4 ms·

News? Sure. Hacker News? Not so much.

by icey 18y ago

dmpayton 18y ago
I was about to say, word for word, the exact same thing. Had it typed out and everything. Then I had to check on dinner, came back, and got the unknown/expired link error. Needles to say, I'm in agreement.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
- icey 18y ago
  Look, I'm an Obama supporter. It's just that as far as I see it, this sort of thing is better left to other venues.
  - TFrancis 18y ago
    Given the position of this article, it appears that the rest of the community disagrees.
    - icey 18y ago
      Well, we don't have a way to downvote it, so I wouldn't assume that to be the truth.
      - TFrancis 18y ago
        Even without the ability to downvote, doesn't the position of the article indicate that there isn't a better article?
        bct 18y ago
        It indicates that that isn't an article with broader appeal. That's not the same thing as "better".
        TFrancis 18y ago
        I then argue that "better" as defined by the HN heuristic is exactly defined as an article with more points.
        hugh 18y ago
        The problem seems to be that people will occasionally reflexively use the upmod arrow on an article just to say "hooray for the sentiment expressed in the headline" rather than after carefully thinking about whether it's worthwhile. Examples include this article (I'm guessing that most of the upmodders were Obama supporters), the "congrats to pg on getting married" thread the other day, and the "happy birthday somebodyorother" thread a few weeks ago.
        bct 18y ago
        I'm more interested in my definition of better than the algorithm's.
        TFrancis 18y ago
        You didn't provide a definition of better.
        rms 18y ago
        ok I am going to play the Luttgenstein/Chomsky blah blah blah argument. you are arguing semantics that are reduced to arguments about differences in language. it is meaningless, mostly
        TFrancis 18y ago
        Pardon the brevity of my previous post. I'm sorry if it appears that I'm arguing for it's own sake. I only meant to indicate that we currently have an implemented definition of "better" between posts--the HN ranking algorithm. I believe that the burden of proof belongs to the party challenging the status quo to provide an alternative and then argue why the alternative is indeed the preferred system. During the debate over which ranking algorithm/definition is better where I believe the Luttgenstein/Chmosky argument is most applicable because we don't have a clearly agreed upon definition of what a better ranking algorithm is. However, until an alternative is provided, we cannot possibly reach and/or explore these semantic differences.
notdarkyet 18y ago
No it is not and you are correct in that assessment. Personally, Obama does not represent a good portion of my views in terms of policy, but what he does represent for me is a new wave in politics, a wave that is once again representative of the people rather than individual incentive and making decisions based on who is going to line their pockets. Anything to end corruption is better to me than someone who is going to promise to act within my set of views for what is best for this country and then do the opposite or what they want. My view, personally, is that government should act as a safety net rather than a guiding father figure. I tend to float towards more libertarian policies than anything, small government and as little intervention as possible (a view that can be considered almost the complete opposite side of the spectrum than Obama). My view is that this nation has grounding and worked for so many years to be a country of opportunity, therefore, the structure of government should reflect that ideal and anyone who is willing to work hard should be rewarded for it (no free gifts). What I do support from Obama are his values (or proposed and believed values) as a human being. Not his religious values or the garbage perpetrated by the media (ie. reverand Wright). He gives individuals a reason to believe that he is going to act on what is best for society and that enough might be what will make me forget about his views of government. Yes, he most likely will propose policy that is near opposite of what I believe and I will make that admission, but I hope that having a man with a sense of ethics will take this country down a path where someone with my sense of views and his could come to some sort of a compromise with what is best for this country. I would rather have that than the selfishness thats perpetuated this country since I have been alive. I would rather have a man who will admit when he is wrong and correct it than someone who will ride it out. Call him a flip flopper or whatever bullshit title you want to call it (I am talking to you media), a real man will admit when he is wrong or made a mistake and then go to fix it. Back to why it is relevant, it is news to you as a hacker because he represents technical views that are in line with what most hackers view as what the internet should be; maintaining status quo and keeping the internet free. I know without a doubt Obama would insure that the internet would continue to remain free and would not be corrupted by big business and allow them to manipulate the way traffic and data flows. That, above anything, should be the most important issue to you, as is to me. To my limited knowledge, he has promised to create a new IT oriented branch of the office if elected, which is once again relative to you. I have had quite a few drinks tonight (I know it is a wednesday but I will give the fact that I am in college as an excuse) but I hope my statement is coherent; the more you think about it, someone in politics, or more specifically the president, has almost the most significant impact to any hacker as almost any individual possible and that is why it is relevant to you. Cheers!
notdarkyet 18y ago
