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A subtle point you've written up well, kudos. I'm curious, do you think that this forum we're on, Hacker News, subtlely maximizes the wrong thing? Its goals[1

A subtle point you've written up well, kudos. I'm curious, do you think that this forum we're on, Hacker News, subtlely maximizes the wrong thing? Its goals[1] are >Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. >Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. Do to this "maximizer function", including comment guidelines, many people refrain from adding noise to subjects they don't have much to say about. HN has lots of readers on each story who do not comment, because they have nothing to say. Cf Reddit, where having nothing to say has never stopped anyone. Do you think HN's guidelines, moderation, and culture, have any unintended side-effects? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ---------- EDIT: The votes on this are weird :) First it got voted up then down. To be clear, I don't have any specific expectation of what your response might be! It's a totally open-ended question. I'm just interested in your thoughts, mundo, for the reason I cited (that I think you make a subtle and interesting observation). Really no agenda here! :)

mundo 9y ago
Thank you! I actually think HN is fairly immune to clickbait, and a big outlier in terms of quality of discourse, which is why I'm here. Unfortunately, I think the reasons for this tend to be unique to HN's weird status (guerilla marketing for vc firm? rich guy's vanity project?) and not very transferable. For example, I think the excellent moderators are a big part of the reason this place is so good, and I also think that most people comport themselves better here because they know luminaries in their chosen industry might be reading, but "just hire paid moderators and then get famous people to join" is not very actionable advice for anyone who is not already themselves wealthy and respected.
- logicallee 9y ago
  Thanks! I share your opinion. I think nothing subtely terrible has resulted here, from these constraints - quite the opposite. Was just curious if you felt otherwise.

mundo 9y ago

Thank you! I actually think HN is fairly immune to clickbait, and a big outlier in terms of quality of discourse, which is why I'm here. Unfortunately, I think the reasons for this tend to be unique to HN's weird status (guerilla marketing for vc firm? rich guy's vanity project?) and not very transferable. For example, I think the excellent moderators are a big part of the reason this place is so good, and I also think that most people comport themselves better here because they know luminaries in their chosen industry might be reading, but "just hire paid moderators and then get famous people to join" is not very actionable advice for anyone who is not already themselves wealthy and respected.

logicallee 9y ago
Thanks! I share your opinion. I think nothing subtely terrible has resulted here, from these constraints - quite the opposite. Was just curious if you felt otherwise.