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This seems a good time to point out that a few of us been organizing a revolt against HN. I wish it wasn't so, and the drama is mostly uninteresting. Suffice to

This seems a good time to point out that a few of us been organizing a revolt against HN. I wish it wasn't so, and the drama is mostly uninteresting. Suffice to say, expressing concerns about HN on HN is a quick way to end up beheaded. If you're looking for an alternative: https://www.laarc.io/ https://www.laarc.io/ You may find the site a welcome change of pace. We just had our first Show post today. There is a good chance that this account will be quickly banned, this post killed, and this account marked as "uncommentable", meaning this is the last comment I am likely able to post under this handle. But you may also know me as sillysaurus. I've missed you guys.

ProAm 8y ago
Why the revolt over HN?
- untog 8y ago
  I can't speak for the OP, but I've been frustrated to find that any time a controversial topic comes up on HN (say, sexism) it is immediately flagged off the homepage. A small cohort of HN users get to dictate what the site at large discusses, and I'm not sure that's for the betterment of the industry.
  - bilbo0s 8y ago
    ??? So is this basically a revolt by the more political oriented people? I mean, the people who want to discuss the political type controversial stuff and not so much tech and science? Just wondering why I never heard of it until I read that comment?
    - untog 8y ago
      > Just wondering why I never heard of it? Because it gets flagged off the site immediately.
      - bilbo0s 8y ago
        In fairness though, if you want a politics version of HN, you can just make your own. I think there are a large number of flags required to get a post removed from the front page. So, to me, it sounds like there are a lot of tech, math, science types who are just not interested in posts that they feel "pollute" the stream so to speak. I mean, again, if we're being fair, those guys should get as much of a say as you do.
        untog 8y ago
        I think the core contention is that tech, maths and science do not live outside of politics - they're all political topics. Books have been written about the politics involved in science. > those guys should get as much of a say as you do. Absolutely agree. But the flagging mechanism means that a small number of users make the choice for the rest, who never see the story in question. I'm not suggesting I have an easy fix, community moderation is one of the biggest problems out there. But I'm not sure the current approach is the best one, that's all. EDIT: and you might notice it happening now. This story has slipped down to 23rd on the front page, despite having far more upvotes in a shorter space of time than the stories that surround it. Soon it won't be on the front page any more.
        bilbo0s 8y ago
        >But the flagging mechanism means that a small number of users make the choice for the rest... That's the thing though, "a small number of users" made the choice to put the post on the front page in the first place. It only really takes a tiny fraction of the daily user count to promote a submission to the front page, and, to my mind, YCombinator is just kind of saying, "well, since there's no way to downvote a submission, we'll have this flagging mechanism." I think that's a reasonable compromise.
    - nostrademons 8y ago
      It's interesting, I just checked it out (I'd never heard of it before) and a number of the usernames seem familiar, and are not who I'd think of as more political-oriented people. The topics are actually more technical and arguably interesting than what shows up on HN these days. I think it may just be that beyond a certain size, online communities break, and you get crap. And laarc is effectively a splinter off HN of users who got fed up with the content here.
RodericDay 8y ago
this is great
brylie 8y ago
What is the rationale for the HN revolt?
yongjik 8y ago
Upvoted because, even if I don't really care for what you think about HN, there's something interesting about someone getting so enraged with HN that they go through the trouble of building an identical-looking clone.
- minimaxir 8y ago
  The core framework of HN, Arc, has an open source variant and it's not hard to deploy a strict HN clone. https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki

ProAm 8y ago

Why the revolt over HN?

untog 8y ago
I can't speak for the OP, but I've been frustrated to find that any time a controversial topic comes up on HN (say, sexism) it is immediately flagged off the homepage. A small cohort of HN users get to dictate what the site at large discusses, and I'm not sure that's for the betterment of the industry.
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  ??? So is this basically a revolt by the more political oriented people? I mean, the people who want to discuss the political type controversial stuff and not so much tech and science? Just wondering why I never heard of it until I read that comment?
  - untog 8y ago
    > Just wondering why I never heard of it? Because it gets flagged off the site immediately.
    - bilbo0s 8y ago
      In fairness though, if you want a politics version of HN, you can just make your own. I think there are a large number of flags required to get a post removed from the front page. So, to me, it sounds like there are a lot of tech, math, science types who are just not interested in posts that they feel "pollute" the stream so to speak. I mean, again, if we're being fair, those guys should get as much of a say as you do.
      - untog 8y ago
        I think the core contention is that tech, maths and science do not live outside of politics - they're all political topics. Books have been written about the politics involved in science. > those guys should get as much of a say as you do. Absolutely agree. But the flagging mechanism means that a small number of users make the choice for the rest, who never see the story in question. I'm not suggesting I have an easy fix, community moderation is one of the biggest problems out there. But I'm not sure the current approach is the best one, that's all. EDIT: and you might notice it happening now. This story has slipped down to 23rd on the front page, despite having far more upvotes in a shorter space of time than the stories that surround it. Soon it won't be on the front page any more.
        bilbo0s 8y ago
        >But the flagging mechanism means that a small number of users make the choice for the rest... That's the thing though, "a small number of users" made the choice to put the post on the front page in the first place. It only really takes a tiny fraction of the daily user count to promote a submission to the front page, and, to my mind, YCombinator is just kind of saying, "well, since there's no way to downvote a submission, we'll have this flagging mechanism." I think that's a reasonable compromise.
  - nostrademons 8y ago
    It's interesting, I just checked it out (I'd never heard of it before) and a number of the usernames seem familiar, and are not who I'd think of as more political-oriented people. The topics are actually more technical and arguably interesting than what shows up on HN these days. I think it may just be that beyond a certain size, online communities break, and you get crap. And laarc is effectively a splinter off HN of users who got fed up with the content here.

RodericDay 8y ago

this is great

brylie 8y ago

What is the rationale for the HN revolt?

yongjik 8y ago

Upvoted because, even if I don't really care for what you think about HN, there's something interesting about someone getting so enraged with HN that they go through the trouble of building an identical-looking clone.

minimaxir 8y ago
The core framework of HN, Arc, has an open source variant and it's not hard to deploy a strict HN clone. https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki