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Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

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Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#111

Post by andrewljohnson »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #76
victork2 wrote: post #41

Hi Steve, I don't know if you are going to read this, but I'm going to write it for the rest of the audience too. I think the trend of dismissing critics and commenting along the lines of "sour grapes" or "haters" very disturbing. Yes I go against your commentary. The great thing about internet and communities based on pseudonyms is that you get the first reaction that people have. Very few will take a few minutes to…

Point by point: Well thought comments are often ignored and not read ( not up/downvoted, just ignored ) You cannot tell if they were read or not. Exhorting users to use their 'mod points' is a challenge (yes its a slashdot reference). The community is larger and only the opinionated seem to vote. Stardom: No matter what they post some ""famous"" people around here get their post on the front page. By courtesy I won't…

You hit the nail on the head about what bothers me about HN, after 4 years of using it: "Its a place for Y-combinator folks to share links they are interested in."

news.YC is biased and will always be biased towards YC-oriented stories, which means it will never be as good as it could be. The status quo doesn't mean that news.YC isn't any good - it's just suspect and you have to filter everything through that lens - the story rankings, comments, and job posts are not ordered by merit, there is a sub-filter in place.

I hope there is eventually a start-up news site that isn't architected and gardened to benefit a small group above all else.

Disclaimer: I was a YC reject, and you can chalk it all up as sour grapes if you like.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#112

Post by kls »

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #49
untog wrote: post #4

Sigh. Personally, I don't have a problem with people being negative. 99% of startups fail, and I think it's worthwhile reminding people of that every now and then. Hacker News shouldn't live in some magical land where everyone is going to make the next billion dollar company. If you truly, genuinely, believe in your idea then you can take the negativity in your stride. There will be plenty of constructive feedback bu…

> And maybe it is a bad idea. ^This. Sometimes people feel very passionate about something and they get tunnel vision. They invest hours, weeks, years on something and to them it is going to be the next big thing that will get the girl, kill the baddies... and save the entire planet[1]. But guess what? Sometimes... sometimes ... it really is just shit. Sorry to tell you this but your idea sucks... or the execution su…

If all you want to hear is how awesome it is, then go show it to your mum. I'm sure she'll tell you how special you are and that you can do no wrong.

Your account was created a little short of a year ago. We are talking about how the newer crop is rude and sarcastic and how that has ruined the quality of the old HN and then you post this. There is no call for it, you could have easily worded your post to say "hey everyone thinks their idea is great, but sometimes we have to help them see reality". Instead you reinforce the very issue, that has caused the decline. Seriously it's sarcastic, condescending and rude.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#113

Post by statictype »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #56
victork2 wrote: post #41

Hi Steve, I don't know if you are going to read this, but I'm going to write it for the rest of the audience too. I think the trend of dismissing critics and commenting along the lines of "sour grapes" or "haters" very disturbing. Yes I go against your commentary. The great thing about internet and communities based on pseudonyms is that you get the first reaction that people have. Very few will take a few minutes to…

>> * Well thought comments are often ignored and not read ( not up/downvoted, just ignored ) I would say this is the biggest issue for me - I am just not into that habit. I would suggest putting a header into the orabe bar: "Please generously upvote if you think something is intelligent, well written or inciteful or otherwise postiviely contributes to the conversation" That said, here is a +1

Could this be a side effect of comment scores not being displayed publicly any longer?

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#114

Post by pg »

It's a genuine problem and has been growing gradually worse for a while. I think the cause is simply growth. When a good community grows, it becomes worse in two ways: (a) more recent arrivals don't have as much of whatever quality distinguished the original members, and (b) the large size of the group makes people behave worse, because there is more anonymity in a larger group.

I've spent many hours over the past several years trying to understand and mitigate such problems. I've come up with a bunch of tweaks that worked, and I have hopes I'll be able to come up with more.

