11 ms·

Ask YC: (< (/ signal noise) too-low)

42 points by BrandonM 19y ago

T I've been a member of Hacker News (actually Startup News when I joined) for over a year now. I've learned a lot here and been exposed to a lot of interesting ideas. Recently, however, I've often seen the front page have at least 10% of the stories be either more Reddit-worthy or be submissions discussing how to combat Hacker News deteriorating into just-another-news-site. With the value I'm getting from Hacker News being much lower than it was when I joined (and up to a couple months ago), I think it's time for me to go. There have been several posts I've seen on the front page where I've wanted to say, "Well, this is definitely it," but I think it's better this way, to just keep it to my own submission and leave. Best of luck to everyone on their ventures and in your lives in general. If I ever get something going, I'll be sure to mention it here first. Thank you for some great discussions.

xenoterracide 19y ago
I can understand this. I've just joined. I'm not sure that I'm benefiting in really reading this feed over digg or slashdot. I'll give it a few days before I determine that.
- BrandonM 19y ago
  I would still choose this site over the alternatives. Before Startup News, I never visited news aggregating sites (except through Google searches), and it will probably be the same after.
johnrob 19y ago
I'm curious, what will you do in place of the time spent on ycnews?
- iamwil 19y ago
  maybe hacking. Or learn arc so he can contribute patches to HN.
- BrandonM 19y ago
  That is a great question. I just might start my first real blog and make the first post be something along these lines, not just in regards to Hacker News, but other time-consuming activities as well.
jey 19y ago
I'm also phasing out of HN.
cstejerean 19y ago
I'm getting more disappointed with the front page as well. It's not necessarily the quality of the content, but the fact that too many posts stay on the front page for too long. Something about reading the same piece of "news" for 2 or more days really irritates me. If I was at least on the same computer it wouldn't be too bad, as visited links would get marked. But I read this site on my desktop, laptop, phone and work computer. I've mentioned this earlier and requested the ability to dismiss items for view (archive), but pg didn't seem to think it was a good idea and/or worthwhile to implement. Every time time I see the same story on the front page 2 days in a row I get this sudden urge to add 127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com to /etc/hosts. Sooner or later I'll go ahead and do it, and not return until HN gets archiving and keyboard shortcuts.
- timr 19y ago
  I have a somewhat related request -- it would be nice if weekend/weeknight submissions weren't instantly relegated to obscurity by their auto-rotation off of the front page. Perhaps a random selection of stories for the front page, with probability of selection weighted by their score? That would diversify the news, and give off-hours posts a fighting chance for views....
- pg 19y ago
  Stuff doesn't stay on the frontpage any longer than it has in the past. If anything the frontpage changes faster.
  - edu 19y ago
    I also have the feeling that some news stay on the frontpage for a longer time than before. My hypothesis is that it happens because nowadays stories get more points. Paul, can you check this? The average points of news that reached the frontpage, the points of the max. scored piece of news, etcetera?
  - iamwil 19y ago
    that depends on how many votes an article gets, doesn't it? I don't remember the formula you posted before, but doesn't an article that gets more votes stave off the decay longer? In addition, I think that the perceived amount of stay is longer. While the front page as a whole changes faster, there are certain articles that stay for quite a while. It's less noticible if it's an article you liked, but if it was something that you hold contempt for, you'll tend to notice it every time you login.
gaika 19y ago
Ironically, this is a typical reddit post too. And why do you think that posts suggesting different strategies to combat noise are not worthy your attention? This is #1 problem for any news site, and this one of the best communities to discuss and test approaches to solve it.
- BrandonM 19y ago
  I think that the first 100 comment threads discussing strategies to combat noise were worth my attention. While the ideas have gone nowhere, though, and the discussions have kept coming, it has gotten a bit old.
pg 19y ago
Can you list some of the stories you didn't like seeing on the frontpage? (You can probably still find them by clicking on More at the bottom.) I'd be curious to know if they're statistically distinguishable from older frontpage stories.
- deleted 19y ago
  [deleted]
- prakash 19y ago
  IMHO, the biggest concern is HN going the reddit way. So here's a stab at trying to fix that: - If we can get the list of the top 10-50 hostnames (xkcd, etc) posted on reddit, and deny publication of those hostnames on HN, the signal to noise ratio should go up (how much I don't know?) - Obviously, some good posts would be missed, but it's alright to have a few false positives, since this is a website of aggregated news and not email What do the folks here think?
  - dcurtis 19y ago
    I don't usually come to News.YC for the links, I come for the comments on the articles. Your idea would prevent News.YC comments on popular articles, so I disagree.
    - prakash 19y ago
      That's a good point. In which case, how about NOT awarding karma for posting links for those hostnames, and award karma for the comments. what do you think?
      - jauco 19y ago
        instead of/besides a fixed top 10 sites, I would add any site that has been on techmeme. If it's been on techmeme everybody here has probably heard of it already.
  - deleted 19y ago
    [deleted]
rms 19y ago
Keep it real. btw, your profile says to email you, but the email field in the profile is only visibile to admins. You have to list it again in your about me if you want it to be visible to the public.
- BrandonM 19y ago
  Added. I didn't realize that e-mail was only visible to admins, although I supposed I should have guessed that.
vegashacker 19y ago
#f
- iamwil 19y ago
  I don't get this comment. explain, anyone?
  - tptacek 19y ago
    Scheme's "false".
pibefision 19y ago
Come on. Grow up. Change is good.
- neilc 19y ago
