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... and a thousand geeks cry "Noooo!" in unison. Why do so many people think that HN will be ruined if a few more people join? I've been reading HN a lot longe

by bobds 16y ago

... and a thousand geeks cry "Noooo!" in unison. Why do so many people think that HN will be ruined if a few more people join? I've been reading HN a lot longer than my account's age implies and I don't think the quality has changed. The only real problem if you ask me, is that with more people submitting stories, things will not stay long on the /newest page. In my opinion it's better to have 100 stories with 20 comments each, rather than 10 stories with 200 comments and the usual huge thread under the top comment.

stanmancan 16y ago
Historically it's happened on a couple of community driven sites, Digg being the best example. People submit stories, people vote stories, it's a very gameable system and it's ruined other communities. I loved Digg the first 6-12 months after it launched. The quality of the stories and community plummeted pretty quickly though. I've been reading HN for just over a year now and I think the qualities always been top notch, which is why I'm still around; but's only natural to fear HN succumbing to the same fate that other sites in a similar domain have.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  HN is not completely defenseless against the barbarian hordes that have been attacking geekdom since that September so many years ago. For one, it's not pretty. Barbarian hordes like flashy things and may get distracted by something else and just go away. It also has no password recovery mechanism, so, when they forget their passwords, they are locked out until they can create another user and that buys us some time before they can downvote. Unless they authenticate with another auth source, but you can't always win.
  - redthrowaway 16y ago
    HN is no more or less pretty than Reddit, and the general feeling around here is that Reddit's Eternal September happened sometime in the last year or two. HN won't last forever. Reddit was great when it started, then they achieved the growth they were looking for and it got diluted a bit. PG started what would become HN, and the early adopters migrated. As reddit becomes less useful for tech and programming news, or as a way to find cool new sites, more people will migrate over here. Then some people will get pissed at the requisite drop in quality, and will start a new place. All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      > All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again. Well, Peter, HN can't stay a kid forever.
    - allenbrunson 16y ago
      You are all acting as if the fate of news.yc is in your hands. It isn't! If anyone here proves that he is not a good actor, he will be ruthlessly pruned from the site. This happens to dozens of people every week. This is all handled behind the scenes by pg and the editors. That's the real reason this site has lasted as long as it has: pg and co are willing to be extremely ruthless about weeding out bad actors. That's the big difference. Other sites were more interested in growth, so they weren't as free to get rid of badly-behaved members. This idea that news.yc is doomed to follow in the path of all other discussion sites that came before it: no, it is not. Not so long as pg is willing to keep pruning bad actors.
      - barrkel 16y ago
        The flaw in your expectation is your assumption that communities decline due to bad actors. I think you're wrong. The decline comes from two other effects: regression to the mean, and decreasing overlap in shared interests and goals. People who followed PG's essays from the early days were pretty plugged in to tech startup culture, and the early community was focused around that. They were people who had a startup, or were contemplating doing one. Generally, they were smart, ambitious and technically astute. Over time, those traits regress to the mean, as people come upon the site based on more and more random hearsay, wade in and contribute. If they are marginally less smart or astute, they still aren't bad actors; but the group's average declines, and asymptotically approaches the population mean. And this more diverse population isn't as homogeneous. That affects the kinds of stories and comments that get voted up. It's only natural that stories and comments which appeal to the lowest common denominator will attract the most votes; it's that in the past, the lowest common denominator had a higher value, owing to the homogeneity.
protomyth 16y ago
I'm sure someone has codified a law that basically says "thing is cool when I discover it, but it is uncool when the next 1000 newbies behind me discover it". A really good example of this is this blog post: http://scobleizer.com/2010/12/22/an-industry-challenge-build-microsxsw-to-bring-back-intimacy-at-sxsw/ http://scobleizer.com/2010/12/22/an-industry-challenge-build... translation: it was cool when I started going, but now that all you "little people" are coming, it sucks.
rbanffy 16y ago
I am not sure if the moderation/flagging system can cope with a 10-fold increase in the number of noise posts.
lionhearted 16y ago
I think I've noticed three things. It's hard to say for sure, but I think these three are true - 1. Raw nastyness has gone up. Profanity, insults, and sarcasm in disagreement. HN was super civil 2-3 years ago. Now it's still far more civil than anywhere else, but gently declining. 2. Stupid arguments that agreed with the dominant view of a thread used to be left alone or even get downvoted. Now I see sometimes where a reasoned critique is at 1 point, but a response going, "How could you even think that? Everyone knows that isn't true" - proof by assertion type stuff - get voted up. 3. Also, very lately there's been a marked increase in the class warfare/social justice/inequality vibe filtering in. Whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on your views, but it was less like that a few years ago.
- ThomPete 16y ago
  Also more people seem to vote based on whether they agree with something rather than whether it adds to the conversation.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - tokenadult 16y ago
    Voting based on agreement has been going on since at least 1078 days ago (which is before when I registered as a user, after about a year of lurking beforehand). http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
- ErrantX 16y ago
  I've observed this too. But I'm not sure it is related to this '08 article (I joined about half a year after it "aired" BTW, so have no data point on how HN was before that). I think a lot of the stuff you highlight has happened in the last year - and accelerated in the last 6 months. Views are appearing to be less informed and commenting lot less jovial. We do seem to be getting more content on politics and religion now too (more than there used to be). (r.e. civility; I totally agree - I distinctly remember getting into a disagreement in my first month here and it was about the most polite argument I ever had :D Pretty sure we both converted each other in the end!)
adolfojp 16y ago
As a community grows in size it becomes more diverse. As it becomes more diverse it becomes a better representative of society in general. As a result websites that target a niche audience tend to shift to websites that target popular culture as they grow. HN is technology and startup oriented and is populated by many professionals in those fields. A popular HN will be populated by people who want broader topics and who are not experts in any of them. And less disciplined individuals tend to abuse the moderation system until it becomes nothing more than the voting system of a popularity contest. Reddit, for example, was a great place for discussing interesting topics a few years ago. Today it is a website for memes. And the technology topics are moderated not according to how interesting the submissions might be but according to how cool and popular they are. The eternal September is not a new phenomenon. And this isn't limited to websites. It happens to TV stations too. SciFi has wrestling, History has ancient aliens, and MTV stopped playing music videos a long time ago.