In response to all of our comments being heavily downmodded, (which I personally wish that the ability to mod was more integrated with the necessary requirement that a comment follow for the sake of conversation) I really hope that you could refute your point of view or why you so vehemently disagree rather than mod into the thread and conversation into oblivion so that no one else will see. I really do believe that some important points were addressed in the conversation in relation to the validity and relevance to the hacker community for the conversation so I would hope that rather than mod down to where no one will see the conversation you express your opposing opinion. In the end a refutation will do more than silencing the opposition. EDIT 1: Thanks to you all that have resurrected the comments in the thread (especially those that oppose the comments). It really would not bother me if every one in the HC community opposed those viewpoints, I am just glad to know that we could have a civilized conversation in the thread and that individuals will still be able to express their opinions in text rather than have the influence be based on votes. EDIT 2: The conversation has obviously went from negative to positive for quite a while now (which would come with the assumption that it is quite controversial and polar topic), but once again, please establish your opinions rather than vote to where no one will read the viewpoints and comments expressed.
JesseAldridge 18y ago
I agree. If people want to push their political views, I suggest doing it over here: http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/Who_is_going_to_be_the_next_President_of_the_United_States http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/Who_is_going_to_be_t...
notdarkyet 18y ago
At this point, my faith in this community is slowly being evaporated. Where I would normally look to this site as quite possibly the most objective source of information (from a entrepreneurial perspective) and a source of honest opinions and as a frequent internet observer (I really do place so much value on all of your comments and to my knowledge, almost all of them have had a significant impact of my life and my decisions), I am scared to what this community has become. As someone who followed digg and reddit from the early days, I transitioned to this site because I valued all of your opinions, which I believed to be honest. All of my submissions (all ask YC/HN) have been to consult the community on decisions that affect my life to an unbelievable extent. I really am just so confused as to what I said that has offended the community to result in such an extreme display of downmodding (including those that disagree with me). Please just explain yourselves and opinions rather than downmod all of the threads opinions. EDIT: As an indicator, my Karma has dropped roughly 20 points within the past hour or so, I just really would love to know what aspect of what I said that has made all of you to so passionately enforce such an action. Maybe I have not established relevancy to the hacker community as to why this story matters and that is fine (or maybe you all just disagree which is fine with me as well). I cannot reiterate enough, for my sake, please just let me know what I said that was so offensive. Please refute. EDIT 2: I just would also like to say that this comment has no relation to the one that has been associated with my comment (the one that has been placed below mine because the one it is associated with has been deleted). That comment goes as follows: Look, I'm an Obama supporter. It's just that as far as I see it, this sort of thing is better left to other venues.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- edw519 18y ago
  "this community is slowly being evaporated" No it's not. Have faith in pg and the rest of us. This stuff happens all the time and we survive just fine. How could you know this after only 28 days. "my Karma has dropped roughly 20 points within the past hour or so, I just really would love to know" You never will, so don't waste any mental energy worrying about it. That's just the way it goes. "confused as to what I said that has offended the community" You haven't "offended" the community. Some people just downvote without commenting. Once it gets going, sometimes it snowballs. Forget about it and move on. "All of my submissions (all ask YC/HN) have been to consult the community on decisions that affect my life to an unbelievable extent." Great! Keep it up and do your part. Forget about the other crap. I have noticed that discussions about what is "appropriate" get lots of upvotes ot lots of downvotes or both, without much logic. Hacker content threads, OTOH, are our bread and butter and are generally well received and appreciated. Stick with the latter.
Leon 18y ago
It is somewhat important to hackers what the future of tech policy in the United States will be. Net neutrality? FCC regulations on different parts of the spectrum? FCC regulations on ISP's? Funding on new internet backbones or litigation against the previous telecoms on their failure to implement high speed access with previous funding? Higher education funding and research grants? All of these are directly related to the production of new/better hackers or the ability of existing hackers/internet startups to reach people. While, yes, any other day this would certainly be off-topic, in our two party system when one party decides on its nominee for president of the United States, it is some-what important for hackers to know what the two possible outcomes of the future of Technology policy will be.
- bkovitz 18y ago
  Articles about net neutrality and other political issues of relevance to hacker entrepreneurs are certainly relevant to HN. General political stuff of the sort that's already saturating the media everywhere else is not.
TFrancis 18y ago
Democracy is the greatest hack.
chaostheory 18y ago
I think it's time for sites like YC News to implement an 'idea tribes/groups' feature in order to survive 'old age'. Site Moderators are only so effective as shown historically by Slashdot... Delicious does this pretty well (though the way they do it doesn't completely map to most social news sites) and Reddit has started doing this with its topics feature... Maybe YC News needs to implement something similar? Thoughts? All I know is even with the risk of missing some good posts, I do not want to see anything from the users that submitted and upmodded this post, and simply moderating this will only sweep the problem under the rug temporarily, and conversely the users that like this post will want to continue making posts like this in the future...