  "Change is good" is one of those things people say but don't actually mean. Not all change is good.
  - mynameishere 19y ago
    But surely diversity is our strength?
    - xlnt 19y ago
      Ignorance is Strength
      - deleted 19y ago
        [deleted]
      - xlnt 19y ago
        Why is this downmodded and the parent downmodded? I was making fun of the parent. If the parent is bad, I was right. It should go one way or the other.
        BrandonM 19y ago
        Making fun does not add value. Hacker News is not about who's right, it's about making a point rationally enough that others can see where you're coming from. See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=149052 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=149052
        mynameishere 19y ago
        Lighten up.
        19y ago
hooande 19y ago
I can understand your decision, but I think "leaving" news.yc might be a bit drastic. I've been reading hacker news for months now and I personally haven't noticed a dramatic drop off in the quality of posts. The signal to noise ratio has gone up and there are a lot more "meta" posts recenty - posts to news.yc about news.yc. Despite these things, I still find quality information on a consistent basis. HN is pretty timely...I'm as likely to read something first here as I am on reddit or digg or any other social news site. The posts tend to be more start up oriented and many of the technical posts are of a better quality than I'd find anywhere else. Despite the noise, there is still a lot of legitimate value on news.yc I'm not trying to ask the question "well if you don't like hacker news, what site is better?". That would only start an argument based on preference. Instead I'm asking "Isn't some startup focused social news, even with a high signal to noise ratio, better than none at all?". It's possible that at some point, there will be so many worthless posts that sifting through them will be more trouble than it's worth. But at this point, it seems to me that there are still interesting posts and insightful comments everyday on news.yc and it's still a ways away from not being a valuable daily read.
doubleplus 19y ago
My 2 cents: I think you're overreacting and being a bit melodramatic by "leaving" and going out of your way to make a post about it instead of, say, just not voting up or reading posts you aren't interested in (or just leaving). It's not like your sentiment isn't expressed in some way already several times a week. The only thing more annoying to me than noise is noise about noise. Yes, I see the irony in my saying that.
- BrandonM 19y ago
  I'm sorry to seem melodramatic, but I didn't feel like I was only speaking for myself, and I hadn't yet seen a post like this. For a while I thought others were overreacting when they were saying that HN was changing too much, but lately I think I know what they're talking about. Several times I've clicked through and read about half of a story only to find that it was a waste of my time, and judging by the names on the comments, most of the story's score is coming from new members. I'm not saying the community isn't good for a lot of people, I'm just saying that it's changed enough that it's no longer what I came here for. I would apologize for making this submission, but it seems that enough people agreed with me that it did make it to the front page.
dcurtis 19y ago
I'm not upset with the front page changing-- I think it's still just as awesome as before, and I'm sure Paul and the moderators are doing a great job at keeping the crap off. What I am worried about are these increasingly common AskYC posts reflecting on News.YC. This post, for example, is a somewhat self-centered broadcast of BrandonM's exit. I hope this doesn't become a common practice, because this is the kind of stuff I don't like seeing on the front page. There's certainly a ton of awesome conversation still going on. But I wish the community would feel like off-white paint again: unnoticeable and non-criticizable. It's what the people in the community say that matters, not the color of the walls.
- comatose_kid 19y ago
  Well said.
  - kajecounterhack 19y ago
    Question: are two word comments like "Well Said" really necessary? Not to nitpick or anything, but come on, really, what do they contribute?
- BrandonM 19y ago
  I'm sorry this post made it to the front page, actually, and it's part of the problem I'm talking about. There's nothing wrong with submitting bad stories, but they should never get 30 points. I find it a bit unfortunate that after commenting on average more than once per day, this submission is the one that achieved the highest karma, just beating out http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=107729 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=107729
- pg 19y ago
  That is one real change. There are more Ask YC type posts on the frontpage than there used to be. I've been thinking of measures to fix that. One possibility is to have a karma threshold for posting them, but I don't want to silence new users. So I think what I may do is make gravity stronger for Ask YC posts: make them have to get e.g. 2x as many points to stay at a given position on the frontpage.
kirubakaran 19y ago
> I think it's time for me to go. No offense dude, but this made me think of ESR.
michaelneale 19y ago
"be submissions discussing how to combat Hacker News deteriorating into just-another-news-site" Irony?
DanielBMarkham 19y ago
Brandon, Thanks for the personal observations. I find that I never make such a black-or-white decision: usually I have periods of increased or decreased usage which eventually peters completely out. So it's interesting to see someone who is either participating or not. Don't let the commenters bug you -- one of the not-so-good traits here is that they sometimes seem to have a bit of a self-admiration society going on. It's not unusual that your post would get criticized. I found it right on-target for what I liked about news.yc -- some person making an observation about the market/program/philosophy-of-business and then asking others for comments. I remember some great AskYC and AskPG questions. Don't seem to see those a lot any more -- at least not as much as before. People who provide honest negative feedback are doing a great service for a community like this. PG owes you thanks for taking the time to rant a bit on the way out.
- BrandonM 19y ago
