Yes, but its awesome so your point is moot.
Ask HN: Is Hacker News a Waste of Time?
61–70 of 72 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News a Waste of Time?
#62First, only your post is a waste of time. (Zing!) But seriously, that all depends on what your goals are when you come here, how you use the site, and whether or not the site meets your goals . Second, some meta-advice about the "Trollish question? Although question might be trollish, it isn't because..." meme: Don't do it. If you have a question like that, then it really is trollish. If you think it isn't trollish,…
I see your point. I started with although this might be a controversial question.......because the question is Is HN a waste of time, from that question you might get the idea that I am speaking of HN only.
It seems that you have come up with a sentencing formula which is bad in all circumstances. Maybe you should write a research report upon it, it certainly might be interesting. My academic training has taught me though that one should be weary of generalising.
I personally do not agree with your line of thinking that if you have an embarrassing question keep it to yourself. There might be many smart people here, but I do not usually refrain myself from asking a dumb question if I feel that it might shed some light regarding some issue.
Am I or this post wasting peoples time? I did think a bit about that before I posted it and concluded that if it was a waste of peoples time it would not attract comments or upvotes.
Thanks for your comment anyway, an interesting way of saying that the post was a waste of time without actually saying so, and further, an interesting way of wasting other peoples time while saying that my post was a waste of time. :P
Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News a Waste of Time?
#63It's certainly alarmingly addictive. Much more so than a newspaper. I've been wondering lately what to do about that. Any ideas? I considered shutting the site down for a couple hours a day. More people disliked that idea than liked it http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=372593 but the vote was close enough that I might still try it.
Really it's just one of the many distractions available on the web. If it's not available, people will flock to others. Actually, the worst for me is ... my mail client (especially since it has my RSS feeds in there).
I've gotten into a routine of waking up and spending about half an hour on mail / news and then switching on Freedom.app for 2-3 hours to turn off my networking. I leave the local intranet connected so that if I really need to find some piece of info I can SSH to another box and use lynx. This helps me get into the groove most days.
Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News a Waste of Time?
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shutting the site down for which hours of the day? With timezones it's not exactly a trivial question.
I was planning to shut down during the traffic peak. That seems the obvious choice if you want to save the most people's time.
And annoy a whole bunch of others.
Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News a Waste of Time?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
An alternative to fully shutting down the site would be to "freeze" it. The site is available, but nothing changes. (This could even happen 24 hours per day: updates only happen every 6 hours or something.) To me, the alarmingly addictive thing about HN is that something interesting could happen at any time . Removing this real-time aspect, HN would still be interesting, but no more addictive than a good issue of the…
But what about all those in different time zones? Freezing the site for periods may make it tricky for people in some places to contribute at all.
I was thinking that anyone can access the site and do anything that they would do now. The only difference is that what you do doesn't affect other people until the freeze interval is over.
Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News a Waste of Time?
#66It's certainly alarmingly addictive. Much more so than a newspaper. I've been wondering lately what to do about that. Any ideas? I considered shutting the site down for a couple hours a day. More people disliked that idea than liked it http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=372593 but the vote was close enough that I might still try it.
I'd be interested in seeing anonymized stats of views per day per user. I know my number is pretty high. And yet I find something good almost every time I come back.
Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News a Waste of Time?
#67Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News a Waste of Time?
#68"Info porn"
I can't find how I came across the term -- I think it was via a link on HN, maybe even in turn from this thread. My apology to whomever I may be shortchanging from appropriate credit for the reference.
The term, and its definition here:
http://tools-for-thought.com/2009/01/05/curbing-info-porn-wi...
capture a lot of my concern.
Just using the term in my own head is helping me to re-evaluate my behavior in this regard.
Re: Ask HN: Is Hacker News a Waste of Time?
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
But what about all those in different time zones? Freezing the site for periods may make it tricky for people in some places to contribute at all.
I was thinking that anyone can access the site and do anything that they would do now. The only difference is that what you do doesn't affect other people until the freeze interval is over.
Freezing the content of the main page to update at a fixed rate makes sense.
The comments won't work as well if they aren't done in real time in the current format. One possible solution would be to add a separate section for active comment threads. This might serve as an acceptable way to slow them down, or keep them visible longer. However, the real time comments are a large part of what makes this site addictive, but it's also what provides a fair amount of the value.