81–90 of 264 posts
I agree. The content on HN became quite politicized after the NSA scandal. This may, honestly, have something to do with the fact that pg himself, and the moderating team, were concerned enough to allow these topics to be prominent and widely discussed. Perhaps it was okay for a time, but if the board is to be politically mobilized on occasion (eg SOPA) it should be very infrequent and it needs to end at some point.…
For example, I notice a few people pointing out the higher number of Golang articles that get to the front page, however, this is more due to there being more development and discussion as v1.1 was just released. For other programming languages most common experiences have been shared and novel new ideas become fewer.
I don't really see it as a problem. Most political posts are identifiable by title. Although the SvN ratio may not be perfect, I doubt it ever could be without HN implementing something like /.'s customisation options for topics and the ability for users' to block them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem for me is that the political stuff has perfect substitutes that I can easily go to, but I don't know of any alternatives for the skeptical, intelligent tech+business discussion.
That's an interesting way of putting it. I first came on here to learn about Arc. It was just tech. Then it became tech+business. What you're seeing is simply that at scale, politics is inextricable from tech+business, just as, at scale, business is inextricable from tech.
It was tech+business before it was tech: The site started out as "Startup News" (which is when I personally have my fondest memories of it).
It is official; Alexa now confirms: Hacker News is dying One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Hacker News community when Google confirmed that Hacker News market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all web traffic. Coming close on the heels of a recent Alexa survey which plainly states that Hacker News has lost more market share, this news serves to reinfo…
Hope you are right, I hope that HN does reduce market share, and head back to its roots, as a niche site for hackers.
I agree completely. I've been on HN for almost six years now (sidenote: wow!), and I'm in the top 40 users on the site by karma. And, despite the exhortations to not think that the site is becoming Reddit, the community is absolutely changing for the worse. There are a few things that I've noticed that I never used to see: * More politics. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm a crazy flaming liberal, and I still d…
I agree completely. I've been on HN for almost six years now (sidenote: wow!), and I'm in the top 40 users on the site by karma. And, despite the exhortations to not think that the site is becoming Reddit, the community is absolutely changing for the worse. There are a few things that I've noticed that I never used to see: * More politics. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm a crazy flaming liberal, and I still d…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a 5-digit uid there and remember when it really was a great site. But the comments started to become pretty terrible almost immediately. I still visit it every day just to skim the articles, but only about 20% of them are interesting/something I didn't see posted somewhere else.
Slashdot always had a large number of terrible comments (four digit UID here - right from the start the site had a huge troll contingent), however the moderation really did yield a better S/N ratio if you browsed the higher rated comments: On Slashdot you earned the occasional ability to moderate, with a limited ability to do so once you did. That resulted in more careful and considered moderation and I still believe…
Smarter moderation might work here in the short term, but ultimately the only thing that works is quietly sneaking off to a newer forum.
It is official; Alexa now confirms: Hacker News is dying One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Hacker News community when Google confirmed that Hacker News market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all web traffic. Coming close on the heels of a recent Alexa survey which plainly states that Hacker News has lost more market share, this news serves to reinfo…
Hope you are right, I hope that HN does reduce market share, and head back to its roots, as a niche site for hackers.
I can think of 3 possibilities: 1. HN has an influx of new users who are somewhat interested in technology and technology businesses, but do not have enough domain expertise to engage on discussion of technical subjects, or subjects related to startups, such as design, customer support, finance, laws (as in interpretation of legal code, not politics), etc. For them, it's easier to engage in political debate. [EDIT] A…
I'm a bit torn by these NSA revelations because most other sites seem to be ignoring them. But I feel they've become too prominent.