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Why I stopped reading HN

245 points by Kilimanjaro 16y ago

wccrawford 16y ago
Sounds to me like the reasons he stopped reading HN were: 1) He couldn't stop himself from posting. He had to comment on things even when he had nothing to add. He even admits to commenting solely to gain karma. 2) He couldn't stop himself from reading the things he found pointless. All the flame wars, the arguments, etc. Just learn to skip all that. Learn to only post when you have something to add. Only read an article when you actually care about the article. Only read the comments when you care both about the article and what others have to say about it. Learn some self-control. That, or tell me what the new best tech-news site is. I get a lot more information about new techniques, languages, etc etc here at HN than anywhere else at the moment.
- tel 16y ago
  It's a matter of SNR though, isn't it? Sure you can skip things and sure you can edit yourself, but it's also easier (healthier?) to just stay somewhere that, to your own personal comfort, delivers signal and promotes meaningful response. The less I have to bear the burden and sink the energy cost of filtration the more I can put into comprehension, enjoyment, and growth.
- swah 16y ago
  Sometimes I write a comment, but writing makes you think more clearly about the subject, and so I realize it is not very insightful. Then I discard it and feel very proud for saving everyone's time.
  - MarkBook 16y ago
    That deserves karma!
  - abraham 16y ago
    I'm curious how many people started replying to you but ended up discarding it.
  - billswift 16y ago
    Same here, I discard at least two-thirds of the comments I start.
  - robryan 16y ago
    I think this indicates a higher average quality than other online comments better than most other indicators. In most places the comment would get posted anyway, but here you feel your writing as part of an average standard which is much higher. I know for one that I also pay more attention to use of words and grammar on here that I probably would other places because that is what the standard is, that is what we all like to read and comments not at that standard usually end up down the bottom heavily down voted. You don't see a lot of well written and constructive comments down voted even if they are arguing a alternate and contentious viewpoint.
  - wccrawford 16y ago
    I quite often write out a whole comment pointing out the error of someone's thinking, or just lashing out in general, then realize that I'm not actually adding anything, the person won't listen anyhow, and I'm just wasting my time, others' time, and being negative. So I click 'back' on my browser and it goes away. Since I learned to do that, my time on sites like HN has been much more rewarding.
  - rapind 16y ago
    I couldn't agree more. I still manage to slip in some meaningless and regrettable comments, but fortunately far less then the drivel you never get to see.
- mortenjorck 16y ago
  I've actually thought that the biggest flaw in HN's interface is that the user's karma is displayed on the home page. I've no doubt it seemed like a good way to encourage and reinforce contribution, but I fear it's enabling to a subtle sort of addiction. Precisely what that addiction is to is perhaps what's hardest to answer. Is it attention? Validation? Some more abstract notion of amassment and score? I've noticed myself looking up into the corner upon return to the site, and have even consciously avoided that gaze pattern at times. It may even come down to such fundamental questions as the existence of altruism. Just as one can ask "are you doing this for someone else, or just because doing things for others makes you feel good?" one can ask at "are you contributing thoughtfully because you want to participate in the community, or because you want to see your karma go up?" If you want to see your karma increase, is it because you want to participate, or the converse? Can the two be functionally separated?
  - hammerdr 16y ago
    I write very few comments. When I do write a comment, I always do the top-right corner check when I come back. To me, its validation that my opinion was well taken by the community (a community that I respect). I'm going to try to avoid that this time :)
    - xenophanes 16y ago
      If you're not getting down voted a reasonable proportion of the time, you're too timid a thinker (or your comments avoid all controversy and stick to technical matters).
      - billswift 16y ago
        Except that on HN, if you are not getting more upvotes than the number of comments you are posting, you can't vote on the comments. That is what the "avg: " on your profile page is for, if it's not 2 or higher your votes don't count.
        edanm 16y ago
- jamii 16y ago
  > I get a lot more information about new techniques, languages, etc etc here at HN than anywhere else at the moment. I find much more useful content on reddit these days. HN tends to be full of opinion pieces with very little technical content. These sometimes start interesting discussions but I don't feel that I actually learn anything useful either from the original article or the comments.
- ajscherer 16y ago
  Being unable to stop reading or commenting on hn can never possibly be the reason you've successfully stopped reading or commenting on hn can it? He wanted to spend his time reading and discussing articles on hn. His problem was that he was finding it increasingly unrewarding. So he quit. Your last point regarding the best tech-news site is irrelevant. He is replacing hn with "arguing with people in person or via e-mail, reading disagreeable books, and the like."
  - billswift 16y ago
    And getting his tech news from his RSS feed.
- 10ren 16y ago
  A way to implement this is to use the new page. There's little indication of what you "should" read, so you have to make up your own mind, from the title or brief skim. There's no or few comments, so less opportunity for meaningless conflict that is irrelevant to the submission. It is, however, more work. bonus: you have a massively increased influence on what gets to the front page - so, to an extent, you create the HN you want.
- SkyMarshal 16y ago
  "Just learn to skip all that. Learn to only post when you have something to add. Only read an article when you actually care about the article. Only read the comments when you care both about the article and what others have to say about it." Perfect advice. That pretty much applies to the entire Internet, not just HN.
- points 16y ago
  One of the problems with the Karma thing is it's ridiculously simple to gain karma. Unless you're deliberately being stupid. All you have to do is say something you believe will fit in with the groupthink of the community. The first step to salvation is the realization that karma="how much time you waste commenting" rather than how much your comments are valued. I'd like to see a community where there is a limited supply of karma. Or your karma is shown as a percentage of total karma. I think that would produce much better dynamics.
tptacek 16y ago
This is 'drewcrawford. Reading ~10 pages of the last 60 days of his comments, I'm not seeing the unproductive arguments he's referring to. It's too bad; he's an interesting guy: lives in OKC, went to WWDC, has opinions about crypto. Maybe a bit too willing to invest himself in discussions that HN doesn't do well (politics, social justice).
- philk 16y ago
  To be fair, politics/social justice discussions seem to turn poisonous everywhere on the web and they probably produce a steady stream of people saying "I'm not posting there again".
  - gloob 16y ago
    Which is precisely why they are largely discouraged here.
- pvg 16y ago
  I thought you had the wrong guy for a moment, given how tame and deliberate these threads seem. Maybe he had other accounts with which he regularly tread into the lava?
- qeorge 16y ago
  Thanks for pointing out the username. Personally, I can see what he's talking about. This is the last thread drew commented on: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1584474 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1584474 About 5 levels down you'll see a 20-point comment that's unnecessarily nasty. I think that's exactly what the author is referring to, and I agree - I don't like it.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    You're referring to: Since you've simply flat-out contradicted a research paper with nothing more than assertion, I find it unlikely your upvotes represent anything more than a set of people who found their preconceptions tickled by your post. Do you have any sort of actual other study to back you point up, or are you just stating your own biases? I am not sympathetic to the notion that this is an unreasonable nasty comment, given some of the arguments I've found myself embroiled in on HN recently. I'm not arguing with Drew, though. He's an interesting guy, and he doesn't like commenting here anymore, and that's a shame --- though, again, talking about colonialism on HN is not a good way to moderate your blood pressure.
DanielBMarkham 16y ago
