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(Why) I quit Hacker News (2010)

mattmaroon.com

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Re: (Why) I quit Hacker News (2010)

#91

Post by dfc »

ionwake wrote: post #9

This seems like a relevant venue to mention my startup http://www.sagebump.com/?view=technocrat&info which dampens HN flagging, re-ranks and merges the top submissions along with those from other tech sites. Thought it might be of interest to those fielding similar complaints. Please note: sageBump is not a replacement, it is a tool for HN

Did you post the wrong link? You mentioned it is a tool for HN but I did not see one HN story. I did see a number of trivial links to images of reddit favorites like a duckling waking up from a nap and a cat with no feet going down the stairs.

Re: (Why) I quit Hacker News (2010)

#92

Post by dfc »

yiedyie wrote: post #2

I recently sent them an email about a thing I really find frustrating at HN: Hi all, I use a lot HN a lot and too often I receive this error: You're submitting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks. The most frustrating part is that I receive it after I submit the link, wouldn't be elegant to have a status icon or label that would signal that my account status is available for submitting. This way I will not submit stor…

It looks like you submit a lot of stories, 545 submissions in 320 days and six submissions in the last 24 hours. You submitted the same askubuntu link twice today. Maybe you should try to only submit one thing a day?

Re: (Why) I quit Hacker News (2010)

#93

Post by dfc »

RivieraKid wrote: post #26

I agree with the "lack of downvotes" and "disagree downvotes" and am neutral or disagree with the rest. This is an opportunity to say what bugs me about HN: 1. A very minor and subjective issue is that I dislike the culture. Not sure how to describe it, but compared to reddir or other sites I visit, it feels academic, humourless, scripted, robotic. The hillarious trolling that Yishan Wong does on Quora would feel com…

I thought I would take a clue from the submission and provide a response to people who have been silently downvoted.

1. Personally (and I imagine that this is true for many HN folks) I find the lack of "hillarious trolling" to be a feature. You and I just have different viewpoints, what you see as academic and robotic I find to be mature and well reasoned discussion. I do not think culture is a minor thing, if you do not like the culture here I imagine that you will be unhappy if you stick around for any period.

2. This is an often repeated complaint. Infact I bet it comes up once a week in a discussion of one of th top ten or fifteen submissions on the front page. Personally I don't have any problem with the design. Sure it might be better if it was a little more fluid on mobile but that is it. Most people are probably tired of hearing this complaint and or feel that the culture makes up for whatever minor annoyances they may have with the UI.

Re: (Why) I quit Hacker News (2010)

#94

Post by normloman »

_mulder_ wrote: post #78
normloman wrote: post #76

The author points out that users upvote a comment based on whether they agree with it or not, and not based on how useful it is to the discussion. Did you really expect it to work any other way? You're expecting internet commentators to be impartial? Even supreme court judges have a hard time remaining impartial. Why do you think someone who spends 15 minutes a day reading articles about technology here would give a…

The problem with linking karma to up/down votes is that it prevents people from posting anything that is contrary to popular opinion and therefore downvoted, even if it may be well thought out or, shock horror, factually accurate too!! The end result is an ever increasing alignment of 'group-think' where popular opinions are boosted and differing opinions are hidden. Up/down voters just need to take a second and cons…

I don't even see the point of karma. It's like fake internet points that mean noting. I have a karma of 583 on HN. What does that mean exactly? What can I do with 583 that I couldn't do before? To me, it's just a pointless scoreboard for how popular my opinions are. It gives me incentive to post a karma-baiting comment once in a while, so I get a burst of dopamine whenever the number jumps by 10 or more.

But back to my main point: When everything is majority rules, with no checks and balances, society collapses into mob rule. Why would it be any different with upvote/downvote?

We're not going to solve this by asking users to think before they click downvote. We should consider removing the upvote/downvote altogether.

Re: (Why) I quit Hacker News (2010)

#95

Post by mhartl »

carrotleads wrote: post #63
etfb wrote: post #25

I agree with most of his points. I stopped reading Slashdot because I didn't like how the voting affected my interaction with the site, and I went cold turkey on Reddit and haven't been back (or even missed it) for maybe a year now. Maybe I should ditch my HN account too. Other than as an experiment in how to craft an inoffensive comment that will be accepted by the tiny subset of humanity who lurk here, it doesn't r…

well the OP mentioned changing the password to long unrecoverable string. How did he manage to come back? did he store pwd somewhere? pull strings at YC?? How?