The idea I'm currently investigating, in case anyone is curious, is that votes rather than comments may be the easiest place to attack this problem. Although snarky comments themselves are the most obvious symptom, I suspect that voting is on average dumber than commenting, because it requires so much less work. So I'm going to try to see if it's possible to identify people who consistently upvote nasty comments and if so count their votes less.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#115

Post by jff »

tkirby wrote: post #90
bhousel wrote: post #3

What projects are you working on now? If you're still stuck with a long commute and you are looking for something to build, you could try your hand at a Hacker News replacement. There are certainly enough people here jaded by the toxicity that would make the jump someplace new. My only piece of advice, if you decide do this, don't post it as a "Show HN". Reach out to smart people privately to beta test it.

Charge $50 for it. Keep out the riff-raff.

Then you just end up with the riff-raff who have $50 to blow. Something Awful charges $10 for an account, but there are plenty of moderators who will ban you if you're a shitheel; you then have to pay another $10 to re-activate your account. It works for them, but I think HN is too self-moderating for that to work--imagine if they auto-banned you when your karma dropped below 0, think of the system gaming that would occur to get others banned!

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#116

Post by wkdown »

TBH, I see VERY few "Show HN" posts. I would like to review a startup and give constructive criticism, but HN has been flooded with op-ed blog posts with sensationalist headlines, or articles that have no relevance whatsoever to HN. Maybe the lack of "Show HN" posts is due to others feeling the way you do. But continue to post. Don't let HN become another Reddit, 4chan, Digg, pick-your-poison.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#117

Post by bthomas »

tcarnell wrote: post #104
ChuckMcM wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point by point: Well thought comments are often ignored and not read ( not up/downvoted, just ignored ) You cannot tell if they were read or not. Exhorting users to use their 'mod points' is a challenge (yes its a slashdot reference). The community is larger and only the opinionated seem to vote. Stardom: No matter what they post some ""famous"" people around here get their post on the front page. By courtesy I won't…

hmmm, has anybody studied reading patterns of people when reading from a screen? It may be possible to fairly accurately estimate the probability of a section of text being read. For example if there are 6 comments on display at anyone time and they are on display (without scrolling away) for 2 minutes, one might arrive at a probability of how much of that page was read, and how much time was equally spent on previou…

Is there an easy way to capture scroll activity on a mac app? I'd love to analyze a data dump of scroll activity and active window.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#118

Post by j45 »

nonrecursive wrote: post #65
victork2 wrote: post #41

Hi Steve, I don't know if you are going to read this, but I'm going to write it for the rest of the audience too. I think the trend of dismissing critics and commenting along the lines of "sour grapes" or "haters" very disturbing. Yes I go against your commentary. The great thing about internet and communities based on pseudonyms is that you get the first reaction that people have. Very few will take a few minutes to…

With all due respect, I think you missed the point of this post. The OP is not dismissing critics with claims of "sour grapes" and "hating". He is saying that the community is no longer a "safe place" where he feels OK to share work in its early stages. In other words, he was not saying that negative criticism should be dismissed. He was saying that there is too much negativity for him to find the site enjoyable and…

Well said, there's nothing more I come to HN for than a positive, supportive community, even where something is wrong and needs to be improved.

I have noticed in the last year on here it's become a lot more like other sites with more general hacker interested threads and (maybe I'm wrong) less and less startup relevant stuff. I know HN is for both, but I personally come here for startup signal.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#120

Post by estel »

steve19 wrote: post #97

I wonder if we are being trolled. sw007 has been a member for just 18 months[0], not five years, and in that time he has only submitted "Ask HN" or "Show HN" posts and written only a handful of comments, half of them being on this post. Steve never participated in the community. He used the community when it suited him to get advice, and after 18 months of not liking the advice he received, he quits. I am not defendi…

I don't think it's beneficial to this discussion to be so cynical about sw007's intentions or motives. Many contributors to the site have multiple accounts, or have moved from an older to a newer one. Attacking his/her credibility doesn't further the conversation, especially as a number of people seem to agree that it's a point worth discussing.

It's almost besides the point, but if you'd researched a bit further you would have found a post confirming that this is an alias of another account.

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