7 ms·

I recently returned to HN, having read it a little a few years back. I remembered it as a low-volume, high-quality feed, where I was hesitant to speak, because

I recently returned to HN, having read it a little a few years back. I remembered it as a low-volume, high-quality feed, where I was hesitant to speak, because all the other comments were so full of knowledge. Now, HN seems to have become like any other place, full of noise like politics, social commentary, and just regular news. I guess the commenters are still knowledgeable about technological subjects, though.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
72deluxe 10y ago
Out of interest, where would you go for news that was like the old HN? I used to really enjoy ArsTechnica but the quality of the journalism seems to have dropped slightly.
- iand 10y ago
  Perhaps https://lobste.rs/ https://lobste.rs/ might be an addition to your reading habits?
  - lmm 10y ago
    Is michaelochurch still getting upvoted there? I used to enjoy lobste.rs, but seeing yet another heavily upvoted rant about "open-plan agile mouthbreathing drones" or similar would ruin my whole morning.
    - DanBC 10y ago
      Judge for yourself: https://lobste.rs/threads/michaelochurch https://lobste.rs/threads/michaelochurch
Etheryte 10y ago
The inevitability of every good site is that it will eventually grow, and with it, the diversity of the interests of the user-base. While I come to HN mainly for the technical news, I find it convenient that it also keeps me in the loop about a wider variety of topics I would surely miss otherwise. Your preference may obviously vary.
ximeng 10y ago
Most but not all politics and social commentary gets flagged pretty quickly. Some tech news also gets flagged. It would actually be interesting to have a page for flagged stories for transparency. Getting responses from people actually involved in making tech decisions (like Gratilup here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12113571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12113571, and recently one of the original authors of Excel CSV export) is part of the appeal of this site to me.
- lorenzhs 10y ago
  you can enable showdead in the settings, flagged articles will show up as [dead] in /newest.
  - ximeng 10y ago
    Thanks. Some show up as flagged, some show up as dead, but lots of live stories in between. I'm more interested in the ones where they had lots of votes in a short time but didn't make it past the flag process.
    - lorenzhs 10y ago
      Then maybe http://hnrankings.info/ http://hnrankings.info/ is what you're looking for? Front page articles which get "flagged off the front page" don't end up [flagged] or [dead], instead they drop in rank quickly. You can often see that quite well from the charts on that site.
      - ximeng 10y ago
        That would probably be closer and I suspect they have the data to get what I want, which is more like a list of flagged stories to understand some of the inherent bias in the site.
bazzargh 10y ago
I browse here with a greasemonkey script to hide links from mainstream news sites, aggregators, etc. That cuts down to mostly just the tech content. var links = document.links; var boring = [ 'adage.com', 'arstechnica', 'bbc', 'discovermagazine', 'bloomberg', 'bloombergview', 'buzzfeed', 'businessinsider', 'californiasunday', 'cnn', 'csmonitor', 'dailymail', 'digg', 'economist', 'engadget', 'esquire', 'fastcompany', 'forbes', 'ft.com', 'fortune', 'fusion', 'geekwire', 'gizmodo', 'harvard.edu', 'huffingtonpost', 'inc.com', 'longreads', 'medium', 'mondaynote', 'nature', 'nautil.us', 'newscientist', 'newstatesman', 'newyorker', 'npr.org', 'nybooks', 'nymag', 'nytimes', 'pando', 'psychologytoday', 'qz.com', 'reddit', 'reuters', 'sciencedaily', 'scientificamerican', 'slate', 'techcrunch', 'telegraph', 'theatlantic', 'theguardian', 'thenation', 'theparisreview', 'theverge', 'theregister', 'time', 'usatoday', 'vancouversun', 'vice', 'vimeo', 'vogue', 'washingtonpost', 'wired', 'wsj', 'yahoo', 'youtube', 'zdnet' ]; matcher = new RegExp('\\b(' + (boring.join('|').replace(/\./g, '\\.')) + ')\\b'); for (i = 0; i < links.length; i++) { hostname = links[i].hostname.replace(/^www\./, ''); if (hostname.match(matcher)) { links[i].style.setProperty('display', 'none'); links[i].parentNode.insertBefore(document.createTextNode('[removed]'), links[i]); } } It's not that I wouldn't read those sites, they're just not what I'm interested in reading when I come here.
- TruthAndDare 10y ago
  Cool! I've been wondering if there is a feed of only the good stuff. If HN itself doesn't provide one, maybe there should be a separate site that does that filtering. I was thinking it would be manually curated, but maybe a list like yours would work as well. Maybe you should set up such a site. All it would have to do is link to the articles and to the corresponding HN discussions.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

