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Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works?

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Re: Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works?

#151

Post by squigz »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #35
dang wrote: post #8

(I'm a mod here) It's true that this place can be cryptic, and that has downsides—specifically, it can be confusing to newcomers, even to some newcomers who would make ideal HN users. That sucks. But there's a key that unlocks most of the puzzles. That is to understand that we're optimizing for exactly one thing: curiosity. (Specifically, intellectual curiosity, since there are other kinds of curiosity too.) Here are…

A great take, and thanks for your all hard work dang. Yesterday the top comment on two stories I went to discuss had deep and meaningful content, before the last line which was a "and I talk about this stuff all the time on my newsletter [link]", and I was conflicted. Same poster each time. The poster had done the HN thing: responded with thoughtful examination of TFA, unique and interesting insight, and I don't feel…

> Yesterday the top comment on two stories I went to discuss had deep and meaningful content, before the last line which was a "and I talk about this stuff all the time on my newsletter [link]", and I was conflicted. Same poster each time.

In my opinion, if they put thought into a deep and meaningful answer, then I think that's fine. If they say "Oh yeah I talked about this in my blog [link]" that's totally different.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works?

#152

Post by Y_Y »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #115
jacquesm wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like that, this really is Dan's forum by now. Maybe YC should gift wrap it and make it a nice Christmas present.

I was going to say, isn't "(I'm a mod here)" kind of an understatement? Oida, he has a pager for it.

Is "oida" here a Greek word or a typo or something else?

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%BF%E1%BC%B6%CE%B4%CE%B1

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works?

#153

Post by RobotToaster »

dxdm wrote: post #132
jesusofsuburbia wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: was an LLM involved in writing this comment? The em-dash style stood out to me

> Honest question: was an LLM involved in writing this comment? The em-dash style stood out to me The use of em dashes looks pretty natural to me. This is how they were used before LLMs, and what LLMs learned from. Em dashes have a useful place in written language. I hope we will not lose their utility because people treat them as enough of a signal on their own to automatically question the authenticity of absolutel…

The reason em dashes raise suspicion isn't usually because of the lack of utility, it's because they're not easy to type.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works?

#154

Post by relaxing »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #147
jacquesm wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been here for a while and that's not a pattern that I recognize, could you point out a few examples? I am fairly sure the mods would love to hear about this as well.

It doesn't look like shit content, but: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46310650 posted an hour ago with 4 measly upvotes among other threads with hundreds of upvotes on spot 10? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46311092 4 upvotes in 26 comments, also on spot 10 after refresh? Still zero comments for both! If all you need to end up in the top 10 is 4 upvotes within 30 minutes I could start selling hacker new…

It’s always amusing to see a topic that’s so esoteric no one can toss off low effort drive by comment on it. Let alone have insightful input on the subject.

I’d believe it’s the mods juicing it by hand, but perhaps there’s an algorithm filtering for subject distance from the core hn oeuvre?

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works?

#155

Post by nottorp »

skydhash wrote: post #149
nottorp wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, small font. I forgot how small it is by default because the browser saves the zoom level per page. Indeed, in spite of wearing glasses that correct me 100%, that font is way too small.

I use the default font size on iPhone and iPad. And just bump the zoom up to 133% and 150% on desktop.

Yes, and it's been so long since I had to adjust it that I forgot I'm not browsing at the default size.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works?

#157

Post by intended »

noosphr wrote: post #107
jacquesm wrote: post #47

HN is hard to game on purpose. So stop looking for the levers and participate , that's all there is to it. I've made friends here, have been helped by people on projects that I was busy with, did the reverse, found friends and business partners and spend way too much time. HN is a very interesting slice of the online world, a place that is unlike the rest, sometimes a bit dry but always interesting and extremely usef…

Hacker news is there to promote ycombinator companies. So long as you know and avoid this it's surprisingly high quality. But that's there to lend more ligitimacy to ycombinator. Its also the currently last man standing in the continual growth and death of tech sites - Slashdot, digg, reddit - and the most surprising one to make it big. You know a tech site is useful when you write about a bug and the maintainer come…

Theres 3 (4?) horse men of online communities.

1 Identity topics, eg: Politics/Religion

2 Insufficient moderation

3 NSFW content

4 Inability to distinguish experienced commenters or valid content from plausible sounding content. I.E. Low Subject Expertise thresholds.

4 is what keeps a community boring, while keeping the SNR high.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works?

#158

Post by RGamma »

keiferski wrote: post #46
PaulRobinson wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't agree with you more. The internet has, to borrow the word of the moment, become enshittified, and people think that's "normal". People accept that platforms should be centralised, and that they should harvest your data in order to sell it to adtech companies who will then feed it to an industry that learns in real-time how to prey on your darkest fears to sell you things you don't need but might make you fee…

YouTube is easily the best “social network” in terms of having high-quality content with minimal manipulation. And I definitely consider it my main form of media consumption. You just have to curate your feed and add stuff to playlists, not watch whatever is on the logged-out default home page.

Is watching videos considered a social activity now? The word "social" truly seems to have been tortured to death.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works?

#159

Post by barnabee »

RobotToaster wrote: post #153
dxdm wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honest question: was an LLM involved in writing this comment? The em-dash style stood out to me The use of em dashes looks pretty natural to me. This is how they were used before LLMs, and what LLMs learned from. Em dashes have a useful place in written language. I hope we will not lose their utility because people treat them as enough of a signal on their own to automatically question the authenticity of absolutel…

The reason em dashes raise suspicion isn't usually because of the lack of utility, it's because they're not easy to type.

They're easy to type on macOS and iOS, which covers quite a large fraction of users

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works?

#160

Post by tptacek »

darkwater wrote: post #140
matsemann wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this "btw I have a newsletter here" seems overly promotional. HN as a forum doesn't have support for "signatures", then it feels a bit off to end every post with something not really relevant. The grey area is people constantly linking to their own blog, but the linked post is relevant (example [0]). Like, it's good when people post relevant links to diver deeper, but when it's constantly your own content, that…

> [0]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que ... simonw is a smart guy, definitely an HN darling for anything LLM related nowadays but at the same time he is constantly pushing for his personal brand, IMO. Maybe unconsciously and just because he is very prolific but still, I get that feeling.

He writes because he loves writing. People can tell, and thus like reading it. If that creates a "brand", there's not much he can do about it. He's an active, valuable, good-faith participant here, has a subject matter expertise in something HN obviously cares very deeply about, and isn't going anywhere.
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