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I don't think I'm ever going to get over what.cd getting taken down. After it disappeared my new music discovery has plummeted.
Ever heard of Apple Music? Spotify? Youtube?
The down-vote feature (for those who didn't read the article: you have to provide feedback to down-vote) is something I've spent years saying HN badly needs. These days I just don't bother posting most of the time because while I shouldn't be bothered by abuse of negative rep; you can't help be pissed off when you've spent a short while including detail only for someone who doesn't understand the subject or has a per…
"It’s invite only." So it's a clique. I thought we grew past these after high school.
And HN is arguably better for not being invite-only. There are so many articles on HN where the top comment is by somebody with deep domain knowledge who provides some kind of original insight that fits into the low length and polish expectations of a comment, but would never have become a formal blog post. Invite-only communities intentionally give up on that kind of discourse for... what? Easier moderation?
"It’s invite only." So it's a clique. I thought we grew past these after high school.
How so, it's a method for dealing with spammers/marketers and the like who would post low effort or off topic content regularly.
The former isn't a great solution because it requires users to be linked to their real identity by at least one person. Real identities have some advantages, but requiring it bars a lot of good discussions that people don't want linked to their real name. Allowing pseudonyms gives people freedom to publicly say something they would traditionally only say privately or sometimes not at all. If it is paired with strong moderation, like HN is, it can prevent the greater internet fuckwad theory from going into effect which is a common problem with anonymous communities.
If you have people inviting people that they don't know the real identity of, the invite system isn't really adding anything beyond making it slightly more complicated to join. I could understand a theory that a higher barrier to entry means that only people with a high desire will join resulting in a better community. It is possible that results in better discussion, but I'm not sold because there are plenty of bad users like spammers and bots that are also highly motivated.
And HN is arguably better for not being invite-only. There are so many articles on HN where the top comment is by somebody with deep domain knowledge who provides some kind of original insight that fits into the low length and polish expectations of a comment, but would never have become a formal blog post. Invite-only communities intentionally give up on that kind of discourse for... what? Easier moderation?
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Ever heard of Apple Music? Spotify? Youtube?
Laughable to compare the obsessive curation of music on what.cd with any of those platforms, not to mention the fidelity and the vast range, far exceeding what’s available on the other platforms.
The front page is mostly dead. The most discussed thread has like 17 comments. And a lot of those comments are uninteresting - e.g. "Hey, really nice post!".
I think it's more important to have a lot of users, with the occasional user that has a deep expertise in one area rather than a small group of people that are slightly better on average.
Honestly, there are probably plenty of small subreddits that have a higher level of expertise. Places like /r/askhistorian have proven that it's possible to have really good in-depth and insightful discussions if a modicum of moderation is implemented. It's especially easy for topics related to a profession and even more generalized, topics that aren't too inflammatory like politics or religion.