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> Hacker News is about the only civil place I'm capable of contributing to a discussion to at this point. Funnily enough, right around the time I made an acct
by wutbrodo 10y ago
> Hacker News is about the only civil place I'm capable of contributing to a discussion to at this point.
Funnily enough, right around the time I made an acct here (4+ years ago, after ~1 year of lurking), I saw an internal post by a well-known Googler talking about the recent drastic decline of HN comment quality and looking for a replacement. I still get value out of HN comments (clearly), but it's definitely changed substantially in the last few years, and not really for the better. I've resigned myself to every high-quality Internet community without heavy, opinionated moderation being a slow treadmill towards popularity and then mediocrity, or worse. Though this is of course something of a "you're not in traffic, you are traffic" problem.
- overcast 10y agoThere is always going to be the elitist attitude of newcomers ruining things for the "OG" people. However there is certainly no way HN compares to the rest of the drivel out there. Always going to be a fine line between popularity, and trash.
- wutbrodo 10y ago> However there is certainly no way HN compares to the rest of the drivel out there Shrug, that just depends on where people choose to set their standards; there are much worse fora and much better ones. As I said, I still clearly find HN comments at least worth reading, but the distinction isn't as binary as you seem to think it is.
- gruyere 10y agoYou and I are around the same group, but I've long since abandoned participating in these conversations. Honestly I am in these comments because I had hoped this was the conversation being had. The HN community drove me away long ago.
- intended 10y agoMaybe for the next community you need to figure out where it is in order to be self selected for membership.
- gruyere 10y agoI've had several people try to discern the meaning of your comment, but none of us could figure it out. You have words here that together sound like a sentence, but don't make any actual sense.
- jessaustin 10y agoThe implication is that if one were truly too good for HN, then one would already know about "the next HN": that exclusive comment site at which sober mature discussion among intelligent sophisticated people takes place much as it used to long ago on HN. Which is funny not least because the level of discussion here even today seems vastly superior to what one finds elsewhere online. Part of that quality, may be a willingness to welcome those for whom English is a second language.
- gruyere 10y agoI have never felt 'too good' for HN at all. That's one of the reasons I loved it in the past- I can pick almost any link and look at almost any comment section to find information that's over my head and the content and conversations were challenging and force me to learn- and I loved that. At a certain point I felt that it turned in to a bunch of mean girls, and I left. I sincerely wanted OP to clarify his comment, because it seemed to be saying something poignant I just couldn't understand it. I see how my phrasing seems insensitive.
- jessaustin 10y agoFair enough. I apologize for misunderstanding.
- intended 10y ago