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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)

#91

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

23B1 wrote: post #54

I disagree with his point that HN is being reddit-ized especially given reddit's recent mishegoss. The overall comment quality around here is still quite high.

The last line of the HN guidelines, https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, addresses this pretty brilliantly in my opinion.

Point being, people have been complaining about HN "turning into" reddit for at least the past decade - yet I guess it never quite "gets there" because people still make this complaint all the time.

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

#92

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

joe_the_user wrote: post #88
nunez wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The sad thing is that having a high quality site seems to be actually worth little to the owners of the site. If your income is advertising, engagement and users with little impulse control seem to be the thing that brings value. And there seem to be few other ways to monetize a site.

Exactly. The only thing that really makes HN "work" is that YC has a very different incentive structure for what they get out of this site, versus all the other news aggregator/social media sites out there who need to maximize revenue.

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

#93

Post by teolandon »

skilled wrote: post #39
Kiro wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How was he wrong?

> Hacker News is wobbling on that space now. Clearly it's not. Not sure why I have to repeat myself though. ;-)

Because you quoted a passage with about 5 statements that he could have been "wrong" about, and didn't specify which one you were talking about. (insert snarky emoticon here)

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

#94

Post by mensetmanusman »

cmdrtaco wrote: post #15
jacquesm wrote: post #11

He's still a user: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cmdrtaco

Hi.

Some of the crazy fan fiction zero point trolling posted in /. still makes me laugh. I joined circa 1999 (pre 9/11!).

I think I remember my username, I wonder if it is possible to log in and find what I was posting about in high school... aha

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

#95

Post by Noumenon72 »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #53
nullindividual wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Interesting that even at the time he was completely wrong. Within the past few months, I've started to see more low effort comment posting, submissions way outside of what many thing HN on-topic to be, and I've flagged more submissions/comments in the past handful of days than I ever have. HN is becoming something like a proto-popular reddit. EDIT: Since the above sounds like doom-and-gloom for HN, I want to say it…

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?

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

#96

Post by realitythreek »

isaacremuant wrote: post #50
sctb wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would read that as editorial/curatorial power being decentralized.

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.

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

#97

Post by realitythreek »

basch wrote: post #51
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…

having each persons identity tied to the instance makes the whole thing way too unstable and centralized. identity needs to exist outside the bounds of instances.

So having a central identity has pros and cons, right? One of the cons is you’d then be beholden to whomever runs the identity service and that takes away a lot of the autonomy of the Fediverse.

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

#98

Post by doublerabbit »

unmole wrote: post #16
doublerabbit wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't know what flaming is? And no I can't because there's no controversial threads at the moment. But the toxicity between users is awful.

So, how does that tie into incel culture ?

Misogyny.

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

#99

Post by ideamotor »

zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #84
ideamotor wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be for-profit but it can’t be publicly traded. The reason we lost Twitter is because they legally had to sell to Elon. The reason we’ll lose Reddit is because they are going public and will legally be required to chase the money.

I think you have that backwards - Elon never wanted Twitter, he just wanted to see his name in some headlines and make people run around pulling their hair for a bit. However he messed up and put himself in a position where he had to buy Twitter for far more then it was worth and he was held to it. All the top people he fired day one were more then happy to parachute away - was the best thing for them. There is no wa…

I’m not following all that. Someone made an offer, the board legally had to sell as it was in the interest of the owners (the shareholders). What else matters? If it’s deemed to be in the interest of shareholders for Reddit to sell off every sub to a corporate, they’ll do that too.

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

#100

Post by throwawaaarrgh »

sltkr wrote: post #86
throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would work, the mods just don't like it

Any source on that? I would guess it's more likely that the Slashdot moderation system is too hard to implement. It also requires a lot of finetuning (like how to determine how many moderation points to dole out to users based on their karma and activity). The Hacker News developers seem to prefer to keep things simple, so they might reject Slashdot-style moderation for being too complicated, but that doesn't mean th…

The source is that the HN mods know about Slashdot, and people have been asking for those features here for 15 years, and they haven't been implemented.

Slashdot's mod system is not complex.

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