Mostly I try to stay unbiased, but like many others I have been guilty of the behavior you describe at times. It think that whenever you post a comment, there should be a bold disclaimer above to remind people to be nice, constructive criticism only, etc.
Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..
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Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..
#92Hi Steve, I don't know if you are going to read this, but I'm going to write it for the rest of the audience too. I think the trend of dismissing critics and commenting along the lines of "sour grapes" or "haters" very disturbing. Yes I go against your commentary. The great thing about internet and communities based on pseudonyms is that you get the first reaction that people have. Very few will take a few minutes to…
> Education sucks... This is my main gripe with HN right now -- the anti-intellectualism of the community. I recall an article submitted where the author claimed "Academic papers are shitloads of crap. Want to read something? Read some beautiful source code instead." Nearly all breakthroughs in computing sprung up from an academic context; why would you be so cavalier in dismissing it? You might actually find out wha…
Hacker News is far from anti-intellectual; the opinion of a single author does not constitute a community trend.
Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..
#93The bar for entry is so low when it comes to many types of startups today that the grand majority of "Show: HN" posts are completely unimpressive, unoriginal, and just plain boring. That is just the reality. This entire idea that people should be supportive regardless is ridiculous when the amount of people entering the market is enormous. Maybe getting great supportive feedback on mediocre projects isn't what HN is for anymore. IMO that is a good thing. The industry has evolved, so has HN, maybe you should as well.
And I still see great supportive criticisms, and general fluff "great project" on the ACTUALLY GOOD projects.
Just building something isn't impressive anymore.
Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..
#94I'm really bummed to hear that you feel you got shot down or excessive snark about your projects. I learned something about this in my creative writing classes - it means nothing until you write it down and put it out there. It's easy to imagine how great your writing is until you actually write, and it's hard to say "at least for now, this is my best effort." If you're putting it out there, you're already doing more than most.
In spite of some snark, I still find HN to be a pretty good community. Up and down voting actually reflects this. On most sites, it is, as you pointed out, a way of keeping score (you know how it goes, if you like Mitt Romney, you vote up, if you like Obama, you vote down, regardless of the tone or content of the post). I actually feel that HN is still unusually inclined to actually use the voting to moderate rather than keep a tally relative to pretty much anything else out there.
I'd be really bummed to see this go.
Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..
#95The bigger a news site gets, the more it starts to resemble Orwell's Two Minutes of Hate. The irony today is that it's not some overbearing totalitarian power that's doing it, it's the users themselves.
Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..
#96What projects are you working on now? If you're still stuck with a long commute and you are looking for something to build, you could try your hand at a Hacker News replacement. There are certainly enough people here jaded by the toxicity that would make the jump someplace new. My only piece of advice, if you decide do this, don't post it as a "Show HN". Reach out to smart people privately to beta test it.
So I shut down (albeit people can still sign in) a site called favilous which was a bookmarking site. And recently I read a book called Join Me by Danny Wallace and thought it would be cool to see if that translated to the web so I created www.11kclub.com but got castigated by HN for being unoriginal, for being a rubbish idea and for the manner in which it was posted. I accept people will be negative and won't like e…
I think that hate and negativity in the face of an obvious bald-faced lie is to be expected. I agree that the negative reaction to 11kclub.com was over-the-top, but also I could have easily predicted that reaction.
Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..
#97I wonder if we are being trolled. sw007 has been a member for just 18 months[0], not five years, and in that time he has only submitted "Ask HN" or "Show HN" posts and written only a handful of comments, half of them being on this post.
Steve never participated in the community. He used the community when it suited him to get advice, and after 18 months of not liking the advice he received, he quits.
I am not defending negativity, but participating in a community is essential in understanding it. Maybe Steves expectations were far to high, or he come here looking for positive affirmation. I would prefer HN to stay honest and objective, providing constructive criticism and encouragement, rather than just praising each other.
Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..
#98Steve,
Where's the constructive criticism? It's a community, you can take your ball and go home but if you actually want better feedback start by giving some.
Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..
#99I have also pretty much given up on HackerNews now too. I used to love finding novel and interesting material from any subject.
Now I just see the same posts over and over again:
- "top 'n' mistakes starts-up make" - "best 'n' ways to ensure your start up will succeed" - "'n' qualities that make a good founder/entrepreneur." - "why my start-up failed: lessons learnt"
The content is rarely ground-breaking and rarely written by somebody of note.
And a more disturbing trend is as soon as somebody write/posts something interesting, there follows weeks/months of similar, non-original rehashed posts/articles.
I think point-scoring is an important factor - as soon as the posting stuff becomes a 'game' that can be 'won', somewhere the reason for it all is de-valued...
Or perhaps it's just too big now... the book "the story of eBay" gives an interesting insight to community growth...
Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..
#100This is probably an outcome of the comment engine on this site, it could use some real work. If it worked a little more like Reddit, with upvotes and downvotes, then good, useful comments would bubble to the surface and negative useless comments would get hidden.