Has Hacker New Become Programmer News?

Uh, I'm a user at lobste.rs and believe me, "founders and makers" are not very welcome there.

I’m always building a new project. I just finished fabricating 8 preamps wired up to an adc with 32bit/192hz sampling rate for recording surround-sound nature noises portably. Before that, I built a system integrating DDD and actor model in a distributed, redundant mechanism for super easy cloud. I could go on and on for days with things I build. I quit corporate work years ago to work on my projects and hike around the country.

I say all this because of all the communities I have found online, this one feels the most at home. And I’m the most distant person from “normal” I know. This community is great, I learn things everyday. Whatever it is and whatever it is turning into, I hope it keeps the spirit I see on it everyday.

After the Russian meddling in the 2016 election stuff was discussed on HN, the moderation got very strict and the HN community lost some of its unique flavor and spirit.

I know the mods were not intending to cause this to happen, but they seem to have taken their mission a bit too seriously and extended their wrath onto anyone playing devil's advocate or posting too rapidly, etc.

Now HN has a much more sterile, corporate feel. Before the change, politics was occasionally discussed in a mostly mature and friendly way, and unhelpful comments were simply downvoted without the "help" of moderators.

Censorship and strict "community standards" about what is considered an appropriate vs inappropriate opinion, and what comment style is considered acceptable (to mods) has become the norm.

Fortunately, HN can still do a pretty good job of covering programming related topics and some startup-relevant stuff, but the old HN, the place where I often found my mind getting changed by an insightful comment or a dialog between others, seems to be gone forever.

>Is there a smaller communitiy somewhere, where less "normies" with normal jobs hang out and more founders and makers? Maybe a community where you have to show what you are building before you can enter?

The inevitable question to ask, taking a cursory glance at your own contributions, is why would such a community accept you as a member? You seem like exactly the kind of 'normie' you're complaining about. You want to hang out with founders and makers? What's your startup? What have you made? Where's your Github profile? Show us your whitepaper on something technical, and how many citations you have. Did you even win the Putnam?

I mean, your last submission was asking about hiring a social media manager on Fiverr, come on.