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Ask HN: Is it time to fork HN into AI/LLM and "Everything else/other?"

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21–30 of 401 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to fork HN into AI/LLM and "Everything else/other?"

#21

This post is turning up at least every other day. The last few times my reply was "AI is 4/30 or 5/30 of the front page, it's not such a big deal", but today it is 9/30. I am wondering what the ratio is for VC and angel dealflow in the valley right now. Hanging out on the "new" page and upvoting quality non-AI articles is an effective method of resistance.

> The last few times my reply was "AI is 4/30 or 5/30 of the front page, it's not such a big deal", but today it is 9/30.

A bigger impact for me has been the number of mentions of AI in the comments. It's not just that a large part of the front page is dominated by LLM hype posts, it's that every single post has a least one guy near the top somehow bringing AI into the discussion. I don't even care if it's "AI will fix this" or "haha, AI sucks at this too". I just don't want to hear anything about AI ever again.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to fork HN into AI/LLM and "Everything else/other?"

#22
I havent been on here forever, but I vaguely remember other trends took over for certain periods. I could be misremembering, but crypto drove a lot of interaction for a while. I'm indifferent towards LLMs, probably because I'm not a developer in my day job, and I don't mind seeing LLM posts. It is annoying that every single LLM thread devolves into the same tired arguments between LLM zealots and detractors.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to fork HN into AI/LLM and "Everything else/other?"

#23

Feature request: HN could support a tag or label for categorizing a post. This would allow for filtering trivially, and creating views based on participant interest.

Keyword filters on the user side would avoid adding extra steps to submitting and moderation. Categories are an extra complication.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to fork HN into AI/LLM and "Everything else/other?"

#24

Feature request: HN could support a tag or label for categorizing a post. This would allow for filtering trivially, and creating views based on participant interest.

Someone has probably developed a personalized browser for HN.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to fork HN into AI/LLM and "Everything else/other?"

#25
> I would very much like to enjoy HN the way I did years ago, as a place where I'd discover things that I never otherwise would have come across.

I've had the exact same feeling a lot over the past couple years or so, and especially the last 6 months. I used to hit the front page and find 5 to 10 stories I was interested in. Exhausting those to read the second or third page wasn't common. Now I find maybe one story I want, and I routinely will scan through 4 or 5 pages (down to 120 to 160) and only find a handful (4 or 5) that I want to read.

I've long found myself wishing for mini-HNs on different broad topics that interest me. Sadly this was the whole point/idea behind reddit. For example, besides the actual and venerable and loved real HN, I'd love an HN for:

1. Politics: Where disagreements are encouraged and any claims are challenged, but only with factual arguments/counterarguments, and any emotional arguments are moderated (basically how we encourage HN comments to be). There have been some reddit communities over the years doing this, but IME they frequently devolve into echo chambers. It almost always comes down to bad moderators.

2. General News: Where stuff that is of broad interest (and not really tech-related) can be posted and commented on in thoughtful ways. Particularly local news would be fun

3. : Had an idea and forgot it as I was making the list. Will edit and insert when I remember!

I've kind of accepted that my dream just can't work (at least, looking at Reddit as the great experimentation of that). People on the internet are just (generally speaking) incapable of consistently humanizing the user(s) on the other end, and proceed to treat others very poorly. Pride and inability to be wrong strongly exacerbate that tendency.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to fork HN into AI/LLM and "Everything else/other?"

#26
Honestly, I’ve always appreciated how much of 2007 Hacker News is still intact. It remains one of the few places on the internet where discovery still happens organically without trending algorithms or clickbait optimization. It's just manual submissions, one by one.

There’s only one other community I’ve encountered like it, run by a small liberal arts college.

From a signals perspective, HN is incredibly valuable. You get to watch in real time what’s capturing the minds of technically inclined readers. Sure, that means lots of lurkers and a few dominant topics (right now: AI). But that’s also kind of the point. HN works as a reflection of where the collective attention is, whether we like it or not.

Anyways...just two cents.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to fork HN into AI/LLM and "Everything else/other?"

#27
I have seen this question asked on subreddits, Not about AI, but for other topics that some people dislike.

They always seem to take the form of "Should we divide this group into A and B, A stays here and B goes over there and that way everybody is happy"

Invariably the person who proposes this wants to remain in group A and will not be a participant in group B.

To me this seems like the subtext is "Those people are not welcome here, they are not like us. It's not like we have anything against them, we just don't want them ramming it down our throats"

Anyone is free to make a website with whatever content they want, they can invite people to it and grow your own community. Directing a community to divide to remove an element you dislike is an attempt to appropriate the established community.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to fork HN into AI/LLM and "Everything else/other?"

#28

No, I have zero interest in LLM and ignoring the posts has worked fine for me. The political posts are causing more damage IMO. There is also a "hide" button if you keep seeing a lingering high activity post.

But finding out that LLMs are used to push the political posts in such obvious ways yet people are still falling for it is a somewhat interesting topic. Regardless whether that just pushes your bias towards LLMs == bad or tweaks you to spin up your own LLM to combat by searching/detecting/posting the slop. Burying your head in the sand and ignoring all of it is not good either.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to fork HN into AI/LLM and "Everything else/other?"

#30

This post is turning up at least every other day. The last few times my reply was "AI is 4/30 or 5/30 of the front page, it's not such a big deal", but today it is 9/30. I am wondering what the ratio is for VC and angel dealflow in the valley right now. Hanging out on the "new" page and upvoting quality non-AI articles is an effective method of resistance.

> Hanging out on the "new" page and upvoting quality non-AI articles is an effective method of resistance.

Fully agree, and I in fact am finding that I actually find more stories I'm interested in that way than looking at the front page. For whatever reason, I'm increasingly getting out of sync (interests-wise) with broader HN. So many stories I think are great HN material (and would have been a few years ago) languish with almost no activity.

So there are two reasons IMHO to browse new: Surface better stories to front page for engagement, and find better stories

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