I've wondered the same thing. He returned under the same username, so it looks like he recovered his password somehow. Matt is a Y Combinator alumnus, so it's possible he talked to PG directly.

Re: (Why) I quit Hacker News (2010)

#96

Post by mindcrime »

The main reasons I sometimes consider quitting are:

1. Too much fiddling with things by the mods (eg, changing post titles and the like). I find this to be more harmful than helpful, and I think we'd be better served with a more hands-off, laissez-faire approach.

2. The overall tone of the site has drifted towards a more collectivist / socialist / left'ish-wing worldview... to much anti-business, anti-capitalist sentiment which I don't enjoy.

3. Too much general news that you could get at cnn.com or msnbc.com or whatever. I liked the site better when there was more of a focus on startups, entrepreneurship, and deep technical topics. Of course, that's not to say that we don't still get some of that stuff, but the weighting towards those topics seems to have lessened, and I - for one - don't consider that a Good Thing.

OTOH, HN is still (mostly) better than Slashdot, and the comments here are mostly of a higher quality than most other "news aggregator" type sites. Just not as much better as they used to be, IMO.

Re: (Why) I quit Hacker News (2010)

#97

Post by mindcrime »

bane wrote: post #74

HN has its problems for sure, but I think it's currently the best general tech/interest site on the Internet at the moment. If I find I'm getting jaded with the mindless groupthink here, I just usually take a couple weeks off. Usually by then, whatever hot topic that was irritating me is out of the news cycle and the hive mind has moved on. At least once a week I find something on the front page that is unique, inten…

There really did used to be more tech discussion (code tips, tech stack discussions etc.) and ShowHN/AskHN posts. But those have either been overwhelmed by more general topics on the front page, or in the case of the HN posts, purposely pushed off quicker than normal posts (which I think is a tragedy).*

Agreed. The Show:HN posts are some of the best and most important posts of all, but they disappear so quickly now... it really is sad.

Re: (Why) I quit Hacker News (2010)

#98

Post by mattmaroon »

bane wrote: post #77
brudgers wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It used to be that every Apple announcement no matter how minor produced links to every Mac related site...for days before the event so that people could speculate. Then the day of the announcement there would be links to live reporting, links to every 'first look' article on every Mac site and the official Apple pages. As a bonus there were always many 'Ask HN:' companion threads. As personally disinterested in the…

I totally agree. And the ultra-weird "it's awesome if Apple does a thing, but completely evil if anybody else even sniffs at the idea" groupthink that permeated almost every thread on any topic seems to have abated somewhat. It's still there on occasion, but Gruber's impossibly apologist blog posts are generally off the front page and the ultra-apologists seems to have started fading after Steve Job's death. There wa…

Much! I'm surprised to see this very ancient post resurfaced here. But this is definitely one of the way in which it's changed for the better since 2010.

Re: (Why) I quit Hacker News (2010)

#99

Post by mattmaroon »

jacquesm wrote: post #31
oskarth wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who quit for real usually don't start with a statement. I think making a big deal out of it is a way of telling oneself why one should quit. Contrast this with someone asking the question "Why did you quit?"and replying with why one did quit.

Considering that I quit for almost a year in much the same way I disagree. The best customers are the ones that leave and tell you why. I never learned anything as an entrepreneur from the people that just left. But I listened very well to those that left and told me why. Of course HN has no direct commercial incentive to retain Matt or me or anybody else, as long as we're contributing it's fine and when we're not th…

I did quit for real. I had been in the top 10 for a long time. Eventually it got better (in some ways anyway) and I started sniffing around again.

Re: (Why) I quit Hacker News (2010)

#100

Post by mattmaroon »

mhartl wrote: post #95
carrotleads wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well the OP mentioned changing the password to long unrecoverable string. How did he manage to come back? did he store pwd somewhere? pull strings at YC?? How?

I've wondered the same thing. He returned under the same username, so it looks like he recovered his password somehow. Matt is a Y Combinator alumnus, so it's possible he talked to PG directly.

There is a password reset feature. It works via typing in the wrong password. Go to the login page, type in a wrong pwd, and it magically appears.

If I recall correctly PG told me that at a YC event. Damn you PG! :)

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