  Thanks for the support. I have been the same way about not making black-or-white decisions, and I have seen the same periods of increased and decreased usage. Near the beginning, I used Startup News a ton, and I was interested in nearly every story on the front page. Some time in the middle, I was only an occasional Hacker News user, and much of the content seemed fresh and interesting. Recently I have begun visiting more, and I have only seen a few gems per day that I think are worthy of being voted up. Perhaps more than anything else, this post was a note to myself to reinforce my decision. I remember hearing advice some time back to tell as many people as possible when you resolve to do something so that you will have that additional motivation of not wanting to seem like a failure. Lately I've been trying to prioritize the things in my life, and since I'm not getting as much value as I used to, it makes sense right now to leave.
- apathy 19y ago
  PG owes you thanks for taking the time to rant a bit on the way out I disagree, and here's why. PG is clearly benefiting from this bully pulpit as a means to recruit startup founders. Especially in the midst of Startup School (the periodic anti-September of YC) and a waning interest in risky ventures as the economy contracts, it serves as a barometer. Plus the type of crowd that sailed in from TechCrunch has been revealed (if that is the right word) as generally free of merit. I do not believe that judging news.YC as if it were yet another social news site (YASNS, if I have to use the phrase ever again) is appropriate, and hence the rant is perhaps less valuable than it would be on, say, reddit. As BrandonM noted, it's still the best source for news that interests this particular subset of the public. However, as another poster noted, perhaps the interesting observations that previously lay unnoticed have been exhausted, and the hard work of turning over new stones, starting new companies, and learning new things must begin. There's only so much you can learn in the library. Eventually you need to get in the laboratory or out in the field. I suspect that is as much to blame for the change in interest levels as anything else. (JMHO)
edw519 19y ago
I, for one, think that this site has gotten much BETTER in the past year. It's the first (and last) I go to every day. It's got just the right mix of outside content, intellegent discussion of that content, "Ask YC" threads, and self-examination. I sure hope I don't upset anyone, but here goes: 1. BrandonM, I recognize your name from encountering you many times in interesting threads. Sure hope you'll reconsider. We'd miss you. 2. BrandonM, you've been a member for 369 days and have posted an outside submission 8 times. AFAIC, your complaint carries no weight. If you don't like the content here, submit more better content. 3. If anyone sees a thread they don't like, don't vote up or click on it. 4. If you're tired of what I call "self-examination" threads, don't vote them up or click on them. 5. Personally, I find the threads discussing this site the most interesting. Here's why. Even though most of us are hackers, we're also users. (We'd better be, or we'd lose all perspective.) The one thing we all have in common is that we are users of THIS SITE. We NEED to keep talking about it. It provides valuable feedback to pg, and interestingly, it provides us much better feedback about each other. I learn more about how you guys think and work from your comments in these threads than any other type. Not sure why, just the way it is. 6. If you're concerned about the content here, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. I surf about a dozen other sites throughout the day, and whenever I see anything interesting, I submit it. I don't feel like I've gotten everything out of the story until I get feedback here. Many stories die quickly (I'm disappointed), but many others take off. If you find something cool somewhere else, don't keep it a secret; let us know about it. 7. Vote! 8. Visit the "new" page more often. Lots of good stuff falls out of the top 30 to a quick death. Maybe we need a more prominent link to the new page, a "split screen" default, or more than 30 new links. 9. Starting a software business takes a lot more than good hacking skills and raw intelligence. You need passion, perserverence, thick skin, and big balls. Don't like something (here or anywhere else)? Shut up and do your part to make it better. Whiners don't belong here. Sure don't mean to offend anyone, especially you, BrandonM. At least you had the balls to say what others must be thinking but won't say. And you gave the rest of us a chance to get a few things off our chest. Thanks. Hope to continue to see your name around here.
- DanielBMarkham 19y ago
  Good comment. I notice that your karma is over 4000. Could it be that you're just one of the "chosen few" who are supposed to represent the community at large? If so, it would stand to reason that your karma would go through the roof and you would be finding the site more and more interesting. I wonder if the reverse holds true: if by choosing the "holders of quality" it also has the effect of choosing certain personality types as being "anti-quality" In other words, when a site gravitates to being represented by a select few (which we all know happens) does it also tend to completely turn off people of opposite personalities and tastes? This is probably not such a big deal with a low volume of articles and submissions, ie, everybody gets a chance to make a difference in the conversation. In a 10-article-per-day site, everybody's opinion can get something on the front page. But as the volume increases, individuals get lost in the system and those that don't exactly match the opinions of the select few feel more and more isolated. Just wildly speculating here. I didn't mean to criticize you personally, just using your account and comment as an example. Hope that is okay.
andyn 19y ago
I feel like there's been a slight creep in people posting articles about recession, polictics, current events because they believe that these things are important to this audience. It all still falls within "Hacker News". I think people may have formed an internal model about the sort of things they think appropriate for this (or any such site) and get concerned when a submitted article doesn't conform to this. I feel it occasionally on programming.reddit.com, sometimes there are articles there that seem to be on there purely because it mentions the word "computer" or "internet". But to my surprise when I visited archive.org and pulled up the front page from just over a year ago I see: http://web.archive.org/web/20070221033032/http://news.ycombinator.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20070221033032/http://news.ycombi... There really isn't much change at all in the sort of articles being posted. Out of curiosity, where will you go instead of HN? I've not encountered anything better than this place yet - the high comment quality especially.
