loses with mainstream crappy summaries and worthless flamebaits like the ones from zdnet (take a link, write a few sentences with an unproven statement, ask 'what you think', ..., profit!).
Re: Ask HN: Glut of Mainstream news on HN?
#16Re: Ask HN: Glut of Mainstream news on HN?
#17Some of those are better than others. The Atlantic is usually original reporting or long form journalism.
extremetech is very annoying to me at the moment. Some of the articles are vaguely on topic for HN, but the coverage is usually well below what could be appearing on HN. I would much rather people link to the original source than to places like ET or The Register or the aggregators.
EDIT: Has anyone created an HN stats software? It might be interesting to see graphs of sources; votes; comments; etc.
Re: Ask HN: Glut of Mainstream news on HN?
#18Also, I think there has been a marked decrease in 'Show HN' articles that make up to the front page. I'm not sure if both are related but if a 'Show HN' article has to compete with the whole world's news, I suppose its possible to fade away without anyone noticing.
What about a "community" section that was home to Show HN, Ask HN - basically posts for the HN community? I think that's actually a great idea...
Re: Ask HN: Glut of Mainstream news on HN?
#19I have the feeling Polls and Ask HN have increased. But I'm sure as "wheels" pointed out on the mainstream perception, the ratio was the same when I've signed up years ago.
Actually, I think the "Ask HN" posts have really been slow lately as I always include the best ones in my weekly Hacker Newsletter. The last couple months it has been hard to find more than three or so quality ones each week.
Re: Ask HN: Glut of Mainstream news on HN?
#20How about tweaking the algorithm so that the popularity of a website counts against a submission? I don't mean that the article should be buried if it's from something like nytimes.com but it should have to work harder to make it to the front page.