I consider it extremely important–perhaps vital, even–to spend time engaging others intelligently who have diverging views from one’s own. I think that this is, on the whole, one of the most valuable uses of one’s time that exists. Very interesting insight. If you're not doing things that are transformative -- that change your habits and the way you have of looking at the world, you're wasting your time. And I don't mean that in a philosophical or political sense. It applies to everything -- coding, marketing, time management. If you spend 3 hours on HN today and leave with basically the same opinions, habits, and immediately useful pieces of knowledge that you started with? Not good for you. HN has always discouraged deeply nested discussions, seeing them as just so much noise. I've always thought that was whacked. Yes, many times you are in a flame war and nothing is accomplished, but the entire point of interacting with other people is to learn. So you'd think that a long conversation about, I dunno, pointer arithmetic, would have a transformative effect on both the participants and the community. I think the issue here is whether you view users as intelligent folks who are trying to understand each other, or cranks and trolls who solely exist to get some emotional thrill from flaming (yes, Gresham's Law comes into play here, but everything is a trade-off) As it is, what's happened is this kind of lightweight, superficial herd mentality, with folks striking out fairly deep responses and then nothing ever gets settled. Lots of generalizations and high-level talk, nothing past an initial exchange or three. I've even questioned some longtime members about various topics and was told "I'm not posting to discuss, I'm posting to cut you off" more or less. Once I realized that HN was idle geek chitchat and not the watercooler for entrepreneurs I wanted it to be, it changed my opinion of the place. I still like it, no place like it, but it also has this terrible time-wasting underbelly that we rarely talk about enough.
- lotharbot 16y ago
  > the entire point of interacting with other people is to learn. I find the short/shallow discussions on HN very good for this. They give you just a couple of shots to either pose an insightful question or provide an insightful response, which encourages high signal content and enforces a "get to the point" mentality. From discussions elsewhere, I've found the majority of learning comes within those first few serious posts; by the time a single person has posted 5-6 times it's often either repetitive or off-topic. In my experience, it's extremely rare for people to still be providing new insight after 5+ rounds of back and forth. That said, in those rare circumstances, I would like to continue discussions further than HN allows (that's one reason I list my e-mail address in my profile.) I've found that what kills deep discussion on HN is not the lack of deep nesting, but the fast news cycle and lack of a "refresh" mechanic to bring threads with new posts back to the top. If someone responds to a discussion I started 2 days ago, I may never see their response.
wwortiz 16y ago
I don't read very many articles on Hacker News and I think I get a lot more out of it by being my own add on filter. I avoid articles from techcrunch, nytimes, and basically any majorish news source (they usually can't keep my attention for some reason, even if it is interesting). What I do like are the new startup posts (sometimes they are interesting just to see what people are doing), the underlying tech posts or how someone solved an interesting problem (be it programming or something else) and anything else that sticks out I'll click on. After I click on them I skim them and see if it keeps my interest and then I read whatever is left, some days I don't read any articles and some days I read quite a few. Also comments help the filter and if I'm grabbed by a title I might check the comments to see whether or not I am going to read an article.
cnlwsu 16y ago
"Every community deteriorates over time" - I hate these kind of statements made by every community as it grows and the "older" generations feel that they come from an elitist or a superior, time of purity. Just related: http://xkcd.com/603/ http://xkcd.com/603/
- darwinGod 16y ago
  Check this out: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/fac/Amy.Bruckman/teaching/6470/spring09/schedule.htm http://www.cc.gatech.edu/fac/Amy.Bruckman/teaching/6470/spri... Did you know Wikipedia doesn't function as a democracy? I believe the stats are something like top 20 % influence 80% of articles. If HN were to be proper democracy, I think it's decline would be hastened a.k.a -"Every community deteriorates over time" Aging in online communities happens way faster than real life-but it 's psychology is basically the same -"What does this Twenty-something CEO know to tell us 15 year industry veterans something of value?"
- Terretta 16y ago
  Unlike your XKCD example, a community's early members are not talking about the general population. They're talking about a special interest community's dilution. Few communities are begun by the average, they're begun by the inspired, impassioned, or invested. The founders are focused. Motivated, they cross a barrier of inaction, pouring in resources and effort, establishing a meeting place for clear like minds. Latecomers are on the whole less missioned. The barrier to joining is less than the barrier to beginning. Growth and time inexorably pull participatory discussion away from the founding focus toward the bell curve's center.
vaksel 16y ago
I don't see why people make such a big deal about karma...it doesn't affect anything...and noone can see it without checking your profile. And that's coming from someone who was #3 karma wise on this site.
- stanleydrew 16y ago
  The problem is that karma does affect things. Just by existing it affects the way we think. It may be subtle, but we give more respect to posters with higher karma. It's a sign of acceptance from a desirable community. It's also correlated with the age of your account, and we all know that older accounts are respected more than newer accounts. And we do check the karma of other users even though we have to click through to a profile. All the time. At least I do. It helps to frame a user's comments for instance. Ultimately I think karma is a big deal. And it comes off as a little disingenuous when someone with a ton of it belittles its importance.
  - acqq 16y ago
    Yes, karma affects things. It's an instant feedback. So you can adjust to it. It's supposed to have a positive effect, and I believe it has, but the negative is: I've already learned that going "with the crowd" can get you more than trying to argument against the popular belief. Going against guarantees to give you some minus values even if you follow all the rules and contribute to the discussion (that is you're not going off-topic). I guess we can generalize things and say that the life is the same, you just can't argue that the condoms are good among the Catholics. So I have personally already also learned that how I'd be able to get more karma: say positive things about Python in post about Python, about Erlang in post about Erlang, about Lisp in posts about Lisp, etc. As Scott Adams would say "we're just meat robots." As long as people react so, the people are not only train not to troll, but also not to discuss against, just to "join our righteous crusades and fight the infidels."
    - robryan 16y ago
      To a point, some of the most well know and respected members of this community and more generally the startup's community are often so respected because they do take alternate viewpoints and argue for them really well. Sure you can preach to the choir on issues but if you do truly believe in an opposite viewpoint and make a well construed argument on it, good enough for the other side to at least see where you are coming from, that will earn a lot of respect.
bitdiddle 16y ago
Well I can empathize with the author. I too feel almost everything of importance that I've ever accomplished intellectually or mathematically, however modest, emerged as the result of intense collaboration with colleagues, complete with rigorous arguments. We would often change sides solely to get a burst of new energy when stuck in the same old thoughts. It's how research is done. I also begin a lot of comments that I don't publish (please give the karma to swah below for saying it first :), as writing is a skill you have to work at. I don't consider myself a lurker, as my low karma might indicate given I've been here 1306 days, but mostly I scan and occasionally read in depth and try to jump in when I can add value or correct obvious mistakes. In terms of interests it's surprising how diverse this community is. Even with lots of programmers one wouldn't expect to find so many familiar with category theory. I've seen HN change, often not for the better, and I'm reminded of Shirky's essay on a group being it's own worst enemy, but I've watched this puppy grow for a long time so I'm staying. Besides, I haven't owned a TV in 20 years now and I miss the Saturday morning cartoons. HN fills that gap.
sudonim 16y ago
This article is attention-seeking flame-bait disguised as a thoughtful analysis of why HN is no longer worthy of his attention. Him: "Baby, I love you but you're so self-destructive" HN: "No, don't go - I promise we'll change and be better for you" I don't buy it. Why make a stink about it? Why not just leave quietly?
- gcheong 16y ago
