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The site still feels more inclined toward political discussion than it used to be. There were the occasional explosions like when Chelsea Manning was arrested a
by rpiguy 7y ago
The site still feels more inclined toward political discussion than it used to be. There were the occasional explosions like when Chelsea Manning was arrested and when Schwartz committed suicide, but the site used to feel more technical... at least to me. I have no hard data.
I would love to see demographic data on users and how they have changed over time as well.
- mikekchar 7y agoYep, I totally agree. I actually dislike the content these days and have been much less engaged than in the past. But that's the way it goes. It doesn't surprise me that some people like it a lot better.
- mattrp 7y agoMore political for sure. And more nytimes, Bloomberg links that I am likely to have already read either directly or through other channels. And seriously, do we really need another link talking about how awesome Rust is?
- Dowwie 7y agoThe Rust phenomenon isn't unique. It happened with every other major breakthrough technology ever since Hacker News has achieved critical mass. We are going to be bombarded with whatever is leading change. New endeavors that aren't leading change fizzle out of existence from the front page.
- mattrp 7y agoYou’re right - I wrote that in jest. I was first to complain but I truly do like the content that makes it to hacker news and the way in which it is ranked. I would say 9 times of 10, I’m surprised to see what’s on the front page because it’s definitely not the mix of information I normally consume. It’s cool to see what people are doing and think about new frameworks like rust and clojure and even erlang.
- wglb 7y agoRemember the insane flurry of Erlang posts some while back? That had to be a record for flooding about one language.
- dang 7y ago> The site still feels more inclined toward political discussion than it used to be People have been saying that for 10 years or more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=208518 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=208518 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1934367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1934367 A bunch more here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869
- rpiguy 7y agoYes ten years ago is about when I first sensed a change and I figured others had pointed it out. I’ve been a lurker from almost the beginning. I still really appreciate this community even if it has changed. Change is normal.
- dang 7y agoI see it the other way around. Not changing for over 10 years (in this respect) is extraordinarily stable. When people complain about the site getting too political lately, by "lately" they do not mean a decade. Such perceptions of deterioration are distorted by things like recency bias and nostalgia bias. The events you mention were from 2010 and 2013. I don't think it was all that different before 2008, either—the toddlerhood if not infancy of this place—because the site was governed by pg's tastes and those didn't change. It's just that there needs to be a bootstrapping period before the usual complaining about how X is worse than it used to be. I'm being oversensitive though!
- non-entity 7y agoI wouldnt mind if the discussion didn't instantly devolve into garbage with posts being downvoted with no discussion, or straight up name calling. That being said, the mod teams seems to do a good job of cleaning thing up when they get too out of hand
- wglb 7y agoThe proper spelling of his name is Swartz.