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I mostly agree. I do sometimes find valuable counterpoint in the HN comments, but most often that's on topics where the community here has actual expertise (mos
by _delirium 11y ago
I mostly agree. I do sometimes find valuable counterpoint in the HN comments, but most often that's on topics where the community here has actual expertise (mostly programming) and the counterpoint is pretty specific.
This has been a discussion on HN for years, though, and even has its own jargon term, the "middlebrow dismissal": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5072224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5072224
- hackuser 11y agoThanks for the interesting link. I think the discussions used to be much better. There was less 'noise' and some truly excellent 'signal', which made the discussions worthwhile. Recently, my impression is that the noise has significantly increased and the excellent signal has almost disappeared. But: That could be simply my mistaken impression, it could be just normal variability, or it could be something else. Certainly I'm not the first to say, in any community, 'it's not like it was in the old days'.
- sanderjd 11y agoIn my opinion, there is plenty of noise, but the truly excellent signal remains and pops up at a reasonable rate. But I've only been around 5 or 6 years, so I always wonder if I simply don't have a concept of the "good old days" that people are nostalgic about.
- 7952 11y agoIn a discussion where the community has expertise there is a tolerance for practicality and getting things done even when it may not be the most perfect solution in an intellectual sense. I find that this is not extended so readily to other domains. People will often have a good understanding of the abstract concepts involved and assume that decisions should be tested on that basis alone. It is a bit like an intelligent but non-technical executive choosing database software.