- BrandonM 19y ago
  Thanks for pulling up that page. I have to take the opposite viewpoint, though, and say that I like that page much more than the ones I've seen recently here. Of course, back then, it was all startup-related, so that makes some difference. I'm in the US, but I'm fed up with our politics and recession, and seeing how flawed the system is is just depressing. That's why I only visited the politics sub-Reddit for about a month before I quit going, and now I see some of the same discussions here in submissions and comment threads. I also think you're right about the internal model. For me, though, my internal model of Hacker News isn't just about what I think is appropriate in a website, but what I think adds value to my life. When the site doesn't meet the model, it is inherently less valuable to me. I will not go anywhere instead of Hacker News. I might pop in a couple times a month to see the "hacker sentiment" and to be referred to some interesting blog posts, but my overall goal is to waste less time on the computer and spend more time getting real things done.
iamelgringo 19y ago
It's hard to quantify, but there have been changes on HN over the past year. I do suspect that's going to be as hard to change as it is to quantify, however. I think that this is partly, because a lot of the truly great content has already been posted. Hacker and geek culture is really a small town once you get over the big learning curve. There are only so many PG essays, Greenspun essays, Spolsky articles, Jargon file content, The Cathedral and the Bazzar, In the Beginning Was the Command Line, PMarca blogs etc.. that can be posted. After the bulk of these got posted, the early adopters started having to work harder to find content that was as good. As they say, the low hanging fruit is easiest to pick. I know that this has been true for myself, at least. I put a lot of hard work into finding great content and posting it on Hacker News. But, the well for me is running dry. It's harder to come across articles/essays/posts that are as good , because there are only so many great, game changing articles about hacking and startup life that have been written. So, I've changed my focus from trying to post great articles, to trying to improve the quality of comments that I can post. And, I'm spending more time getting through school so I can get to work on my startup instead of just reading about them.
Alex3917 19y ago
I was thinking the other day that there must be some ideal homogeneity level of a social news site. If homogeneity was zero, then there would be nothing separating news.yc from every other community in existence: 4chan, or the catholic church, or rec.food.drink.tea, etc. But if the homogeneity was one, that is if the community were perfectly homogeneous, then clearly no one would get any value out of that either. The only reason I mention it is that you can actually kind of measure this. If news.yc was perfectly homogeneous, then the new page and the front page would be exactly the same. So you can measure the percent homogeneity by dividing 25 by the number of new submissions since the oldest item on the front page. I would bet that there is some ideal number.
raganwald 19y ago
Point one: A question for everyone criticizing Brandon for being a "Drama Queen" (my choice of words, not yours). Which one of Paul's "levels of disagreement" applies? Point two: You can make the argument that his "suicide note" is contributing to the problem, but unless he has a flotilla of sock-puppets voting it up, his note is on the front page because the people here--on aggregate--vote things like this up. Which means that he's right! If the community does not want to read this kind of thing and discuss this kind of thing, it would be voted into oblivion. You can hardly blame him for 27 of the 28 points it currently has.
- BrandonM 19y ago
  Nope, no sock puppets, and I definitely didn't mean for this to be as depressing as a "suicide note". I was mostly curious to what extent older members feel the way I do, and at what point they, too, would consider leaving. Not that I'm trying to start a trend or anything, nothing like that, I'm just curious.
ejs 19y ago
The biggest problem that I have noticed most recently has been all the complaining about quality reduction. If there is any reason to leave it seems like posts like this always on the front page. I think the karma system will work things out in the end and all of this just makes the 'problem' worse.
- r7000 19y ago
  > I think the karma system will work things out in the end Karma systems have an awful track record, from my experience. It is not a solved problem.
atoulouse 19y ago
This idea sounds controversial, but I think folding news.YC into a section on reddit (at least in name) would prompt people to post the irrelevant fluff on reddit, and keep news.YC on topic. I'm sure there are many reasons not to do this, but the idea still has merit, IMO.
nazgulnarsil 19y ago
Scholars have known for ages that the best way to get the riff-raff to leave you alone is to make what you're doing seem extremely boring. :)
mattrepl 19y ago
The problem may be that the growth of users and, it follows, submissions is independent from the growth of HN-worthy postings. That is, there isn't enough good content for everyone to make good contributions. As more "poor" submissions are made, the "mediocre" submissions begin to look better and the community standards are lowered.
TrevorJ 19y ago
I agree. This isn't dig, this isn't Reddit, nor should it be.
NewWorldOrder 19y ago
Although there's been a influx of new users, I would conjecture that there are still more veteran users than novices. If this conjecture is the case, then the solution for the "problem" on HN would be for the veteran users to vote more aggressively on the "good" submissions. After you've been vectored off to an interesting Web page via a submission, don't forget to come back to HN and vote it up. Veteran users can use their frustration with front page stories, and turn it into determination to find better stories. This way, everybody wins :o).