News? Sure. Hacker News? Not so much.

by icey 18y ago

News? Sure. Hacker News? Not so much.

I was about to say, word for word, the exact same thing. Had it typed out and everything. Then I had to check on dinner, came back, and got the unknown/expired link error. Needles to say, I'm in agreement.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

icey 18y ago
Look, I'm an Obama supporter. It's just that as far as I see it, this sort of thing is better left to other venues.
- TFrancis 18y ago
  Given the position of this article, it appears that the rest of the community disagrees.
  - icey 18y ago
    Well, we don't have a way to downvote it, so I wouldn't assume that to be the truth.
    - TFrancis 18y ago
      Even without the ability to downvote, doesn't the position of the article indicate that there isn't a better article?
      - bct 18y ago
        It indicates that that isn't an article with broader appeal. That's not the same thing as "better".
        TFrancis 18y ago
        I then argue that "better" as defined by the HN heuristic is exactly defined as an article with more points.
        hugh 18y ago
        The problem seems to be that people will occasionally reflexively use the upmod arrow on an article just to say "hooray for the sentiment expressed in the headline" rather than after carefully thinking about whether it's worthwhile. Examples include this article (I'm guessing that most of the upmodders were Obama supporters), the "congrats to pg on getting married" thread the other day, and the "happy birthday somebodyorother" thread a few weeks ago.
        bct 18y ago
        I'm more interested in my definition of better than the algorithm's.
        TFrancis 18y ago
        You didn't provide a definition of better.
        rms 18y ago
        ok I am going to play the Luttgenstein/Chomsky blah blah blah argument. you are arguing semantics that are reduced to arguments about differences in language. it is meaningless, mostly
        TFrancis 18y ago
        Pardon the brevity of my previous post. I'm sorry if it appears that I'm arguing for it's own sake. I only meant to indicate that we currently have an implemented definition of "better" between posts--the HN ranking algorithm. I believe that the burden of proof belongs to the party challenging the status quo to provide an alternative and then argue why the alternative is indeed the preferred system. During the debate over which ranking algorithm/definition is better where I believe the Luttgenstein/Chmosky argument is most applicable because we don't have a clearly agreed upon definition of what a better ranking algorithm is. However, until an alternative is provided, we cannot possibly reach and/or explore these semantic differences.

notdarkyet 18y ago

No it is not and you are correct in that assessment. Personally, Obama does not represent a good portion of my views in terms of policy, but what he does represent for me is a new wave in politics, a wave that is once again representative of the people rather than individual incentive and making decisions based on who is going to line their pockets. Anything to end corruption is better to me than someone who is going to promise to act within my set of views for what is best for this country and then do the opposite or what they want. My view, personally, is that government should act as a safety net rather than a guiding father figure. I tend to float towards more libertarian policies than anything, small government and as little intervention as possible (a view that can be considered almost the complete opposite side of the spectrum than Obama). My view is that this nation has grounding and worked for so many years to be a country of opportunity, therefore, the structure of government should reflect that ideal and anyone who is willing to work hard should be rewarded for it (no free gifts). What I do support from Obama are his values (or proposed and believed values) as a human being. Not his religious values or the garbage perpetrated by the media (ie. reverand Wright). He gives individuals a reason to believe that he is going to act on what is best for society and that enough might be what will make me forget about his views of government. Yes, he most likely will propose policy that is near opposite of what I believe and I will make that admission, but I hope that having a man with a sense of ethics will take this country down a path where someone with my sense of views and his could come to some sort of a compromise with what is best for this country. I would rather have that than the selfishness thats perpetuated this country since I have been alive. I would rather have a man who will admit when he is wrong and correct it than someone who will ride it out. Call him a flip flopper or whatever bullshit title you want to call it (I am talking to you media), a real man will admit when he is wrong or made a mistake and then go to fix it. Back to why it is relevant, it is news to you as a hacker because he represents technical views that are in line with what most hackers view as what the internet should be; maintaining status quo and keeping the internet free. I know without a doubt Obama would insure that the internet would continue to remain free and would not be corrupted by big business and allow them to manipulate the way traffic and data flows. That, above anything, should be the most important issue to you, as is to me. To my limited knowledge, he has promised to create a new IT oriented branch of the office if elected, which is once again relative to you. I have had quite a few drinks tonight (I know it is a wednesday but I will give the fact that I am in college as an excuse) but I hope my statement is coherent; the more you think about it, someone in politics, or more specifically the president, has almost the most significant impact to any hacker as almost any individual possible and that is why it is relevant to you. Cheers!

