4 ms·

Perhaps it could be added that submitters shouldn't submit "flamebait" - eg. titles/articles that will elicit very predictable, emotionally charged responses, o

• davidw 19y ago
  I like this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=119277 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=119277 "I personally tend to try to apply the standard of whether it's of importance or interest to hackers in particular, rather than to human beings in general." Stories about, say, the US elections are of equal importance to everyone, and fail that test.
  • ardit33 19y ago
    "Stories about, say, the US elections are of equal importance to everyone, and fail that test." --I think that is wrong. US elections are important to americans (and maybe some foreigners that are into foreign politics). You can be a hacker, and not an amercian, so you don't care much about US elections.
    • davidw 19y ago
      I'm using everyone very loosely as "a broader community", and not actually every person on the planet, if that wasn't apparent.
    • iamdave 19y ago
      Another huge problem with Reddit. There was so much coverage on the US elections non-US citizens would get upset and everyone else would use the mentality "Well it got upmodded, this is what we want to see and you're just going to have to deal with it." Gladly we dont have that mentality here, it reflects too much of the .NET developers being tourists and look at everything with the "us" and "everything else" pattern. Very destructive.
      • ilamont 19y ago
        One of the problems with Reddit since Wired took over is the dominance of all kinds of political discussions on the front page, both US and world news. It really brought the site down, IMHO.
    • juanpablo 19y ago
      That's denying the impact the US economy/foreign policy has, for better or for worse, in the rest of the world. I'm not "american", but considering the Internet Neutrality will be decided by the next administration I really care about the US elections right now.
      • derefr 19y ago
        But there's really no need to hear about it until it's decided if you can't do anything to change it (i.e. you are not a voter in the US, nor have influence with any large number of them). I'm Canadian and, though I will be affected by the future actions of the US, there's nothing I can really do to affect them back, so the news of the presidency will probably only reach me a few days after the election, when someone mentions it over coffee.
        • juanpablo 19y ago
          You have a point. I'd also prefer not to read that kind of news in this site, unless they are related to the tech world (like an interview at the Googleplex).
  • tim2 19y ago
    The tabloid and flamebait techniques can, unfortunately, be effectively employed while remaining entirely within the hacker's topics of interest. I'll spare the naming of specific blogs or yc submissions...
    • davidw 19y ago
      Certainly, but it eliminates an entire category of posting about things that are relevant "because hackers live on the same planet everyone else does", which, true as it may be, doesn't justify dumping the tight focus this site has had on hacker/startup oriented topics.
      • tim2 19y ago
        Two separate concerns, both valid.
• iamdave 19y ago
  This is THE reason I left Reddit. Sensationalist articles that made stories appear demonstrably worse than they really were. Articles turned out not worth reading, I would downmod them and eventually good articles were impossible to find. I approve this idea.
• jcl 19y ago
  It's a pity there isn't a automated way to fix this -- a Netflix-like system that sorts articles by how highly they are rated by other users who rate articles like you do.