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Interesting that a lot of the top rated articles over the year have been political, not strictly (or sometimes even remotely) technical.

by fnayr 11y ago

acemarke 11y ago
In casual observation, I've found that to be the case in every submission/comment site I've read (Slashdot, Reddit, HN, etc). The submissions that seem to gather the most comments are always the ones about politics, social drama, and "real-world" news.
- ivl 11y ago
  Just taking a guess here: the really interesting technical submissions might just appeal to the users who are fond of that subset of tech, but the political ones have a broader interest? Or maybe it's that the technical submissions don't really cause the same emotional response (well, barring stuff like Heartbleed, or other serious issues in tech).
  - acemarke 11y ago
    Definitely both of those.
- hkmurakami 11y ago
  However, the site that gets the most front page links is actually github.com (a friend of mine scrapes the front page)
levemi 11y ago
This is explained by political topics being a lot more accessible than technical topics. Also given technical topics require investment in them, more specific technical topics have a more limited available audience. For example for a given topic say Scala your audience of possible commentators and upvoters you must draw from the entire population of HN readers that includes programmers, and from this subset you must draw those competent and interested in Scala. So of course political topics will always be higher rated than technical topics.
amsilprotag 11y ago
citing http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html "What's different about religion is that people don't feel they need to have any particular expertise to have opinions about it. All they need is strongly held beliefs, and anyone can have those. No thread about Javascript will grow as fast as one about religion, because people feel they have to be over some threshold of expertise to post comments about that. But on religion everyone's an expert." Prophetic counter-example.
nickpsecurity 11y ago
Remember that the mainstream media made billions by figuring out how to match content to specific demographics. They hit as many political and emotional buttons as possible in the process. Human nature, esp the emotional brain, applies even on Hacker News.

Interesting that a lot of the top rated articles over the year have been political, not strictly (or sometimes even remotely) technical.

by fnayr 11y ago

Interesting that a lot of the top rated articles over the year have been political, not strictly (or sometimes even remotely) technical.

acemarke 11y ago

In casual observation, I've found that to be the case in every submission/comment site I've read (Slashdot, Reddit, HN, etc). The submissions that seem to gather the most comments are always the ones about politics, social drama, and "real-world" news.

ivl 11y ago
Just taking a guess here: the really interesting technical submissions might just appeal to the users who are fond of that subset of tech, but the political ones have a broader interest? Or maybe it's that the technical submissions don't really cause the same emotional response (well, barring stuff like Heartbleed, or other serious issues in tech).
- acemarke 11y ago
  Definitely both of those.
hkmurakami 11y ago
However, the site that gets the most front page links is actually github.com (a friend of mine scrapes the front page)

levemi 11y ago

This is explained by political topics being a lot more accessible than technical topics. Also given technical topics require investment in them, more specific technical topics have a more limited available audience. For example for a given topic say Scala your audience of possible commentators and upvoters you must draw from the entire population of HN readers that includes programmers, and from this subset you must draw those competent and interested in Scala. So of course political topics will always be higher rated than technical topics.

amsilprotag 11y ago

citing http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html "What's different about religion is that people don't feel they need to have any particular expertise to have opinions about it. All they need is strongly held beliefs, and anyone can have those. No thread about Javascript will grow as fast as one about religion, because people feel they have to be over some threshold of expertise to post comments about that. But on religion everyone's an expert." Prophetic counter-example.

nickpsecurity 11y ago

Remember that the mainstream media made billions by figuring out how to match content to specific demographics. They hit as many political and emotional buttons as possible in the process. Human nature, esp the emotional brain, applies even on Hacker News.