  Maybe he wanted to burn the bridge publicly in order to make it more likely that he will keep to his decision. "Can't go back now that I've said I'm leaving." kind of thing? But if he does decide to go back it leaves a nice opening for the follow-on post of "Why I decided to go back to reading HN".
- hugh3 16y ago
  Indeed. I've left HN forever at least six times, and you don't see me making a big fuss about it.
mark_l_watson 16y ago
A reasonable point of view, but I would suggest simply setting rough limits like "I am going to spend about 20 minutes today reading tech news." Way off topic, but: I think the article was too long. This is a trick I learned a long time ago: usually when I write an email or a blog post I let it sit for a while, then try to shorten it. Other people's time is as precious as our own so the effort in shrinking material down for quick digestion is worthwhile.
- ScottBurson 16y ago
  "Forgive the length of this letter; I did not have the time to make it shorter." -- Blaise Pascal, at the end of a 10-page letter to a friend
angstrom 16y ago
It was only natural that the community's interests would broaden and lose focus. There was certainly a more strict focus prior to 5-6 months ago and definitely 4 years ago, however, HN was never strictly startup only news. In the initial stages it was heavily weighted towards startup news, but the focus was still more diffuse than say /r/startups. http://www.reddit.com/r/startups http://www.reddit.com/r/startups This is where the superiority of a site designed to offer something for everyone without foisting a mould on everyone becomes obvious. Reddit allows the targeted streaming of topic consistent information. Hacker News attempts to be an aggregate approximation of multiple streams that interest hacker mindsets. Alternatively, Facebook is good if you're looking for organized boredom in a curated garden that will spill your information like a dribble cup.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
rw 16y ago
Irony: it is articles like this that keep me coming back to HN.
amix 16y ago
The thing I love about HN are the comments from domain-experts - e.g. tptacek on security, grellas posts on law or a direct response from a founder/creator. These kind of comments always seem to be very insightful. I don't value general discussions that much and I don't think HN is a very good medium for discussions.
- ww520 16y ago
  I think it might be better to ignore the roles of an expert and evaluate the comments by themselves. If the comments are insightful, they can stand on their own. Evaluating the comments by themselves help to develop critical thinking and avoid being spoonfed by others.
  - scott_s 16y ago
    We know those two are domain experts because we have done precisely that.
  - amix 16y ago
    Arguments from authority are a fallacy and I am not saying that I trust blindly someone just because they are an expert. I am just stating that domain experts on HN generally have some really insightful comments :)
TGJ 16y ago
I've left other communities for many of the same reasons. I think that people get attached to the discourse and mental challenge that they ignore the underlying issues. I don't think any site will ever be good enough and I don't think that sites really change that much. I think the change perceived is more the person coming around to the way things actually are and not the 'new toy' image they had. One site that I like to look at from time to time is http://forum.objectivismonline.net/index.php?s=7f68f69e2b74acadce7bf0617ca0c303&act=idx http://forum.objectivismonline.net/index.php?s=7f68f69e2b74a... From what I can tell, most people that post there do so in a manner that represents intelligence and proper manners. Plus they all agree with each other too. There are some new people that join up because they have a question but from what I have seen, there is a finite community. This also leads to a tremendous stagnation on the forums. When everyone agrees, and everyone is polite, discussions resolve themselves very quickly and there is nothing left to talk about. Granted they are only concerned with one particular philosophy and it's impacts, I think it shows what can happen.
tomsaffell 16y ago
I suspect that one of the discussion to which he is referring is this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1549623 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1549623
Eliezer 16y ago
If semantic debates are really starting to be a problem here, http://lesswrong.com/lw/od/37_ways_that_words_can_be_wrong/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/od/37_ways_that_words_can_be_wrong/. Seriously, that's what I wrote it for.
- xenophanes 16y ago
  Why do you think the problem people will be the ones who click the link? And think about it enough to figure out what situations it applies to and learn how to recognize those situations. And learn to see situations they are personally involved in, in an objective enough way so that they can recognize when they personally are doing it. And remember all this. The link offers very little help in doing these tasks. It's almost pure content, with little about how to integrate it into your life and actually use it. I think it therefore is failing to give much advice about a part where the many of relevant people get stuck or fail. There also seems to be some significant proportion of people who think taking issues like this seriously is not fun -- it's "overly serious" -- and they want their internet discussions to be light-hearted and enjoyable. They are alienated to learning things. So they won't care what you're saying; they think it's only for people with a different personality type who like that kind of thing. I don't even know what to do about these people because giving an explanation of why they are making a mistake would offend them -- if they aren't going to take discussion too seriously, they certainly don't want it to turn into a self-help seminar that asks them personally to improve. So, point is, while it's a decent article, if it's supposed to be for fixing a discussion atmosphere involving thousands of people, I don't think it will solve that problem.
  - billswift 16y ago
    There is a similar post to the original article here that was posted to LW a few days ago, Self-Improvement or Shiny Distraction: Why Less Wrong is anti-Instrumental Rationality , http://lesswrong.com/lw/2po/selfimprovement_or_shiny_distraction_why_less/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/2po/selfimprovement_or_shiny_distrac... . I have been strongly cutting back my browsing in general, including both LW and HN.
rblion 16y ago
Very insightful. I have become a casual reader just for articles, not really for the illogical arguments or personal attacks. It really does feel like everybody's talking and no one is saying anything.
- dschobel 16y ago
  You're missing out. The comments are a great way to filter the articles. I usually load them up before reading the story and if the most highly rated comment is a point by point evisceration of the thesis of the article then I know I can skip it.
jonpaul 16y ago
What I appreciated about this article was the idea of engaging yourself into a community for the sake of learning. I'm not sure that I do that enough.
bigB 16y ago
Umm...Its a website....you should probably just get over whatever is making you grumpy and get some fresh air. Sure its a community, but if it really is that hard to let go of then you really need some time out to sort out your real world issues.
smoody 16y ago
A few ideas (of course you won't be reading this, so perhaps it'll be useful to those of us remaining on the service): 1. Logout of HN and have a friend of yours change your password and not tell you what it is. This keeps you from getting into the commenting/commenting-for-karma cycle. And you won't want to create a new account because karma addicts can't stand the idea of starting back at zero. 2. Find a community that better suits your argumentative needs. I would probably suggest looking a quora.com -- but, if you're addicted to arguments for the sake of arguments, then that's probably not a good idea either. 3. Take up photography. Seriously. It will center you and give you a vice to replace the void created by quitting this site (whether the ban is short-term imposed or long-term imposed).
epi0Bauqu 16y ago
The biggest change for me is the broadening of focus away from just startups. I like it because I'm interested in broad stuff, but it leaves a hole. So we created http://techstartu.ps http://techstartu.ps for the startup piece and now I regularly visit both sites. Reddit subreddits are also good for other specific knowledge domains, e.g. netsec.
forgottenpaswrd 16y ago
"I consider it extremely important–perhaps vital, even–to spend time engaging others intelligently who have diverging views from one’s own. I think that this is, on the whole, one of the most valuable uses of one’s time that exists. " This should be the reason he has comments closed. Walk your talk.
- willurd 16y ago
  I was thinking the same thing myself. I'm unsure why a person who considers having arguments a vital part of his life and is "very, very careful" with his time would spend a month writing an article nobody can comment on. He's surely not coming back the HN to read the comments. Tell me again why I should care about this article? EDIT: FWIW I did enjoy reading parts of the article. I thought the writer has some thought-provoking things to say. I like his ideas about what make a bad argument, and I like his ideas about the importance of interacting with people who don't think like you. I just have a problem taking people who say one thing and do another seriously.
Mz 16y ago
There are communities I have left for various reasons. I am not wrapped around the axle enough about it to write a blog post naming the forum in the title and bitch about everything that is wrong with the forum in question. I couldn't get through half this post. I just don't care that much. I stopped reading after he explained how central HN had been to him and how giving it up was like lopping off a limb (or some such) but he just had to do it (or some such). HN serves some of my needs, so I visit when time permits and the interest is there. No big.
jedwhite 16y ago
The thing about Karma is it's related to Zen. Sometimes you just have to accept things for what they are and let them be. HN is the Parisian salon or bohemian coffee house of its age. And they also suffered from the pretentious, inane or despotic and inciteful, as well as the insightful and delightful.
- grandalf 16y ago
  Excellent point. There is no point about meta-complaining about HN. It's a superb community.
mmaunder 16y ago
I stopped reading HN too. Doh!
alexyim 16y ago
One thing I would like to see get addressed is how a popular sentiment can get upvoted so much. I feel that this undermines the importance of making an insightful or relevant comment. People can easily just speak the popular sentiment of the time and gain karma/have it highlighted. However, this is an issue we can all try to address. Next time we see a comment that says "hackers rule", we can avoid being trigger happy about upvoting it but rather evaluate it in terms of its merits. As a corollary, I make it a focus of mine to upvote good comments that I disagree with, a particularly hard thing to do.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  It's easy, see the 'points' as a value instead of an increment on vote. That way you evaluate a comment based on what you think it's worth. If it still has less points than what you think it is worth, vote it up, otherwise vote it down.
- pavs 16y ago
  Also hero worshipping. This is one thing I absolutely can't stand in reddit and now I see that it is also very common here in HN. People seem to up-vote users with "high score/past reputation/YC funded member" on virtually any comment they leave, even if their comment contributes absolutely nothing to the discussion or just re-enforces whatever the hive mind believes in. Forget about trying to disagree with a popular HN poster without getting down-voted to oblivion. This is really sad. I think overall karma points should not be made public. Each comment should be judged by its own merit not by the "karma points" they have in the leader-board.
  - kmfrk 16y ago
    I haven't really wrapped my head around the grounds for down-voting on HN. It seemed very rare - and proper - at first, but I am beginning to get that the, albeit few, who do it vote based on content and not form. In other words, they disagree with what a person is saying - sometimes vehemently - but the downvoted comment is still politely and somewhat cogently phrased. It's not as widespread as on reddit where there is widespread reputation-sniping going on, and many HN users tend to pick up on unfair downvotes and vote the comment up to counter it. It'll still deter some people, I guess.
iuguy 16y ago
Some of what the author wrote was interesting, but a lot was hyperbole. At the end of the day, HN loses less from his departure as he does from leaving. I'm not saying this as a suggestion of the author's inferiority in comparison to HN, far from it, just that people join and people leave communities, and ultimately unless you are able to corner an area of the market (like why the lucky stiff and rails) nothing of value is generally lost. I see where the author is coming from but think it's a good thing for his development as a person, he should carry on and move to his next thing, because he should push forward in whatever direction he feels fit. Anhyoo, I never stopped reading, because for every shameless plug, there's a 6502 implemented in Javscript here. You just don't get that ratio on reddit. Good night, and $deity bless.
pg 16y ago
I think the first time I remember having argument on HN from which I learned nothing-- one of those nasty, legalistic types of arguments where the other guy is definitely not collaborating with you in a search for truth-- was when the site was about a year old. So it is not a new phenomenon. You just have to sense when a conversation is going down that sort of rathole, and not get drawn into it. I still sometimes get drawn in, but not as easily as I was before I'd developed any resistance. As recently as a few years ago, I could still be fooled by deliberate trolls. Now I'm mostly only fooled by de facto ones.
- katovatzschyn 16y ago
  I would wager learning nothing is a trait of individuals and not settings.
  - aniket_ray 16y ago
    I think you're right. You learn something every time. But it may not be the kind of thing you're out to learn. As pg writes he learned not to be part of such arguments. Although, an important lesson, I'm sure that's pg actually wanted to learn something more pertinent to the argument (that's why he joined in the argument in the first place). When we don't get to learn what we were seeking to learn, we feel disappointed.
  - thaumaturgy 16y ago
    With the implication that there's no such thing as a wasted argument? I prefer, "Never argue with a fool; onlookers may not be able to tell the difference." I'm still learning that one, though.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
RevRal 16y ago
I basically stopped posting after this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1433950 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1433950
- RevRal 16y ago
  It's extremely discouraging to write a sincere comment that receives downvotes without explanations, giving no chance to clarify or modify ideas. Sometimes I have no idea what people are objecting to.... I felt that my comment (the one I linked to) was on topic and fulfilled what the TC had asked for, yet downvotes and no explanation. So I felt hurt, and here I am bringing it up. "It," the downvoted comment, basically being the reason I don't post here much anymore. I don't mind my downvotes in this submission, since unclear comments aren't good comments. So I should have written a better comment. I do respect this community a lot, I'm just not very "active" anymore.
pseudopattern 16y ago
When I was unemployed, HN was a big deal to me. I don't have time to come here now. Developments about languages, frameworks and such is best received other places. The trivial businesses, which are the stuff of legend around here, and often silly, tribal discussions are not worthy of a person looking for new information. The worst feature of this and many other communities is the transparent effort of many in the discussions to make compliments at the nebulous 'community.' Some cool people make an effort to engage in some threads (especially about them or their fraudulent board members). However, most of the time, hairs are split in abundance.
- emit_time_n3rgy 16y ago
  Unemployment + exploration is what enabled me to find out about HN. A job with a routine span of hours can really gouge out a lot of opportunities to find out about many interesting things going on in the world. However, when having a much more limited amount of time to explore, it helps prioritize what to explore. Both circumstances have their benefits and undesirables. I think another issue is the idea of having a range-rating system versus a 1 point up & 1 point down system. Another idea is to be able to turn off seeing the point system altogether until you are done reading what you want to read. Perhaps this can be accomplished somehow with the firebug firefox add-on. I like the idea of being able to customize & edit the entire Web as an add-on feature (not permanent/censorship) :)
technomancy 16y ago
> I am very, very careful with my time That's funny; I read Hacker News when I just want to blow off some time. If I'm being careful with my time, I'll spend it hacking.
johnconroy 16y ago
tl;dr... "NEWFAGS R THE CANCER THAT IS KILLING HN!!111!!!" Move along. Nothing to see here.
darwinGod 16y ago
I think it would be helpful to have certain information-breakdown made public. From what I have seen,those with karma of 1000+,have been active on HN for more than a year. I am curious to know the number of people with karma 1000+ - (or any breakdown of people/karma ranges). It would be helpful to have : a)A graph of number of stories submitted vs Karma level. b)A graph of number of downvotes vs Karma levels This might give a better picture of the dynamics of HN. While that would not be directly indicative of the quality of discussions, it would atleast show: a) Rate of infusion of number of people into higher karma levels b) A closed, and strongly opinionated group of higher karma levels ..which should be healthy for HN, as such.
kingkawn 16y ago
HN is soooooo 2009
maw 16y ago
Grey mixes well with neither black nor white. Please stop!

245 points by Kilimanjaro 16y ago

Sounds to me like the reasons he stopped reading HN were: 1) He couldn't stop himself from posting. He had to comment on things even when he had nothing to add. He even admits to commenting solely to gain karma. 2) He couldn't stop himself from reading the things he found pointless. All the flame wars, the arguments, etc. Just learn to skip all that. Learn to only post when you have something to add. Only read an article when you actually care about the article. Only read the comments when you care both about the article and what others have to say about it. Learn some self-control. That, or tell me what the new best tech-news site is. I get a lot more information about new techniques, languages, etc etc here at HN than anywhere else at the moment.

tel 16y ago
It's a matter of SNR though, isn't it? Sure you can skip things and sure you can edit yourself, but it's also easier (healthier?) to just stay somewhere that, to your own personal comfort, delivers signal and promotes meaningful response. The less I have to bear the burden and sink the energy cost of filtration the more I can put into comprehension, enjoyment, and growth.
swah 16y ago
Sometimes I write a comment, but writing makes you think more clearly about the subject, and so I realize it is not very insightful. Then I discard it and feel very proud for saving everyone's time.
- MarkBook 16y ago
  That deserves karma!
- abraham 16y ago
  I'm curious how many people started replying to you but ended up discarding it.
- billswift 16y ago
  Same here, I discard at least two-thirds of the comments I start.
- robryan 16y ago
  I think this indicates a higher average quality than other online comments better than most other indicators. In most places the comment would get posted anyway, but here you feel your writing as part of an average standard which is much higher. I know for one that I also pay more attention to use of words and grammar on here that I probably would other places because that is what the standard is, that is what we all like to read and comments not at that standard usually end up down the bottom heavily down voted. You don't see a lot of well written and constructive comments down voted even if they are arguing a alternate and contentious viewpoint.
- wccrawford 16y ago
  I quite often write out a whole comment pointing out the error of someone's thinking, or just lashing out in general, then realize that I'm not actually adding anything, the person won't listen anyhow, and I'm just wasting my time, others' time, and being negative. So I click 'back' on my browser and it goes away. Since I learned to do that, my time on sites like HN has been much more rewarding.
- rapind 16y ago
  I couldn't agree more. I still manage to slip in some meaningless and regrettable comments, but fortunately far less then the drivel you never get to see.
mortenjorck 16y ago
I've actually thought that the biggest flaw in HN's interface is that the user's karma is displayed on the home page. I've no doubt it seemed like a good way to encourage and reinforce contribution, but I fear it's enabling to a subtle sort of addiction. Precisely what that addiction is to is perhaps what's hardest to answer. Is it attention? Validation? Some more abstract notion of amassment and score? I've noticed myself looking up into the corner upon return to the site, and have even consciously avoided that gaze pattern at times. It may even come down to such fundamental questions as the existence of altruism. Just as one can ask "are you doing this for someone else, or just because doing things for others makes you feel good?" one can ask at "are you contributing thoughtfully because you want to participate in the community, or because you want to see your karma go up?" If you want to see your karma increase, is it because you want to participate, or the converse? Can the two be functionally separated?
- hammerdr 16y ago
  I write very few comments. When I do write a comment, I always do the top-right corner check when I come back. To me, its validation that my opinion was well taken by the community (a community that I respect). I'm going to try to avoid that this time :)
  - xenophanes 16y ago
    If you're not getting down voted a reasonable proportion of the time, you're too timid a thinker (or your comments avoid all controversy and stick to technical matters).
    - billswift 16y ago
      Except that on HN, if you are not getting more upvotes than the number of comments you are posting, you can't vote on the comments. That is what the "avg: " on your profile page is for, if it's not 2 or higher your votes don't count.
      - edanm 16y ago
jamii 16y ago
> I get a lot more information about new techniques, languages, etc etc here at HN than anywhere else at the moment. I find much more useful content on reddit these days. HN tends to be full of opinion pieces with very little technical content. These sometimes start interesting discussions but I don't feel that I actually learn anything useful either from the original article or the comments.
ajscherer 16y ago
Being unable to stop reading or commenting on hn can never possibly be the reason you've successfully stopped reading or commenting on hn can it? He wanted to spend his time reading and discussing articles on hn. His problem was that he was finding it increasingly unrewarding. So he quit. Your last point regarding the best tech-news site is irrelevant. He is replacing hn with "arguing with people in person or via e-mail, reading disagreeable books, and the like."
- billswift 16y ago
  And getting his tech news from his RSS feed.
10ren 16y ago
A way to implement this is to use the new page. There's little indication of what you "should" read, so you have to make up your own mind, from the title or brief skim. There's no or few comments, so less opportunity for meaningless conflict that is irrelevant to the submission. It is, however, more work. bonus: you have a massively increased influence on what gets to the front page - so, to an extent, you create the HN you want.
SkyMarshal 16y ago
"Just learn to skip all that. Learn to only post when you have something to add. Only read an article when you actually care about the article. Only read the comments when you care both about the article and what others have to say about it." Perfect advice. That pretty much applies to the entire Internet, not just HN.
points 16y ago
One of the problems with the Karma thing is it's ridiculously simple to gain karma. Unless you're deliberately being stupid. All you have to do is say something you believe will fit in with the groupthink of the community. The first step to salvation is the realization that karma="how much time you waste commenting" rather than how much your comments are valued. I'd like to see a community where there is a limited supply of karma. Or your karma is shown as a percentage of total karma. I think that would produce much better dynamics.

tptacek 16y ago

This is 'drewcrawford. Reading ~10 pages of the last 60 days of his comments, I'm not seeing the unproductive arguments he's referring to. It's too bad; he's an interesting guy: lives in OKC, went to WWDC, has opinions about crypto. Maybe a bit too willing to invest himself in discussions that HN doesn't do well (politics, social justice).

philk 16y ago
To be fair, politics/social justice discussions seem to turn poisonous everywhere on the web and they probably produce a steady stream of people saying "I'm not posting there again".
- gloob 16y ago
  Which is precisely why they are largely discouraged here.
pvg 16y ago
I thought you had the wrong guy for a moment, given how tame and deliberate these threads seem. Maybe he had other accounts with which he regularly tread into the lava?
qeorge 16y ago
Thanks for pointing out the username. Personally, I can see what he's talking about. This is the last thread drew commented on: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1584474 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1584474 About 5 levels down you'll see a 20-point comment that's unnecessarily nasty. I think that's exactly what the author is referring to, and I agree - I don't like it.
- tptacek 16y ago
  You're referring to: Since you've simply flat-out contradicted a research paper with nothing more than assertion, I find it unlikely your upvotes represent anything more than a set of people who found their preconceptions tickled by your post. Do you have any sort of actual other study to back you point up, or are you just stating your own biases? I am not sympathetic to the notion that this is an unreasonable nasty comment, given some of the arguments I've found myself embroiled in on HN recently. I'm not arguing with Drew, though. He's an interesting guy, and he doesn't like commenting here anymore, and that's a shame --- though, again, talking about colonialism on HN is not a good way to moderate your blood pressure.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

I consider it extremely important–perhaps vital, even–to spend time engaging others intelligently who have diverging views from one’s own. I think that this is, on the whole, one of the most valuable uses of one’s time that exists. Very interesting insight. If you're not doing things that are transformative -- that change your habits and the way you have of looking at the world, you're wasting your time. And I don't mean that in a philosophical or political sense. It applies to everything -- coding, marketing, time management. If you spend 3 hours on HN today and leave with basically the same opinions, habits, and immediately useful pieces of knowledge that you started with? Not good for you. HN has always discouraged deeply nested discussions, seeing them as just so much noise. I've always thought that was whacked. Yes, many times you are in a flame war and nothing is accomplished, but the entire point of interacting with other people is to learn. So you'd think that a long conversation about, I dunno, pointer arithmetic, would have a transformative effect on both the participants and the community. I think the issue here is whether you view users as intelligent folks who are trying to understand each other, or cranks and trolls who solely exist to get some emotional thrill from flaming (yes, Gresham's Law comes into play here, but everything is a trade-off) As it is, what's happened is this kind of lightweight, superficial herd mentality, with folks striking out fairly deep responses and then nothing ever gets settled. Lots of generalizations and high-level talk, nothing past an initial exchange or three. I've even questioned some longtime members about various topics and was told "I'm not posting to discuss, I'm posting to cut you off" more or less. Once I realized that HN was idle geek chitchat and not the watercooler for entrepreneurs I wanted it to be, it changed my opinion of the place. I still like it, no place like it, but it also has this terrible time-wasting underbelly that we rarely talk about enough.

lotharbot 16y ago
> the entire point of interacting with other people is to learn. I find the short/shallow discussions on HN very good for this. They give you just a couple of shots to either pose an insightful question or provide an insightful response, which encourages high signal content and enforces a "get to the point" mentality. From discussions elsewhere, I've found the majority of learning comes within those first few serious posts; by the time a single person has posted 5-6 times it's often either repetitive or off-topic. In my experience, it's extremely rare for people to still be providing new insight after 5+ rounds of back and forth. That said, in those rare circumstances, I would like to continue discussions further than HN allows (that's one reason I list my e-mail address in my profile.) I've found that what kills deep discussion on HN is not the lack of deep nesting, but the fast news cycle and lack of a "refresh" mechanic to bring threads with new posts back to the top. If someone responds to a discussion I started 2 days ago, I may never see their response.

wwortiz 16y ago

I don't read very many articles on Hacker News and I think I get a lot more out of it by being my own add on filter. I avoid articles from techcrunch, nytimes, and basically any majorish news source (they usually can't keep my attention for some reason, even if it is interesting). What I do like are the new startup posts (sometimes they are interesting just to see what people are doing), the underlying tech posts or how someone solved an interesting problem (be it programming or something else) and anything else that sticks out I'll click on. After I click on them I skim them and see if it keeps my interest and then I read whatever is left, some days I don't read any articles and some days I read quite a few. Also comments help the filter and if I'm grabbed by a title I might check the comments to see whether or not I am going to read an article.

cnlwsu 16y ago

"Every community deteriorates over time" - I hate these kind of statements made by every community as it grows and the "older" generations feel that they come from an elitist or a superior, time of purity. Just related: http://xkcd.com/603/ http://xkcd.com/603/

darwinGod 16y ago
Check this out: http://www.cc.gatech.edu/fac/Amy.Bruckman/teaching/6470/spring09/schedule.htm http://www.cc.gatech.edu/fac/Amy.Bruckman/teaching/6470/spri... Did you know Wikipedia doesn't function as a democracy? I believe the stats are something like top 20 % influence 80% of articles. If HN were to be proper democracy, I think it's decline would be hastened a.k.a -"Every community deteriorates over time" Aging in online communities happens way faster than real life-but it 's psychology is basically the same -"What does this Twenty-something CEO know to tell us 15 year industry veterans something of value?"
Terretta 16y ago
Unlike your XKCD example, a community's early members are not talking about the general population. They're talking about a special interest community's dilution. Few communities are begun by the average, they're begun by the inspired, impassioned, or invested. The founders are focused. Motivated, they cross a barrier of inaction, pouring in resources and effort, establishing a meeting place for clear like minds. Latecomers are on the whole less missioned. The barrier to joining is less than the barrier to beginning. Growth and time inexorably pull participatory discussion away from the founding focus toward the bell curve's center.

vaksel 16y ago

I don't see why people make such a big deal about karma...it doesn't affect anything...and noone can see it without checking your profile. And that's coming from someone who was #3 karma wise on this site.

stanleydrew 16y ago
The problem is that karma does affect things. Just by existing it affects the way we think. It may be subtle, but we give more respect to posters with higher karma. It's a sign of acceptance from a desirable community. It's also correlated with the age of your account, and we all know that older accounts are respected more than newer accounts. And we do check the karma of other users even though we have to click through to a profile. All the time. At least I do. It helps to frame a user's comments for instance. Ultimately I think karma is a big deal. And it comes off as a little disingenuous when someone with a ton of it belittles its importance.
- acqq 16y ago
  Yes, karma affects things. It's an instant feedback. So you can adjust to it. It's supposed to have a positive effect, and I believe it has, but the negative is: I've already learned that going "with the crowd" can get you more than trying to argument against the popular belief. Going against guarantees to give you some minus values even if you follow all the rules and contribute to the discussion (that is you're not going off-topic). I guess we can generalize things and say that the life is the same, you just can't argue that the condoms are good among the Catholics. So I have personally already also learned that how I'd be able to get more karma: say positive things about Python in post about Python, about Erlang in post about Erlang, about Lisp in posts about Lisp, etc. As Scott Adams would say "we're just meat robots." As long as people react so, the people are not only train not to troll, but also not to discuss against, just to "join our righteous crusades and fight the infidels."
  - robryan 16y ago
    To a point, some of the most well know and respected members of this community and more generally the startup's community are often so respected because they do take alternate viewpoints and argue for them really well. Sure you can preach to the choir on issues but if you do truly believe in an opposite viewpoint and make a well construed argument on it, good enough for the other side to at least see where you are coming from, that will earn a lot of respect.

bitdiddle 16y ago

Well I can empathize with the author. I too feel almost everything of importance that I've ever accomplished intellectually or mathematically, however modest, emerged as the result of intense collaboration with colleagues, complete with rigorous arguments. We would often change sides solely to get a burst of new energy when stuck in the same old thoughts. It's how research is done. I also begin a lot of comments that I don't publish (please give the karma to swah below for saying it first :), as writing is a skill you have to work at. I don't consider myself a lurker, as my low karma might indicate given I've been here 1306 days, but mostly I scan and occasionally read in depth and try to jump in when I can add value or correct obvious mistakes. In terms of interests it's surprising how diverse this community is. Even with lots of programmers one wouldn't expect to find so many familiar with category theory. I've seen HN change, often not for the better, and I'm reminded of Shirky's essay on a group being it's own worst enemy, but I've watched this puppy grow for a long time so I'm staying. Besides, I haven't owned a TV in 20 years now and I miss the Saturday morning cartoons. HN fills that gap.

sudonim 16y ago

This article is attention-seeking flame-bait disguised as a thoughtful analysis of why HN is no longer worthy of his attention. Him: "Baby, I love you but you're so self-destructive" HN: "No, don't go - I promise we'll change and be better for you" I don't buy it. Why make a stink about it? Why not just leave quietly?

gcheong 16y ago
Maybe he wanted to burn the bridge publicly in order to make it more likely that he will keep to his decision. "Can't go back now that I've said I'm leaving." kind of thing? But if he does decide to go back it leaves a nice opening for the follow-on post of "Why I decided to go back to reading HN".
hugh3 16y ago
Indeed. I've left HN forever at least six times, and you don't see me making a big fuss about it.

mark_l_watson 16y ago

A reasonable point of view, but I would suggest simply setting rough limits like "I am going to spend about 20 minutes today reading tech news." Way off topic, but: I think the article was too long. This is a trick I learned a long time ago: usually when I write an email or a blog post I let it sit for a while, then try to shorten it. Other people's time is as precious as our own so the effort in shrinking material down for quick digestion is worthwhile.

ScottBurson 16y ago
"Forgive the length of this letter; I did not have the time to make it shorter." -- Blaise Pascal, at the end of a 10-page letter to a friend

angstrom 16y ago

It was only natural that the community's interests would broaden and lose focus. There was certainly a more strict focus prior to 5-6 months ago and definitely 4 years ago, however, HN was never strictly startup only news. In the initial stages it was heavily weighted towards startup news, but the focus was still more diffuse than say /r/startups. http://www.reddit.com/r/startups http://www.reddit.com/r/startups This is where the superiority of a site designed to offer something for everyone without foisting a mould on everyone becomes obvious. Reddit allows the targeted streaming of topic consistent information. Hacker News attempts to be an aggregate approximation of multiple streams that interest hacker mindsets. Alternatively, Facebook is good if you're looking for organized boredom in a curated garden that will spill your information like a dribble cup.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

rw 16y ago

Irony: it is articles like this that keep me coming back to HN.

amix 16y ago

The thing I love about HN are the comments from domain-experts - e.g. tptacek on security, grellas posts on law or a direct response from a founder/creator. These kind of comments always seem to be very insightful. I don't value general discussions that much and I don't think HN is a very good medium for discussions.

ww520 16y ago
I think it might be better to ignore the roles of an expert and evaluate the comments by themselves. If the comments are insightful, they can stand on their own. Evaluating the comments by themselves help to develop critical thinking and avoid being spoonfed by others.
- scott_s 16y ago
  We know those two are domain experts because we have done precisely that.
- amix 16y ago
  Arguments from authority are a fallacy and I am not saying that I trust blindly someone just because they are an expert. I am just stating that domain experts on HN generally have some really insightful comments :)

TGJ 16y ago

I've left other communities for many of the same reasons. I think that people get attached to the discourse and mental challenge that they ignore the underlying issues. I don't think any site will ever be good enough and I don't think that sites really change that much. I think the change perceived is more the person coming around to the way things actually are and not the 'new toy' image they had. One site that I like to look at from time to time is http://forum.objectivismonline.net/index.php?s=7f68f69e2b74acadce7bf0617ca0c303&act=idx http://forum.objectivismonline.net/index.php?s=7f68f69e2b74a... From what I can tell, most people that post there do so in a manner that represents intelligence and proper manners. Plus they all agree with each other too. There are some new people that join up because they have a question but from what I have seen, there is a finite community. This also leads to a tremendous stagnation on the forums. When everyone agrees, and everyone is polite, discussions resolve themselves very quickly and there is nothing left to talk about. Granted they are only concerned with one particular philosophy and it's impacts, I think it shows what can happen.

tomsaffell 16y ago

I suspect that one of the discussion to which he is referring is this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1549623 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1549623

Eliezer 16y ago

If semantic debates are really starting to be a problem here, http://lesswrong.com/lw/od/37_ways_that_words_can_be_wrong/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/od/37_ways_that_words_can_be_wrong/. Seriously, that's what I wrote it for.

xenophanes 16y ago
Why do you think the problem people will be the ones who click the link? And think about it enough to figure out what situations it applies to and learn how to recognize those situations. And learn to see situations they are personally involved in, in an objective enough way so that they can recognize when they personally are doing it. And remember all this. The link offers very little help in doing these tasks. It's almost pure content, with little about how to integrate it into your life and actually use it. I think it therefore is failing to give much advice about a part where the many of relevant people get stuck or fail. There also seems to be some significant proportion of people who think taking issues like this seriously is not fun -- it's "overly serious" -- and they want their internet discussions to be light-hearted and enjoyable. They are alienated to learning things. So they won't care what you're saying; they think it's only for people with a different personality type who like that kind of thing. I don't even know what to do about these people because giving an explanation of why they are making a mistake would offend them -- if they aren't going to take discussion too seriously, they certainly don't want it to turn into a self-help seminar that asks them personally to improve. So, point is, while it's a decent article, if it's supposed to be for fixing a discussion atmosphere involving thousands of people, I don't think it will solve that problem.
- billswift 16y ago
  There is a similar post to the original article here that was posted to LW a few days ago, Self-Improvement or Shiny Distraction: Why Less Wrong is anti-Instrumental Rationality , http://lesswrong.com/lw/2po/selfimprovement_or_shiny_distraction_why_less/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/2po/selfimprovement_or_shiny_distrac... . I have been strongly cutting back my browsing in general, including both LW and HN.

rblion 16y ago

Very insightful. I have become a casual reader just for articles, not really for the illogical arguments or personal attacks. It really does feel like everybody's talking and no one is saying anything.

dschobel 16y ago
You're missing out. The comments are a great way to filter the articles. I usually load them up before reading the story and if the most highly rated comment is a point by point evisceration of the thesis of the article then I know I can skip it.

jonpaul 16y ago

What I appreciated about this article was the idea of engaging yourself into a community for the sake of learning. I'm not sure that I do that enough.

bigB 16y ago

Umm...Its a website....you should probably just get over whatever is making you grumpy and get some fresh air. Sure its a community, but if it really is that hard to let go of then you really need some time out to sort out your real world issues.

smoody 16y ago

A few ideas (of course you won't be reading this, so perhaps it'll be useful to those of us remaining on the service): 1. Logout of HN and have a friend of yours change your password and not tell you what it is. This keeps you from getting into the commenting/commenting-for-karma cycle. And you won't want to create a new account because karma addicts can't stand the idea of starting back at zero. 2. Find a community that better suits your argumentative needs. I would probably suggest looking a quora.com -- but, if you're addicted to arguments for the sake of arguments, then that's probably not a good idea either. 3. Take up photography. Seriously. It will center you and give you a vice to replace the void created by quitting this site (whether the ban is short-term imposed or long-term imposed).

epi0Bauqu 16y ago

The biggest change for me is the broadening of focus away from just startups. I like it because I'm interested in broad stuff, but it leaves a hole. So we created http://techstartu.ps http://techstartu.ps for the startup piece and now I regularly visit both sites. Reddit subreddits are also good for other specific knowledge domains, e.g. netsec.

forgottenpaswrd 16y ago

"I consider it extremely important–perhaps vital, even–to spend time engaging others intelligently who have diverging views from one’s own. I think that this is, on the whole, one of the most valuable uses of one’s time that exists. " This should be the reason he has comments closed. Walk your talk.

willurd 16y ago
I was thinking the same thing myself. I'm unsure why a person who considers having arguments a vital part of his life and is "very, very careful" with his time would spend a month writing an article nobody can comment on. He's surely not coming back the HN to read the comments. Tell me again why I should care about this article? EDIT: FWIW I did enjoy reading parts of the article. I thought the writer has some thought-provoking things to say. I like his ideas about what make a bad argument, and I like his ideas about the importance of interacting with people who don't think like you. I just have a problem taking people who say one thing and do another seriously.