notdarkyet 18y ago

In response to all of our comments being heavily downmodded, (which I personally wish that the ability to mod was more integrated with the necessary requirement that a comment follow for the sake of conversation) I really hope that you could refute your point of view or why you so vehemently disagree rather than mod into the thread and conversation into oblivion so that no one else will see. I really do believe that some important points were addressed in the conversation in relation to the validity and relevance to the hacker community for the conversation so I would hope that rather than mod down to where no one will see the conversation you express your opposing opinion. In the end a refutation will do more than silencing the opposition. EDIT 1: Thanks to you all that have resurrected the comments in the thread (especially those that oppose the comments). It really would not bother me if every one in the HC community opposed those viewpoints, I am just glad to know that we could have a civilized conversation in the thread and that individuals will still be able to express their opinions in text rather than have the influence be based on votes. EDIT 2: The conversation has obviously went from negative to positive for quite a while now (which would come with the assumption that it is quite controversial and polar topic), but once again, please establish your opinions rather than vote to where no one will read the viewpoints and comments expressed.

JesseAldridge 18y ago

I agree. If people want to push their political views, I suggest doing it over here: http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/Who_is_going_to_be_the_next_President_of_the_United_States http://www.createdebate.com/debate/show/Who_is_going_to_be_t...

notdarkyet 18y ago

At this point, my faith in this community is slowly being evaporated. Where I would normally look to this site as quite possibly the most objective source of information (from a entrepreneurial perspective) and a source of honest opinions and as a frequent internet observer (I really do place so much value on all of your comments and to my knowledge, almost all of them have had a significant impact of my life and my decisions), I am scared to what this community has become. As someone who followed digg and reddit from the early days, I transitioned to this site because I valued all of your opinions, which I believed to be honest. All of my submissions (all ask YC/HN) have been to consult the community on decisions that affect my life to an unbelievable extent. I really am just so confused as to what I said that has offended the community to result in such an extreme display of downmodding (including those that disagree with me). Please just explain yourselves and opinions rather than downmod all of the threads opinions. EDIT: As an indicator, my Karma has dropped roughly 20 points within the past hour or so, I just really would love to know what aspect of what I said that has made all of you to so passionately enforce such an action. Maybe I have not established relevancy to the hacker community as to why this story matters and that is fine (or maybe you all just disagree which is fine with me as well). I cannot reiterate enough, for my sake, please just let me know what I said that was so offensive. Please refute. EDIT 2: I just would also like to say that this comment has no relation to the one that has been associated with my comment (the one that has been placed below mine because the one it is associated with has been deleted). That comment goes as follows: Look, I'm an Obama supporter. It's just that as far as I see it, this sort of thing is better left to other venues.

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
edw519 18y ago
"this community is slowly being evaporated" No it's not. Have faith in pg and the rest of us. This stuff happens all the time and we survive just fine. How could you know this after only 28 days. "my Karma has dropped roughly 20 points within the past hour or so, I just really would love to know" You never will, so don't waste any mental energy worrying about it. That's just the way it goes. "confused as to what I said that has offended the community" You haven't "offended" the community. Some people just downvote without commenting. Once it gets going, sometimes it snowballs. Forget about it and move on. "All of my submissions (all ask YC/HN) have been to consult the community on decisions that affect my life to an unbelievable extent." Great! Keep it up and do your part. Forget about the other crap. I have noticed that discussions about what is "appropriate" get lots of upvotes ot lots of downvotes or both, without much logic. Hacker content threads, OTOH, are our bread and butter and are generally well received and appreciated. Stick with the latter.

Leon 18y ago

It is somewhat important to hackers what the future of tech policy in the United States will be. Net neutrality? FCC regulations on different parts of the spectrum? FCC regulations on ISP's? Funding on new internet backbones or litigation against the previous telecoms on their failure to implement high speed access with previous funding? Higher education funding and research grants? All of these are directly related to the production of new/better hackers or the ability of existing hackers/internet startups to reach people. While, yes, any other day this would certainly be off-topic, in our two party system when one party decides on its nominee for president of the United States, it is some-what important for hackers to know what the two possible outcomes of the future of Technology policy will be.

bkovitz 18y ago
Articles about net neutrality and other political issues of relevance to hacker entrepreneurs are certainly relevant to HN. General political stuff of the sort that's already saturating the media everywhere else is not.

TFrancis 18y ago

Democracy is the greatest hack.

chaostheory 18y ago

I think it's time for sites like YC News to implement an 'idea tribes/groups' feature in order to survive 'old age'. Site Moderators are only so effective as shown historically by Slashdot... Delicious does this pretty well (though the way they do it doesn't completely map to most social news sites) and Reddit has started doing this with its topics feature... Maybe YC News needs to implement something similar? Thoughts? All I know is even with the risk of missing some good posts, I do not want to see anything from the users that submitted and upmodded this post, and simply moderating this will only sweep the problem under the rug temporarily, and conversely the users that like this post will want to continue making posts like this in the future...