42 points by BrandonM 19y ago

xenoterracide 19y ago

I can understand this. I've just joined. I'm not sure that I'm benefiting in really reading this feed over digg or slashdot. I'll give it a few days before I determine that.

BrandonM 19y ago
I would still choose this site over the alternatives. Before Startup News, I never visited news aggregating sites (except through Google searches), and it will probably be the same after.

johnrob 19y ago

I'm curious, what will you do in place of the time spent on ycnews?

iamwil 19y ago
maybe hacking. Or learn arc so he can contribute patches to HN.
BrandonM 19y ago
That is a great question. I just might start my first real blog and make the first post be something along these lines, not just in regards to Hacker News, but other time-consuming activities as well.

jey 19y ago

I'm also phasing out of HN.

cstejerean 19y ago

I'm getting more disappointed with the front page as well. It's not necessarily the quality of the content, but the fact that too many posts stay on the front page for too long. Something about reading the same piece of "news" for 2 or more days really irritates me. If I was at least on the same computer it wouldn't be too bad, as visited links would get marked. But I read this site on my desktop, laptop, phone and work computer. I've mentioned this earlier and requested the ability to dismiss items for view (archive), but pg didn't seem to think it was a good idea and/or worthwhile to implement. Every time time I see the same story on the front page 2 days in a row I get this sudden urge to add 127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com to /etc/hosts. Sooner or later I'll go ahead and do it, and not return until HN gets archiving and keyboard shortcuts.

timr 19y ago
I have a somewhat related request -- it would be nice if weekend/weeknight submissions weren't instantly relegated to obscurity by their auto-rotation off of the front page. Perhaps a random selection of stories for the front page, with probability of selection weighted by their score? That would diversify the news, and give off-hours posts a fighting chance for views....
pg 19y ago
Stuff doesn't stay on the frontpage any longer than it has in the past. If anything the frontpage changes faster.
- edu 19y ago
  I also have the feeling that some news stay on the frontpage for a longer time than before. My hypothesis is that it happens because nowadays stories get more points. Paul, can you check this? The average points of news that reached the frontpage, the points of the max. scored piece of news, etcetera?
- iamwil 19y ago
  that depends on how many votes an article gets, doesn't it? I don't remember the formula you posted before, but doesn't an article that gets more votes stave off the decay longer? In addition, I think that the perceived amount of stay is longer. While the front page as a whole changes faster, there are certain articles that stay for quite a while. It's less noticible if it's an article you liked, but if it was something that you hold contempt for, you'll tend to notice it every time you login.

gaika 19y ago

Ironically, this is a typical reddit post too. And why do you think that posts suggesting different strategies to combat noise are not worthy your attention? This is #1 problem for any news site, and this one of the best communities to discuss and test approaches to solve it.

BrandonM 19y ago
I think that the first 100 comment threads discussing strategies to combat noise were worth my attention. While the ideas have gone nowhere, though, and the discussions have kept coming, it has gotten a bit old.

pg 19y ago

Can you list some of the stories you didn't like seeing on the frontpage? (You can probably still find them by clicking on More at the bottom.) I'd be curious to know if they're statistically distinguishable from older frontpage stories.

deleted 19y ago
[deleted]
prakash 19y ago
IMHO, the biggest concern is HN going the reddit way. So here's a stab at trying to fix that: - If we can get the list of the top 10-50 hostnames (xkcd, etc) posted on reddit, and deny publication of those hostnames on HN, the signal to noise ratio should go up (how much I don't know?) - Obviously, some good posts would be missed, but it's alright to have a few false positives, since this is a website of aggregated news and not email What do the folks here think?
- dcurtis 19y ago
  I don't usually come to News.YC for the links, I come for the comments on the articles. Your idea would prevent News.YC comments on popular articles, so I disagree.
  - prakash 19y ago
    That's a good point. In which case, how about NOT awarding karma for posting links for those hostnames, and award karma for the comments. what do you think?
    - jauco 19y ago
      instead of/besides a fixed top 10 sites, I would add any site that has been on techmeme. If it's been on techmeme everybody here has probably heard of it already.
- deleted 19y ago
  [deleted]

rms 19y ago

Keep it real. btw, your profile says to email you, but the email field in the profile is only visibile to admins. You have to list it again in your about me if you want it to be visible to the public.