72deluxe 10y ago

Out of interest, where would you go for news that was like the old HN? I used to really enjoy ArsTechnica but the quality of the journalism seems to have dropped slightly.

iand 10y ago
Perhaps https://lobste.rs/ https://lobste.rs/ might be an addition to your reading habits?
- lmm 10y ago
  Is michaelochurch still getting upvoted there? I used to enjoy lobste.rs, but seeing yet another heavily upvoted rant about "open-plan agile mouthbreathing drones" or similar would ruin my whole morning.
  - DanBC 10y ago
    Judge for yourself: https://lobste.rs/threads/michaelochurch https://lobste.rs/threads/michaelochurch

Etheryte 10y ago

The inevitability of every good site is that it will eventually grow, and with it, the diversity of the interests of the user-base. While I come to HN mainly for the technical news, I find it convenient that it also keeps me in the loop about a wider variety of topics I would surely miss otherwise. Your preference may obviously vary.

ximeng 10y ago

Most but not all politics and social commentary gets flagged pretty quickly. Some tech news also gets flagged. It would actually be interesting to have a page for flagged stories for transparency. Getting responses from people actually involved in making tech decisions (like Gratilup here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12113571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12113571, and recently one of the original authors of Excel CSV export) is part of the appeal of this site to me.

lorenzhs 10y ago
you can enable showdead in the settings, flagged articles will show up as [dead] in /newest.
- ximeng 10y ago
  Thanks. Some show up as flagged, some show up as dead, but lots of live stories in between. I'm more interested in the ones where they had lots of votes in a short time but didn't make it past the flag process.
  - lorenzhs 10y ago
    Then maybe http://hnrankings.info/ http://hnrankings.info/ is what you're looking for? Front page articles which get "flagged off the front page" don't end up [flagged] or [dead], instead they drop in rank quickly. You can often see that quite well from the charts on that site.
    - ximeng 10y ago
      That would probably be closer and I suspect they have the data to get what I want, which is more like a list of flagged stories to understand some of the inherent bias in the site.

bazzargh 10y ago

I browse here with a greasemonkey script to hide links from mainstream news sites, aggregators, etc. That cuts down to mostly just the tech content. var links = document.links; var boring = [ 'adage.com', 'arstechnica', 'bbc', 'discovermagazine', 'bloomberg', 'bloombergview', 'buzzfeed', 'businessinsider', 'californiasunday', 'cnn', 'csmonitor', 'dailymail', 'digg', 'economist', 'engadget', 'esquire', 'fastcompany', 'forbes', 'ft.com', 'fortune', 'fusion', 'geekwire', 'gizmodo', 'harvard.edu', 'huffingtonpost', 'inc.com', 'longreads', 'medium', 'mondaynote', 'nature', 'nautil.us', 'newscientist', 'newstatesman', 'newyorker', 'npr.org', 'nybooks', 'nymag', 'nytimes', 'pando', 'psychologytoday', 'qz.com', 'reddit', 'reuters', 'sciencedaily', 'scientificamerican', 'slate', 'techcrunch', 'telegraph', 'theatlantic', 'theguardian', 'thenation', 'theparisreview', 'theverge', 'theregister', 'time', 'usatoday', 'vancouversun', 'vice', 'vimeo', 'vogue', 'washingtonpost', 'wired', 'wsj', 'yahoo', 'youtube', 'zdnet' ]; matcher = new RegExp('\\b(' + (boring.join('|').replace(/\./g, '\\.')) + ')\\b'); for (i = 0; i < links.length; i++) { hostname = links[i].hostname.replace(/^www\./, ''); if (hostname.match(matcher)) { links[i].style.setProperty('display', 'none'); links[i].parentNode.insertBefore(document.createTextNode('[removed]'), links[i]); } } It's not that I wouldn't read those sites, they're just not what I'm interested in reading when I come here.

TruthAndDare 10y ago
Cool! I've been wondering if there is a feed of only the good stuff. If HN itself doesn't provide one, maybe there should be a separate site that does that filtering. I was thinking it would be manually curated, but maybe a list like yours would work as well. Maybe you should set up such a site. All it would have to do is link to the articles and to the corresponding HN discussions.