Mz 16y ago

There are communities I have left for various reasons. I am not wrapped around the axle enough about it to write a blog post naming the forum in the title and bitch about everything that is wrong with the forum in question. I couldn't get through half this post. I just don't care that much. I stopped reading after he explained how central HN had been to him and how giving it up was like lopping off a limb (or some such) but he just had to do it (or some such). HN serves some of my needs, so I visit when time permits and the interest is there. No big.

jedwhite 16y ago

The thing about Karma is it's related to Zen. Sometimes you just have to accept things for what they are and let them be. HN is the Parisian salon or bohemian coffee house of its age. And they also suffered from the pretentious, inane or despotic and inciteful, as well as the insightful and delightful.

grandalf 16y ago
Excellent point. There is no point about meta-complaining about HN. It's a superb community.

mmaunder 16y ago

I stopped reading HN too. Doh!

alexyim 16y ago

One thing I would like to see get addressed is how a popular sentiment can get upvoted so much. I feel that this undermines the importance of making an insightful or relevant comment. People can easily just speak the popular sentiment of the time and gain karma/have it highlighted. However, this is an issue we can all try to address. Next time we see a comment that says "hackers rule", we can avoid being trigger happy about upvoting it but rather evaluate it in terms of its merits. As a corollary, I make it a focus of mine to upvote good comments that I disagree with, a particularly hard thing to do.

jacquesm 16y ago
It's easy, see the 'points' as a value instead of an increment on vote. That way you evaluate a comment based on what you think it's worth. If it still has less points than what you think it is worth, vote it up, otherwise vote it down.
pavs 16y ago
Also hero worshipping. This is one thing I absolutely can't stand in reddit and now I see that it is also very common here in HN. People seem to up-vote users with "high score/past reputation/YC funded member" on virtually any comment they leave, even if their comment contributes absolutely nothing to the discussion or just re-enforces whatever the hive mind believes in. Forget about trying to disagree with a popular HN poster without getting down-voted to oblivion. This is really sad. I think overall karma points should not be made public. Each comment should be judged by its own merit not by the "karma points" they have in the leader-board.
- kmfrk 16y ago
  I haven't really wrapped my head around the grounds for down-voting on HN. It seemed very rare - and proper - at first, but I am beginning to get that the, albeit few, who do it vote based on content and not form. In other words, they disagree with what a person is saying - sometimes vehemently - but the downvoted comment is still politely and somewhat cogently phrased. It's not as widespread as on reddit where there is widespread reputation-sniping going on, and many HN users tend to pick up on unfair downvotes and vote the comment up to counter it. It'll still deter some people, I guess.

iuguy 16y ago

Some of what the author wrote was interesting, but a lot was hyperbole. At the end of the day, HN loses less from his departure as he does from leaving. I'm not saying this as a suggestion of the author's inferiority in comparison to HN, far from it, just that people join and people leave communities, and ultimately unless you are able to corner an area of the market (like why the lucky stiff and rails) nothing of value is generally lost. I see where the author is coming from but think it's a good thing for his development as a person, he should carry on and move to his next thing, because he should push forward in whatever direction he feels fit. Anhyoo, I never stopped reading, because for every shameless plug, there's a 6502 implemented in Javscript here. You just don't get that ratio on reddit. Good night, and $deity bless.

pg 16y ago

I think the first time I remember having argument on HN from which I learned nothing-- one of those nasty, legalistic types of arguments where the other guy is definitely not collaborating with you in a search for truth-- was when the site was about a year old. So it is not a new phenomenon. You just have to sense when a conversation is going down that sort of rathole, and not get drawn into it. I still sometimes get drawn in, but not as easily as I was before I'd developed any resistance. As recently as a few years ago, I could still be fooled by deliberate trolls. Now I'm mostly only fooled by de facto ones.

katovatzschyn 16y ago
I would wager learning nothing is a trait of individuals and not settings.
- aniket_ray 16y ago
  I think you're right. You learn something every time. But it may not be the kind of thing you're out to learn. As pg writes he learned not to be part of such arguments. Although, an important lesson, I'm sure that's pg actually wanted to learn something more pertinent to the argument (that's why he joined in the argument in the first place). When we don't get to learn what we were seeking to learn, we feel disappointed.
- thaumaturgy 16y ago
  With the implication that there's no such thing as a wasted argument? I prefer, "Never argue with a fool; onlookers may not be able to tell the difference." I'm still learning that one, though.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

RevRal 16y ago

I basically stopped posting after this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1433950 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1433950

RevRal 16y ago
It's extremely discouraging to write a sincere comment that receives downvotes without explanations, giving no chance to clarify or modify ideas. Sometimes I have no idea what people are objecting to.... I felt that my comment (the one I linked to) was on topic and fulfilled what the TC had asked for, yet downvotes and no explanation. So I felt hurt, and here I am bringing it up. "It," the downvoted comment, basically being the reason I don't post here much anymore. I don't mind my downvotes in this submission, since unclear comments aren't good comments. So I should have written a better comment. I do respect this community a lot, I'm just not very "active" anymore.

pseudopattern 16y ago

When I was unemployed, HN was a big deal to me. I don't have time to come here now. Developments about languages, frameworks and such is best received other places. The trivial businesses, which are the stuff of legend around here, and often silly, tribal discussions are not worthy of a person looking for new information. The worst feature of this and many other communities is the transparent effort of many in the discussions to make compliments at the nebulous 'community.' Some cool people make an effort to engage in some threads (especially about them or their fraudulent board members). However, most of the time, hairs are split in abundance.

emit_time_n3rgy 16y ago
Unemployment + exploration is what enabled me to find out about HN. A job with a routine span of hours can really gouge out a lot of opportunities to find out about many interesting things going on in the world. However, when having a much more limited amount of time to explore, it helps prioritize what to explore. Both circumstances have their benefits and undesirables. I think another issue is the idea of having a range-rating system versus a 1 point up & 1 point down system. Another idea is to be able to turn off seeing the point system altogether until you are done reading what you want to read. Perhaps this can be accomplished somehow with the firebug firefox add-on. I like the idea of being able to customize & edit the entire Web as an add-on feature (not permanent/censorship) :)

technomancy 16y ago

> I am very, very careful with my time That's funny; I read Hacker News when I just want to blow off some time. If I'm being careful with my time, I'll spend it hacking.

johnconroy 16y ago

tl;dr... "NEWFAGS R THE CANCER THAT IS KILLING HN!!111!!!" Move along. Nothing to see here.

darwinGod 16y ago

I think it would be helpful to have certain information-breakdown made public. From what I have seen,those with karma of 1000+,have been active on HN for more than a year. I am curious to know the number of people with karma 1000+ - (or any breakdown of people/karma ranges). It would be helpful to have : a)A graph of number of stories submitted vs Karma level. b)A graph of number of downvotes vs Karma levels This might give a better picture of the dynamics of HN. While that would not be directly indicative of the quality of discussions, it would atleast show: a) Rate of infusion of number of people into higher karma levels b) A closed, and strongly opinionated group of higher karma levels ..which should be healthy for HN, as such.

kingkawn 16y ago

HN is soooooo 2009

maw 16y ago

Grey mixes well with neither black nor white. Please stop!