BrandonM 19y ago
Added. I didn't realize that e-mail was only visible to admins, although I supposed I should have guessed that.

vegashacker 19y ago

iamwil 19y ago
I don't get this comment. explain, anyone?
- tptacek 19y ago
  Scheme's "false".

pibefision 19y ago

Come on. Grow up. Change is good.

neilc 19y ago
"Change is good" is one of those things people say but don't actually mean. Not all change is good.
- mynameishere 19y ago
  But surely diversity is our strength?
  - xlnt 19y ago
    Ignorance is Strength
    - deleted 19y ago
      [deleted]
    - xlnt 19y ago
      Why is this downmodded and the parent downmodded? I was making fun of the parent. If the parent is bad, I was right. It should go one way or the other.
      - BrandonM 19y ago
        Making fun does not add value. Hacker News is not about who's right, it's about making a point rationally enough that others can see where you're coming from. See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=149052 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=149052
        mynameishere 19y ago
        Lighten up.
        19y ago

hooande 19y ago

I can understand your decision, but I think "leaving" news.yc might be a bit drastic. I've been reading hacker news for months now and I personally haven't noticed a dramatic drop off in the quality of posts. The signal to noise ratio has gone up and there are a lot more "meta" posts recenty - posts to news.yc about news.yc. Despite these things, I still find quality information on a consistent basis. HN is pretty timely...I'm as likely to read something first here as I am on reddit or digg or any other social news site. The posts tend to be more start up oriented and many of the technical posts are of a better quality than I'd find anywhere else. Despite the noise, there is still a lot of legitimate value on news.yc I'm not trying to ask the question "well if you don't like hacker news, what site is better?". That would only start an argument based on preference. Instead I'm asking "Isn't some startup focused social news, even with a high signal to noise ratio, better than none at all?". It's possible that at some point, there will be so many worthless posts that sifting through them will be more trouble than it's worth. But at this point, it seems to me that there are still interesting posts and insightful comments everyday on news.yc and it's still a ways away from not being a valuable daily read.

doubleplus 19y ago

My 2 cents: I think you're overreacting and being a bit melodramatic by "leaving" and going out of your way to make a post about it instead of, say, just not voting up or reading posts you aren't interested in (or just leaving). It's not like your sentiment isn't expressed in some way already several times a week. The only thing more annoying to me than noise is noise about noise. Yes, I see the irony in my saying that.

BrandonM 19y ago
I'm sorry to seem melodramatic, but I didn't feel like I was only speaking for myself, and I hadn't yet seen a post like this. For a while I thought others were overreacting when they were saying that HN was changing too much, but lately I think I know what they're talking about. Several times I've clicked through and read about half of a story only to find that it was a waste of my time, and judging by the names on the comments, most of the story's score is coming from new members. I'm not saying the community isn't good for a lot of people, I'm just saying that it's changed enough that it's no longer what I came here for. I would apologize for making this submission, but it seems that enough people agreed with me that it did make it to the front page.

dcurtis 19y ago

I'm not upset with the front page changing-- I think it's still just as awesome as before, and I'm sure Paul and the moderators are doing a great job at keeping the crap off. What I am worried about are these increasingly common AskYC posts reflecting on News.YC. This post, for example, is a somewhat self-centered broadcast of BrandonM's exit. I hope this doesn't become a common practice, because this is the kind of stuff I don't like seeing on the front page. There's certainly a ton of awesome conversation still going on. But I wish the community would feel like off-white paint again: unnoticeable and non-criticizable. It's what the people in the community say that matters, not the color of the walls.

comatose_kid 19y ago
Well said.
- kajecounterhack 19y ago
  Question: are two word comments like "Well Said" really necessary? Not to nitpick or anything, but come on, really, what do they contribute?
BrandonM 19y ago
I'm sorry this post made it to the front page, actually, and it's part of the problem I'm talking about. There's nothing wrong with submitting bad stories, but they should never get 30 points. I find it a bit unfortunate that after commenting on average more than once per day, this submission is the one that achieved the highest karma, just beating out http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=107729 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=107729
pg 19y ago
That is one real change. There are more Ask YC type posts on the frontpage than there used to be. I've been thinking of measures to fix that. One possibility is to have a karma threshold for posting them, but I don't want to silence new users. So I think what I may do is make gravity stronger for Ask YC posts: make them have to get e.g. 2x as many points to stay at a given position on the frontpage.

kirubakaran 19y ago

> I think it's time for me to go. No offense dude, but this made me think of ESR.

michaelneale 19y ago

"be submissions discussing how to combat Hacker News deteriorating into just-another-news-site" Irony?

DanielBMarkham 19y ago

Brandon, Thanks for the personal observations. I find that I never make such a black-or-white decision: usually I have periods of increased or decreased usage which eventually peters completely out. So it's interesting to see someone who is either participating or not. Don't let the commenters bug you -- one of the not-so-good traits here is that they sometimes seem to have a bit of a self-admiration society going on. It's not unusual that your post would get criticized. I found it right on-target for what I liked about news.yc -- some person making an observation about the market/program/philosophy-of-business and then asking others for comments. I remember some great AskYC and AskPG questions. Don't seem to see those a lot any more -- at least not as much as before. People who provide honest negative feedback are doing a great service for a community like this. PG owes you thanks for taking the time to rant a bit on the way out.

