The Evolution of Hacker News (2013) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Evolution of Hacker News (2013)

#51

Post by type0 » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 10:01 PM UTC

blhack wrote: post #26

mojuba wrote: post #4

I can't believe I've been a HN user for 14 years. Things come and go but HN was one of the very very few web sites that I visited pretty much every day for this whole time. Except for rare hiking trip days. It's also amazing how the spirit and the quality stay more or less the same here. I guess not all Eternal September effects are alike.

Completely agree. I think this is the website I have been a consistent user of the longest (aside from facebook). Love it here. It does seem like the discussion here has become quite a bit less technical, but I think that is really just due to a de-emphasis on the important of low-level tech understanding in the startup space.

It is less and less technical for every year. Probably because it's not just developers among the users now, you can encounter chemists, engineers, lawyers etc. It's usually some of those curious professions that acquire interest for programming and like to follow tech news.

Re: The Evolution of Hacker News (2013)

#52

Post by jshevek » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 10:04 PM UTC

leadingthenet wrote: post #45

vimy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been here since 2012. I feel there has been a shift from startup and programming discussions to more general interests. Definitely a lot more political debates here. Now Indiehackers forum feels more like the old HN.

Could it be due to an influx of Reddit refugees that have left the platform due to its serious decline of quality in the past couple of years?

Yes, this definitely contributes. You see these changes in the language used and in the voting habits as well.

Re: The Evolution of Hacker News (2013)

#53

Post by DanielBMarkham » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 10:15 PM UTC

ignoramous wrote: post #48

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, although you and the commenter have me beat by a couple of months. Unlike some, I have never sworn off HN and left in a huff. HN is where I learned about the drawbacks of where internet tech was going. Many of us started with a desire to build sticky sites and apps, but as some startups mastered this, it became obvious that this was two-edged sword. I miss PG being on, but I completely understand why he le…

> I miss PG being on, but I completely understand why he left. pg isn't shy of (seemingly) speaking his mind on twitter though.

I am happy for that.

pg is one of an extremely small number of high-follower folks I follow on Twitter. It's mostly because I miss his input here.

I love watching smart people discuss stuff (not pointlessly argue) so when I started here, I would post any kind of question that I thought would be interesting to see like-minded (tech) folks discuss. Things like "Is there a God?" I'd also engage with folks who had differing views in order to try to learn from them.

I remember one time I asked some kind of question that set folks off. PG came on and said something like "Why don't you guys find out more about why he's asking that question instead of trashing him so much?" (My paraphrasing and poor memory)

I think he was still asking that question when he finally left. I don't think he ever got a good answer.

pg and I probably disagree on a ton of things, but he seems interested in sharing and learning, not playing the emotional manipulation game. That's why I follow him there.

Re: The Evolution of Hacker News (2013)

#54

Post by type0 » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 10:22 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #27

vonnik wrote: post #19

It would be interesting to see an update on this article, especially how the conversation has evolved, and its quality preserved, with moderation from @dang and others since 2014. https://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-the-people-taking-over-hac...

I'm a youngster compared with most people's tenure on HN, but I've noticed a change in the place since the planet went into lockdown. I'm not going to get into the changes I observe because I don't want to start a long, off-topic thread. But I think if you pay close enough attention, you can see changes in HN over short periods of time. Even between weekdays and weekends, HN changes.

> Even between weekdays and weekends, HN changes.

There's American and European wave during the 24 hour span, maybe even Asian/Aussie wave, but that's still not as noticeable.

Re: The Evolution of Hacker News (2013)

#55

Post by type0 » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 10:26 PM UTC

brk wrote: post #34

I've been here since the beginning, though lurked for a while before actually creating an account. I was also at the original Startup School session or whatever it was called on a Saturday, I think shortly before this site launched?

I have been lurking much longer than I have been commenting, somehow it feels that it always will be the case.

Re: The Evolution of Hacker News (2013)

#56

Post by type0 » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 10:38 PM UTC

I remember many years ago I discovered this site and my first thought was that quality of discussions was good and that couldn't possibly last. Usually web forums have a particular birth, flourishing and demise periods. HN seems to be an outlier, maybe because it isn't a typical forum discussion platform, I'm still nostalgic for all the lost web forums of the past.

Re: The Evolution of Hacker News (2013)

#57

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 10:42 PM UTC

k__ wrote: post #15

b5 wrote: post #6

Interesting to see how stable the design of Hacker News has been. Here’s the earliest I c Ould find in the Wayback Machine – from 21st February, 2007: https://web.archive.org/web/20070221033032/http://news.ycomb... Some changes – most notably the name – but you could easily mistake it for the current design at a glance.

Which is interesting, considering it's so bad on mobile.

[deleted]

Re: The Evolution of Hacker News (2013)

#58

Post by totalZero » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 10:43 PM UTC

leadingthenet wrote: post #45

vimy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been here since 2012. I feel there has been a shift from startup and programming discussions to more general interests. Definitely a lot more political debates here. Now Indiehackers forum feels more like the old HN.

Could it be due to an influx of Reddit refugees that have left the platform due to its serious decline of quality in the past couple of years?

I'm not the newest user here, but this is what I think on that specific subject....

Every time I think about comparing HN to Reddit, I am jarred back to reality by comments that start with "I work in [extremely specific field relevant to article]" or "I did [X project] with [Y person at center of discussion]." People show a different face depending on the group culture, and HN just draws a different humor out of people than Reddit does. The same person could be very serious on HN, and then turn around and write looney jokes on Reddit.

There are certain areas of Reddit that are informative and moderated to maintain a high degree of quality. I think they often deal with a shared hobby, profession, or pursuit.

Re: The Evolution of Hacker News (2013)

#59

Post by krapp » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 10:48 PM UTC

nanomonkey wrote: post #21

tkinom wrote: post #8

Love to know more about the HW and SW stacks that service HN.

From my understanding, it's written in Arc, a Lisp variant created by PG. The Wikipedia article on arc [0] lists some tutorials for creating a forum similar to HN. [0][ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_(programming_language) ]

The current version of Arc can be found at arclanguage.org, forum included, but HN itself runs a lot of proprietary code so the base version of the language and forum won't have feature parity with HN.

There is also Anarki[0], which is the public fork of Arc and the forum, which is very much not in feature parity with HN. Anyone who wants to contribute is welcome to.

[0]https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki

Re: The Evolution of Hacker News (2013)

#60

Post by nexthash » Tue, Feb 09, 2021, 10:55 PM UTC

I've been on HN as a lurker since 2014, and am still surprised by how few people in hacker communities I am a part of are aware of the its existence. I think part of what makes the site great is the small size and structured nature of it, allowing regulars to promote its values and prevent the discussion from diluting with bad comments. There's even a 'classic' version of Hacker News where the front-page consists solely of posts upvoted by accounts created before February 2008:

https://news.ycombinator.com/classic