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HN is Becoming 2005 Slashdot

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Re: HN is Becoming 2005 Slashdot

#101

Post by jared314 »

dictum wrote: post #58

I can think of 3 possibilities: 1. HN has an influx of new users who are somewhat interested in technology and technology businesses, but do not have enough domain expertise to engage on discussion of technical subjects, or subjects related to startups, such as design, customer support, finance, laws (as in interpretation of legal code, not politics), etc. For them, it's easier to engage in political debate. [EDIT] A…

A fourth possibility is that the growing user base has made HN a larger target for social media marketing.

Re: HN is Becoming 2005 Slashdot

#102

Post by deveac »

scythe wrote: post #47

I agree. The content on HN became quite politicized after the NSA scandal. This may, honestly, have something to do with the fact that pg himself, and the moderating team, were concerned enough to allow these topics to be prominent and widely discussed. Perhaps it was okay for a time, but if the board is to be politically mobilized on occasion (eg SOPA) it should be very infrequent and it needs to end at some point.…

>We have simply discussed the surveillance scandal enough. There's just nothing more we can say or do that will matter right now.

The opposite is true.

For too long the minimal to zero reporting these issues have received in the majority of news outlets was met with an abundance of silence and indifference. Outside of a few communities on the net (and fewer offline), there hasn't been discussion on these issues. The Guardian finally breaks one story that manages to have legs for a week or two in the mainstream press and we're done here?

No. Just no.

>I, like you, appreciate the possibility of a board devoted entirely to technical content...

This has never been the case for HN, nor was it ever an ideal for HN:

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

From the first line of the first question about submission guidelines: On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups.

While most (read: not all) political posts are discouraged, the discussions around surveillance have been more technical here than anywhere, and it would be hard to conceive of a discussion with a political element being more on-topic and imperative than the discussions of late.

Re: HN is Becoming 2005 Slashdot

#103

Post by polychrome »

lsc wrote: post #60
taproot wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a) too young and b) too sheltered from it we were only just getting consumer dial up in homes about that time in our country. But as i understand it yes although that was more like a gold rush in peoples living rooms. Unlike what we have today, a multibillion dollar industry walking around in peoples pockets every minute of the day. Dont gete wrong the desktop isnt going anywhere soon we just have a new poster…

>a multibillion dollar industry walking around in peoples pockets every minute of the day. - you are speaking of popularizing and monetizing the internet on mobile devices. In the last dot-com, we were popularizing and monetizing the internet on desktops. To someone that has lived through both? it looks pretty similar. Lots of dumb ideas that will crater, and a few good ones that will endure. (Of course, it's difficu…

While I initially agree with you and can understand your view point based on your previous experience, I think there are two categories of tech: -Business Value Add -Hype / Marketing

I separate these out because we've already gone through a terrible economic downturn that is sputtering to produce jobs and yet we see an explosion of jobs in the tech sector. That's because of the value add software that is reducing the number of employees, paperwork or steps in a process a business needs in order to operate.

Those types of companies are going to be fine through another economic downturn because their clients have realized how much their saving by using the software. These value add tech businesses may see a slow down, but not a collapse.

The biggest example that is here to stay is E-Commerce. Look at how many companies / businesses are realizing how much easier / cheaper it is to go online than build a brick and mortar store with employees, rent, utilities, taxes, repairs, maintenance, etc.

Even some apps are here to stay. AirBNB, for example, is a personal value add when I'm traveling. I have no problem paying them a couple dollars to reduce my overall travel costs by 15-30%.

What will collapse almost overnight are the apps, websites, etc that are simply fluffy websites, marketing materials, or buggy unusable software.

My thought is stick with the people helping other people make or save money, and you'll be safe through the next one.

Re: HN is Becoming 2005 Slashdot

#104

Post by krapp »

shuzchen wrote: post #93

I've always been hopeful that lobste.rs would take off, but sadly the steps they took to ensure good participation has kept it from growing. I mean, it still gets new articles, and there are a very few items that aren't on HN (or showed up sooner), but most posts have very little discussion. Looking at the homepage, and the majority of links have 0 comments. That said, it's got a few features that people have pitched…

lobste.rs is invite only, isn't it? Do you think that's been their main problem, or are there others?