BrandonM 19y ago
Thanks for the support. I have been the same way about not making black-or-white decisions, and I have seen the same periods of increased and decreased usage. Near the beginning, I used Startup News a ton, and I was interested in nearly every story on the front page. Some time in the middle, I was only an occasional Hacker News user, and much of the content seemed fresh and interesting. Recently I have begun visiting more, and I have only seen a few gems per day that I think are worthy of being voted up. Perhaps more than anything else, this post was a note to myself to reinforce my decision. I remember hearing advice some time back to tell as many people as possible when you resolve to do something so that you will have that additional motivation of not wanting to seem like a failure. Lately I've been trying to prioritize the things in my life, and since I'm not getting as much value as I used to, it makes sense right now to leave.
apathy 19y ago
PG owes you thanks for taking the time to rant a bit on the way out I disagree, and here's why. PG is clearly benefiting from this bully pulpit as a means to recruit startup founders. Especially in the midst of Startup School (the periodic anti-September of YC) and a waning interest in risky ventures as the economy contracts, it serves as a barometer. Plus the type of crowd that sailed in from TechCrunch has been revealed (if that is the right word) as generally free of merit. I do not believe that judging news.YC as if it were yet another social news site (YASNS, if I have to use the phrase ever again) is appropriate, and hence the rant is perhaps less valuable than it would be on, say, reddit. As BrandonM noted, it's still the best source for news that interests this particular subset of the public. However, as another poster noted, perhaps the interesting observations that previously lay unnoticed have been exhausted, and the hard work of turning over new stones, starting new companies, and learning new things must begin. There's only so much you can learn in the library. Eventually you need to get in the laboratory or out in the field. I suspect that is as much to blame for the change in interest levels as anything else. (JMHO)

edw519 19y ago

I, for one, think that this site has gotten much BETTER in the past year. It's the first (and last) I go to every day. It's got just the right mix of outside content, intellegent discussion of that content, "Ask YC" threads, and self-examination. I sure hope I don't upset anyone, but here goes: 1. BrandonM, I recognize your name from encountering you many times in interesting threads. Sure hope you'll reconsider. We'd miss you. 2. BrandonM, you've been a member for 369 days and have posted an outside submission 8 times. AFAIC, your complaint carries no weight. If you don't like the content here, submit more better content. 3. If anyone sees a thread they don't like, don't vote up or click on it. 4. If you're tired of what I call "self-examination" threads, don't vote them up or click on them. 5. Personally, I find the threads discussing this site the most interesting. Here's why. Even though most of us are hackers, we're also users. (We'd better be, or we'd lose all perspective.) The one thing we all have in common is that we are users of THIS SITE. We NEED to keep talking about it. It provides valuable feedback to pg, and interestingly, it provides us much better feedback about each other. I learn more about how you guys think and work from your comments in these threads than any other type. Not sure why, just the way it is. 6. If you're concerned about the content here, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. I surf about a dozen other sites throughout the day, and whenever I see anything interesting, I submit it. I don't feel like I've gotten everything out of the story until I get feedback here. Many stories die quickly (I'm disappointed), but many others take off. If you find something cool somewhere else, don't keep it a secret; let us know about it. 7. Vote! 8. Visit the "new" page more often. Lots of good stuff falls out of the top 30 to a quick death. Maybe we need a more prominent link to the new page, a "split screen" default, or more than 30 new links. 9. Starting a software business takes a lot more than good hacking skills and raw intelligence. You need passion, perserverence, thick skin, and big balls. Don't like something (here or anywhere else)? Shut up and do your part to make it better. Whiners don't belong here. Sure don't mean to offend anyone, especially you, BrandonM. At least you had the balls to say what others must be thinking but won't say. And you gave the rest of us a chance to get a few things off our chest. Thanks. Hope to continue to see your name around here.

DanielBMarkham 19y ago
Good comment. I notice that your karma is over 4000. Could it be that you're just one of the "chosen few" who are supposed to represent the community at large? If so, it would stand to reason that your karma would go through the roof and you would be finding the site more and more interesting. I wonder if the reverse holds true: if by choosing the "holders of quality" it also has the effect of choosing certain personality types as being "anti-quality" In other words, when a site gravitates to being represented by a select few (which we all know happens) does it also tend to completely turn off people of opposite personalities and tastes? This is probably not such a big deal with a low volume of articles and submissions, ie, everybody gets a chance to make a difference in the conversation. In a 10-article-per-day site, everybody's opinion can get something on the front page. But as the volume increases, individuals get lost in the system and those that don't exactly match the opinions of the select few feel more and more isolated. Just wildly speculating here. I didn't mean to criticize you personally, just using your account and comment as an example. Hope that is okay.

andyn 19y ago

I feel like there's been a slight creep in people posting articles about recession, polictics, current events because they believe that these things are important to this audience. It all still falls within "Hacker News". I think people may have formed an internal model about the sort of things they think appropriate for this (or any such site) and get concerned when a submitted article doesn't conform to this. I feel it occasionally on programming.reddit.com, sometimes there are articles there that seem to be on there purely because it mentions the word "computer" or "internet". But to my surprise when I visited archive.org and pulled up the front page from just over a year ago I see: http://web.archive.org/web/20070221033032/http://news.ycombinator.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20070221033032/http://news.ycombi... There really isn't much change at all in the sort of articles being posted. Out of curiosity, where will you go instead of HN? I've not encountered anything better than this place yet - the high comment quality especially.

