4 ms·

Petewailes, with the greatest respect in the world your account is 65 days old - I suspect most people here would consider that fairly new. I myself am certainl

by ErrantX 17y ago

Petewailes, with the greatest respect in the world your account is 65 days old - I suspect most people here would consider that fairly new. I myself am certainly nowhere near part of the original crowd - but I did join in here before the recent influx of reddit-like people. You are right; the quality of articles has generally declined slightly (or more specifically bunk articles are hitting the top of the main page). But the point I take issue with... We don't really want stuff on politics or whatnot on here. It's natural to want to comment on political stuff; and (I guess your likely discussing the healthcare posts here) most of the political stuff here either satisfies the intellectual curiosity barrier OR is relevant to startups/entrepreneurs. Bear in mind here the commentary is generally more interesting and insightful than elsewhere. The real problem that has cropped up the last few weeks is comment quality. I run with showdead on (no reason, I just forgot to turn it off ages ago) and there are a growing number of (dead) jerk-comments. There are a lot more combative "troll" comments and worse voting behavior. In general the commentary - one of the most important parts of HN for me - is becoming diluted.

ehsanul 17y ago
The fact that bad comments show up as dead is however a good indication that HN is coping with them well enough. As long as this pattern of voting down the worst comments remains the same, the commentary here should hold up fine.
- ErrantX 17y ago
  Yes absolutely; but the mods can only do so much (I imagine) and a few do seem to be leaking in the gaps. A lot more comments are at -4 recently - mostly one line agreements and silly meme's (this is the stuff that used to be "dead") The problem is the commentary between there and the "good stuff". I contend that this has declined too (though I have no empirical evidence except my own opinion).
petewailes 17y ago
Oh sure, I'm not saying I'm an old-timer. But I've still noticed it, even in the two months that I've been around. I like the fact that this place isn't Reddit, and I'd like it to stay that way.
ahlatimer 17y ago
I've personally noticed the quality of submissions drop recently. I'm also nowhere near part of the original crowd (although today is my 1 year anniversary of registering), but there has been a steady degradation of submission quality starting probably two months ago. There was a time when I'd read practically every article on the front page. Now, I pick a handful that tend to be towards the bottom. It's done wonders for my productivity, though, so I guess it's not all bad.
- jasonkester 17y ago
  It's probably a side effect of the quantity of submissions going up. I've noticed that the last few submissions I made scrolled off the "new" page inside of 20 minutes. One of those articles made it to 100+ points on programming.reddit (and onto the front page), so it wouldn't be surprising to learn that a lot of good stuff is simply falling through the cracks. Surprisingly, programming.reddit.com's "new" page is about 4-6 hours "tall" most of the time. HN has evidently become the new hot place to dump linkbait tech articles.
araneae 17y ago
How does one know if one arrived before or after this Reddit influx? I first heard about Reddit from people who were complaining about it on hn.
- ErrantX 17y ago
  It's fairly recent (2 months say): there may have been such influxes before I arrived (about 18 months ago). But recently I noticed a decline in the quality of comments, voting and (yeh) submissions. The thing that makes me call it a "Reddit influx" is due to a comment posted last week , in response to "what's with all the redditlike commets", from an ex-redditor basically saying that a lot of redditors are coming over to HN because they prefer it now to the "new reddit". Im sure that's been going on a long time - but it's more noticeable now. Certainly HN is completely different to when I first joined :)

by ErrantX 17y ago

ehsanul 17y ago

The fact that bad comments show up as dead is however a good indication that HN is coping with them well enough. As long as this pattern of voting down the worst comments remains the same, the commentary here should hold up fine.

ErrantX 17y ago
Yes absolutely; but the mods can only do so much (I imagine) and a few do seem to be leaking in the gaps. A lot more comments are at -4 recently - mostly one line agreements and silly meme's (this is the stuff that used to be "dead") The problem is the commentary between there and the "good stuff". I contend that this has declined too (though I have no empirical evidence except my own opinion).

petewailes 17y ago

Oh sure, I'm not saying I'm an old-timer. But I've still noticed it, even in the two months that I've been around. I like the fact that this place isn't Reddit, and I'd like it to stay that way.

ahlatimer 17y ago

I've personally noticed the quality of submissions drop recently. I'm also nowhere near part of the original crowd (although today is my 1 year anniversary of registering), but there has been a steady degradation of submission quality starting probably two months ago. There was a time when I'd read practically every article on the front page. Now, I pick a handful that tend to be towards the bottom. It's done wonders for my productivity, though, so I guess it's not all bad.

jasonkester 17y ago
It's probably a side effect of the quantity of submissions going up. I've noticed that the last few submissions I made scrolled off the "new" page inside of 20 minutes. One of those articles made it to 100+ points on programming.reddit (and onto the front page), so it wouldn't be surprising to learn that a lot of good stuff is simply falling through the cracks. Surprisingly, programming.reddit.com's "new" page is about 4-6 hours "tall" most of the time. HN has evidently become the new hot place to dump linkbait tech articles.

araneae 17y ago

How does one know if one arrived before or after this Reddit influx? I first heard about Reddit from people who were complaining about it on hn.

ErrantX 17y ago
It's fairly recent (2 months say): there may have been such influxes before I arrived (about 18 months ago). But recently I noticed a decline in the quality of comments, voting and (yeh) submissions. The thing that makes me call it a "Reddit influx" is due to a comment posted last week , in response to "what's with all the redditlike commets", from an ex-redditor basically saying that a lot of redditors are coming over to HN because they prefer it now to the "new reddit". Im sure that's been going on a long time - but it's more noticeable now. Certainly HN is completely different to when I first joined :)