I ask because a forum project is on the back burner for me and this kind of thing is relevant to my interests.

Re: HN is Becoming 2005 Slashdot

#105

Post by gonehome »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #57

I agree completely. I've been on HN for almost six years now (sidenote: wow!), and I'm in the top 40 users on the site by karma. And, despite the exhortations to not think that the site is becoming Reddit, the community is absolutely changing for the worse. There are a few things that I've noticed that I never used to see: * More politics. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm a crazy flaming liberal, and I still d…

I think it'd be interesting if any account less than a year old had their comments put into the 'pending' state pg has been talking to.

Re: HN is Becoming 2005 Slashdot

#106

Post by cothomps »

badman_ting wrote: post #10

That is an interesting take on what happened to Slashdot. I guess I just assumed that the world passed by Slashdot's cohort, that the currents governing our industry changed but they mostly didn't. The "iPod lame" post gets harped on, but it's a good illustration of that dynamic, I think. But you were probably much more familiar with it than I was.

From my perspective, the RSS reader mostly killed Slashdot for me; Slashdot was great when it was able to surface things I normally wouldn't have seen otherwise. Once RSS (then Twitter) came along, the sites that were generating their own content were easier to find/skim directly rather than waiting for Slashdot to throw them a little publicity.

I frequent HN because it does serve that purpose that Slashdot once did - bringing content to my attention that I otherwise would have missed.

Re: HN is Becoming 2005 Slashdot

#107

Post by danso »

I think part of the problem is in the mechanics of the editing/modding process. Too many similar articles (and sometimes, the same URL, but slightly altered) make it to the front page in a short time span. Even worse, the desire for advocacy is so strong that people tolerate and upvote blatant blogspam. Otherwise, I think an interest in current events - i.e. this is the world we live in -- is not too orthogonal from tech/entrepreneurial topics, and can often be highly complementary. Also, while there are lots of places to discuss politics and advocacy, I think HN's quality of comments and a desire for thinking outside-the-box makes HN's comment section worth visiting for any topic.

I read Slashdot for years and there were also great comments...but a much higher number of top-voted/expanded comments that were akin to the clever/cute/meme-funny comments that plague Reddit today. Also, IIRC, Slashdot's commenting system required a lot of clicks to expand discussions...I pretty much never did that...which meant that Slashdot discussions required work to get past the witty upvoted one-liners...whereas with HN, it's just a quick flick of the mousewheel to get to more substantial comments.

Re: HN is Becoming 2005 Slashdot

#108

Post by ricardobeat »

deveac wrote: post #102
scythe wrote: post #47

I agree. The content on HN became quite politicized after the NSA scandal. This may, honestly, have something to do with the fact that pg himself, and the moderating team, were concerned enough to allow these topics to be prominent and widely discussed. Perhaps it was okay for a time, but if the board is to be politically mobilized on occasion (eg SOPA) it should be very infrequent and it needs to end at some point.…

>We have simply discussed the surveillance scandal enough. There's just nothing more we can say or do that will matter right now. The opposite is true. For too long the minimal to zero reporting these issues have received in the majority of news outlets was met with an abundance of silence and indifference. Outside of a few communities on the net (and fewer offline), there hasn't been discussion on these issues. The…

You seem to have ignored the gist of this whole discussion.

As someone brilliantly put it in a recent thread: I assume you have taken some space from your company's meetings for discussing the NSA, SOPA and related subjects every day?

Re: HN is Becoming 2005 Slashdot

#110

Post by lbrandy »

I have a theory that "upvote for visibility" instead of "upvote because it interests me" is when any up-vote-down-vote arrow community crosses a line that cannot be easily uncrossed. Every "awful" subreddit is a place where a bunch of people upvote a story because they want other people to see it, in some form misguided activism. And this is everything that is "wrong" with those communities.

The community is boring to people who want interesting things, but interesting to those who want to advocate some position. And the upvotey-downvotey nature makes non-activism and contrary opinions go away, since activists tend to be poor caretakers of the community itself, instead looking to push a particular position (ie, they downvote everyone else away).

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