BrandonM 19y ago
Thanks for pulling up that page. I have to take the opposite viewpoint, though, and say that I like that page much more than the ones I've seen recently here. Of course, back then, it was all startup-related, so that makes some difference. I'm in the US, but I'm fed up with our politics and recession, and seeing how flawed the system is is just depressing. That's why I only visited the politics sub-Reddit for about a month before I quit going, and now I see some of the same discussions here in submissions and comment threads. I also think you're right about the internal model. For me, though, my internal model of Hacker News isn't just about what I think is appropriate in a website, but what I think adds value to my life. When the site doesn't meet the model, it is inherently less valuable to me. I will not go anywhere instead of Hacker News. I might pop in a couple times a month to see the "hacker sentiment" and to be referred to some interesting blog posts, but my overall goal is to waste less time on the computer and spend more time getting real things done.

iamelgringo 19y ago

It's hard to quantify, but there have been changes on HN over the past year. I do suspect that's going to be as hard to change as it is to quantify, however. I think that this is partly, because a lot of the truly great content has already been posted. Hacker and geek culture is really a small town once you get over the big learning curve. There are only so many PG essays, Greenspun essays, Spolsky articles, Jargon file content, The Cathedral and the Bazzar, In the Beginning Was the Command Line, PMarca blogs etc.. that can be posted. After the bulk of these got posted, the early adopters started having to work harder to find content that was as good. As they say, the low hanging fruit is easiest to pick. I know that this has been true for myself, at least. I put a lot of hard work into finding great content and posting it on Hacker News. But, the well for me is running dry. It's harder to come across articles/essays/posts that are as good , because there are only so many great, game changing articles about hacking and startup life that have been written. So, I've changed my focus from trying to post great articles, to trying to improve the quality of comments that I can post. And, I'm spending more time getting through school so I can get to work on my startup instead of just reading about them.

Alex3917 19y ago

I was thinking the other day that there must be some ideal homogeneity level of a social news site. If homogeneity was zero, then there would be nothing separating news.yc from every other community in existence: 4chan, or the catholic church, or rec.food.drink.tea, etc. But if the homogeneity was one, that is if the community were perfectly homogeneous, then clearly no one would get any value out of that either. The only reason I mention it is that you can actually kind of measure this. If news.yc was perfectly homogeneous, then the new page and the front page would be exactly the same. So you can measure the percent homogeneity by dividing 25 by the number of new submissions since the oldest item on the front page. I would bet that there is some ideal number.

raganwald 19y ago

Point one: A question for everyone criticizing Brandon for being a "Drama Queen" (my choice of words, not yours). Which one of Paul's "levels of disagreement" applies? Point two: You can make the argument that his "suicide note" is contributing to the problem, but unless he has a flotilla of sock-puppets voting it up, his note is on the front page because the people here--on aggregate--vote things like this up. Which means that he's right! If the community does not want to read this kind of thing and discuss this kind of thing, it would be voted into oblivion. You can hardly blame him for 27 of the 28 points it currently has.

BrandonM 19y ago
Nope, no sock puppets, and I definitely didn't mean for this to be as depressing as a "suicide note". I was mostly curious to what extent older members feel the way I do, and at what point they, too, would consider leaving. Not that I'm trying to start a trend or anything, nothing like that, I'm just curious.

ejs 19y ago

The biggest problem that I have noticed most recently has been all the complaining about quality reduction. If there is any reason to leave it seems like posts like this always on the front page. I think the karma system will work things out in the end and all of this just makes the 'problem' worse.

r7000 19y ago
> I think the karma system will work things out in the end Karma systems have an awful track record, from my experience. It is not a solved problem.

atoulouse 19y ago

This idea sounds controversial, but I think folding news.YC into a section on reddit (at least in name) would prompt people to post the irrelevant fluff on reddit, and keep news.YC on topic. I'm sure there are many reasons not to do this, but the idea still has merit, IMO.

nazgulnarsil 19y ago

Scholars have known for ages that the best way to get the riff-raff to leave you alone is to make what you're doing seem extremely boring. :)

mattrepl 19y ago

The problem may be that the growth of users and, it follows, submissions is independent from the growth of HN-worthy postings. That is, there isn't enough good content for everyone to make good contributions. As more "poor" submissions are made, the "mediocre" submissions begin to look better and the community standards are lowered.

TrevorJ 19y ago

I agree. This isn't dig, this isn't Reddit, nor should it be.

NewWorldOrder 19y ago

Although there's been a influx of new users, I would conjecture that there are still more veteran users than novices. If this conjecture is the case, then the solution for the "problem" on HN would be for the veteran users to vote more aggressively on the "good" submissions. After you've been vectored off to an interesting Web page via a submission, don't forget to come back to HN and vote it up. Veteran users can use their frustration with front page stories, and turn it into determination to find better stories. This way, everybody wins :o).

Ask YC: (&lt; (/ signal noise) too-low)

Ask YC: (&lt; (/ signal noise) too-low)

Ask YC: (< (/ signal noise) too-low)

Ask YC: (< (/ signal noise) too-low)