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Slashdot founder Rob Malda on why there won’t be another Hacker News (2013)

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Re: Slashdot founder Rob Malda on why there won’t be another Hacker News (2013)

#101

Post by fsckboy »

nunez wrote: post #80
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #68

I thought this was a good interview, and interesting to see what has changed in the past 13 years. IMO HN still has by far the best commentary compared to any aggregator. I think there is a lot shittier commentary than there used to be, but that still tends to get downvoted to the bottom or flagged, and dang somehow manages to keep the flame wars to a minimum. One glaring omission in this interview, though, was how S…

Yeah, Slashdot's UI refresh definitely killed the site for me. Reddit was a breath of fresh air by comparison. I still remember when a coworker told me about it back in 2012. I literally stopped browsing Slashdot ever since that day. Reddit had a lot of the same energy that /. did, but in areas other than tech, which I found fascinating. I've learned so much about so many things thanks to Reddit. It's a real shame th…

>Yeah, Slashdot's UI refresh definitely killed the site for me. Reddit was a breath of fresh air by comparison.

the major exodus from slashdot to digg after a redesign was in 2007

Then the digg exodus to reddit after a resdesign was 2010

Re: Slashdot founder Rob Malda on why there won’t be another Hacker News (2013)

#102

Post by lllllkkkk »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #68

I thought this was a good interview, and interesting to see what has changed in the past 13 years. IMO HN still has by far the best commentary compared to any aggregator. I think there is a lot shittier commentary than there used to be, but that still tends to get downvoted to the bottom or flagged, and dang somehow manages to keep the flame wars to a minimum. One glaring omission in this interview, though, was how S…

[flagged]

Re: Slashdot founder Rob Malda on why there won’t be another Hacker News (2013)

#103

Post by Karrot_Kream »

Noumenon72 wrote: post #95
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN has had a huge influx in users since December, probably a result of the Twitter ownership transition and the Reddit blackout. I tend to agree that a lot of the worse elements of those posting cultures are starting to leak through here and HN is starting to feel more like a generic tech subreddit but I'm not sure whether that'll be sustained or not.

How are you tracking the number of HN users over time?

https://hackernews-insight.vercel.app/user-analysis

Re: Slashdot founder Rob Malda on why there won’t be another Hacker News (2013)

#104

Post by tacocataco »

ideamotor wrote: post #63
karaterobot wrote: post #12

> I think that the power has decentralized. Successful people on Twitter basically can fulfill a lot of that same role. You can follow Tim O'Reilly and Robert Scoble and Tim Lee and you can get a pretty good summary of what's happening around the universe. This part was confusing, because it seemed like he was immediate contradicting himself: decentralizing by moving to platforms? Twitter and Reddit centralized power…

Twitter and Reddit used to be open platforms, and were not thought of as centralized. Which is an ongoing massive rug pull.

Using a open platform is a moving target. I really wish it wasn't this way, but it is.

Is it to much to expect the average user to continue dialing in their scopes? Maybe not.

How about the below average user?

Re: Slashdot founder Rob Malda on why there won’t be another Hacker News (2013)

#105

Post by sam0x17 »

joe_the_user wrote: post #83
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #68

I thought this was a good interview, and interesting to see what has changed in the past 13 years. IMO HN still has by far the best commentary compared to any aggregator. I think there is a lot shittier commentary than there used to be, but that still tends to get downvoted to the bottom or flagged, and dang somehow manages to keep the flame wars to a minimum. One glaring omission in this interview, though, was how S…

The thing about slashdot is they tolerated/encouraged low-quality posts ("first post!") from the start - and it worked... for some people while there were also good quality posts. But I think it had the problem that when some factor causes your good posts to decline, the garbage ratio goes up and then you can't recover. I've seen similar dynamics with smaller forums - tolerating various kind of bullshit can work for…

It was more a funy/quirky part of slashdot culture though. As a teen at the time this was a useful hook for getting me interested in tech news.

Re: Slashdot founder Rob Malda on why there won’t be another Hacker News (2013)

#106

Post by jhbadger »

sam0x17 wrote: post #105
joe_the_user wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about slashdot is they tolerated/encouraged low-quality posts ("first post!") from the start - and it worked... for some people while there were also good quality posts. But I think it had the problem that when some factor causes your good posts to decline, the garbage ratio goes up and then you can't recover. I've seen similar dynamics with smaller forums - tolerating various kind of bullshit can work for…

It was more a funy/quirky part of slashdot culture though. As a teen at the time this was a useful hook for getting me interested in tech news.

It also allowed you to upvote a comment in different categories. So you could, for example, ignore the upvotes for "funny" comments in favor of "informative" ones if that's what you wanted.

Re: Slashdot founder Rob Malda on why there won’t be another Hacker News (2013)

#107

Post by Angostura »

DANmode wrote: post #60
mixmax wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm till flabbergasted that noone stole it, it worked so well.

Did it work well for retaining good discussion and a community? ...or for making money?

Good discussion and community.

Re: Slashdot founder Rob Malda on why there won’t be another Hacker News (2013)

#108

Post by isaacremuant »

realitythreek wrote: post #96
isaacremuant wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad fact is that the fediverse has the worse of both worlds where, in the end, it still seems like following a block list of an admin who is accountable to no one (instead of a popular person with some specific track record) and the fragmentation means the discoverability and interaction is minimal. Until there's a way where one user can decide what instances to see, it will be a crap experience unless you agree…

> Until there's a way where one user can decide what instances to see, it will be a crap experience unless you agree 100% with the whims of an admin, who made you jump through hoops only to defederate at the slightest disagreement. You can always run your own instance for yourself. Also in practice I’ve not found it hard to find instances who’s block lists I agree with.

Thanks for the suggestion but it sounds utterly ridiculous to have to self host an instance just to achieve that usecase.

Re: Slashdot founder Rob Malda on why there won’t be another Hacker News (2013)

#109

Post by realitythreek »

isaacremuant wrote: post #108
realitythreek wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Until there's a way where one user can decide what instances to see, it will be a crap experience unless you agree 100% with the whims of an admin, who made you jump through hoops only to defederate at the slightest disagreement. You can always run your own instance for yourself. Also in practice I’ve not found it hard to find instances who’s block lists I agree with.

Thanks for the suggestion but it sounds utterly ridiculous to have to self host an instance just to achieve that usecase.

You don't have to self host. That was a suggestion if you couldn't find a single other instance out of the thousands that exist that meet your requirements.

Re: Slashdot founder Rob Malda on why there won’t be another Hacker News (2013)

#110

Post by isaacremuant »

yborg wrote: post #76
isaacremuant wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad fact is that the fediverse has the worse of both worlds where, in the end, it still seems like following a block list of an admin who is accountable to no one (instead of a popular person with some specific track record) and the fragmentation means the discoverability and interaction is minimal. Until there's a way where one user can decide what instances to see, it will be a crap experience unless you agree…

It's impressive that you have evaluated 20k+ instances to summarize the Fediverse. I have accounts on 5 separate Mastodon instances, and on none of them is the experience as you describe it. You also seem to believe that if you get on an instance run by a reactionary martinet that you are somehow forced to stay there or stop using the Fediverse. Of course, a lot of people seem to believe this about Twitter.

It's impressive how you don't get that the point stands because of the paradigm of users being tied to instances and not having the ability to construct themselves, what they want to see.

You're comfortable with whatever you're doing and that's fine but for someone who is looking for my usecase ,which is more akin to Reddit and being able to pick the subs I see for myself, it's absolutely limiting.

I don't care about mastodon or twitter but that's beside the point.

My points stand. If you want to address them make sure you read them again.

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