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Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

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Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#11

Post by Goronmon »

untog wrote: post #4

Sigh. Personally, I don't have a problem with people being negative. 99% of startups fail, and I think it's worthwhile reminding people of that every now and then. Hacker News shouldn't live in some magical land where everyone is going to make the next billion dollar company. If you truly, genuinely, believe in your idea then you can take the negativity in your stride. There will be plenty of constructive feedback bu…

Personally, I don't have a problem with people being negative. 99% of startups fail, and I think it's worthwhile reminding people of that every now and then. Hacker News shouldn't live in some magical land where everyone is going to make the next billion dollar company.

If this is the case, why even allow for comments? Just have a bot that auto-responds a bunch of times with randomly generated comments that 99% of the time is "Your idea sucks. You should do something else that is worthwhile."

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#13

Post by xvolter »

Recently it seems like Hacker News is just a place people use for marketing and posting links to other blogs, it's truly more like a social bookmarking site by now than it is about the feedback and community. I still have Hacker News in my Google Reader feed but it's becoming more and more about people who find an interesting page and posting it, even if the post was from 4 years ago and was on Hacker News 10 times already, it is still posted. There are no moderators, but if there were it would be restrictive. Can you think of a better solution to save Hacker News or would it turn into jumping from one site to another and trying to have the startup community follow but leave behind the unwanteds?

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#14

Post by electrichead »

I think it doesn't have as much to do with HN as it does with the startup scene itself. A few years ago before the mobile apps, there were fewer people in the startup scene, and those that were there had a more communal sense. Since we are now quite common, there is a lot more competition out there, which probably fuels some of the frustration directed at you.

personally, I wouldn't tear anyone's work down, but I can see why some people would, given how crowded it is now.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#15

Post by nicholassmith »

paulhauggis wrote: post #8

How long have you been using the Internet? sniping and negativity is the norm and I just ignore it. You should too. If your app truly is good, your users/customers will be the only thing that matters.

He's saying that sniping and negativity wasn't the norm for HN, but it's become that way.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#16

Post by Metatron »

I think it's a rejection by some of the karma system. I know that I personally definitely aim not to get points, but at the same time not be a jackass. So that makes me quite cynical and negative in any feedback I do give. I don't like doing anything nice for a karma-like reward, that's just pretentious to me and something I definitely hate about sites like Reddit. I want to feel good about myself in my own eyes, not feed the collective masturbation orgy that many online communities can become, by getting the approval of my opinions from my peers.

But I find that even that tactic is pretty silly and shouldn't be used too much, because as you say, it turns everything far too sour.

So my final solution is to often ignore discussions altogether and us HN as a feed of intellectual peculiarities, and nothing more, only the odd comment here or there. But that does leave me feeling very sorry for the poors sods who ask for feedback here.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#17

Post by WiseWeasel »

If people agree with this, what are some strategies for countering the trend? People could put more effort into down-voting unconstructive comments. Maybe up-voting should also be unavailable until a karma threshold is met. Maybe up-votes could be made precious by limiting the number per day. Maybe there could be honeypot content that's bad on purpose, or determined to be bad after the fact, and everyone who up-votes it gets their voting privileges revoked. The nuclear option might be to hide scores even from ourselves.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#18

Post by johnson_deni »

It's inevitable.

Slashdot, Digg, Reddit, HN.

On a two year or so schedule new ones come along, old ones become worse. People on here are already using those illiterate, infantile 'memes' to express themselves. The next step is HN gone wild.

The only question is, where do I go next? I'm not going to pretend it's going to have than two years to live though.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#19

Post by untog »

Goronmon wrote: post #11
untog wrote: post #4

Sigh. Personally, I don't have a problem with people being negative. 99% of startups fail, and I think it's worthwhile reminding people of that every now and then. Hacker News shouldn't live in some magical land where everyone is going to make the next billion dollar company. If you truly, genuinely, believe in your idea then you can take the negativity in your stride. There will be plenty of constructive feedback bu…

Personally, I don't have a problem with people being negative. 99% of startups fail, and I think it's worthwhile reminding people of that every now and then. Hacker News shouldn't live in some magical land where everyone is going to make the next billion dollar company. If this is the case, why even allow for comments? Just have a bot that auto-responds a bunch of times with randomly generated comments that 99% of th…

Because despite the OP's lament, not all feedback is negative. I posted a project and got both positive and negative feedback, I found both useful.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#20

Post by dazzawazza »

Here's the thing: Not everyone is super confident, not everyone has a thick skin. So when people just snipe it really damages that person and potentially their idea.

It would be fine if ALL the good ideas were made by super confident thick skinned people but they are not. So we, as a species, just lose the potential of the less confident, thin skinned people. This is a HUGE waste of talent. This community should be here to fix that.

Now it's true that in the wide world, thin skinned people need to 'toughen up'. THIS community should be here to help them by helping, guiding and supporting. After all that is what communities are for.

I agree with sw007 that this community is atm worth less than it was a few years ago due to this.

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