by bobds 16y ago

stanmancan 16y ago

Historically it's happened on a couple of community driven sites, Digg being the best example. People submit stories, people vote stories, it's a very gameable system and it's ruined other communities. I loved Digg the first 6-12 months after it launched. The quality of the stories and community plummeted pretty quickly though. I've been reading HN for just over a year now and I think the qualities always been top notch, which is why I'm still around; but's only natural to fear HN succumbing to the same fate that other sites in a similar domain have.

rbanffy 16y ago
HN is not completely defenseless against the barbarian hordes that have been attacking geekdom since that September so many years ago. For one, it's not pretty. Barbarian hordes like flashy things and may get distracted by something else and just go away. It also has no password recovery mechanism, so, when they forget their passwords, they are locked out until they can create another user and that buys us some time before they can downvote. Unless they authenticate with another auth source, but you can't always win.
- redthrowaway 16y ago
  HN is no more or less pretty than Reddit, and the general feeling around here is that Reddit's Eternal September happened sometime in the last year or two. HN won't last forever. Reddit was great when it started, then they achieved the growth they were looking for and it got diluted a bit. PG started what would become HN, and the early adopters migrated. As reddit becomes less useful for tech and programming news, or as a way to find cool new sites, more people will migrate over here. Then some people will get pissed at the requisite drop in quality, and will start a new place. All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    > All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again. Well, Peter, HN can't stay a kid forever.
  - allenbrunson 16y ago
    You are all acting as if the fate of news.yc is in your hands. It isn't! If anyone here proves that he is not a good actor, he will be ruthlessly pruned from the site. This happens to dozens of people every week. This is all handled behind the scenes by pg and the editors. That's the real reason this site has lasted as long as it has: pg and co are willing to be extremely ruthless about weeding out bad actors. That's the big difference. Other sites were more interested in growth, so they weren't as free to get rid of badly-behaved members. This idea that news.yc is doomed to follow in the path of all other discussion sites that came before it: no, it is not. Not so long as pg is willing to keep pruning bad actors.
    - barrkel 16y ago
      The flaw in your expectation is your assumption that communities decline due to bad actors. I think you're wrong. The decline comes from two other effects: regression to the mean, and decreasing overlap in shared interests and goals. People who followed PG's essays from the early days were pretty plugged in to tech startup culture, and the early community was focused around that. They were people who had a startup, or were contemplating doing one. Generally, they were smart, ambitious and technically astute. Over time, those traits regress to the mean, as people come upon the site based on more and more random hearsay, wade in and contribute. If they are marginally less smart or astute, they still aren't bad actors; but the group's average declines, and asymptotically approaches the population mean. And this more diverse population isn't as homogeneous. That affects the kinds of stories and comments that get voted up. It's only natural that stories and comments which appeal to the lowest common denominator will attract the most votes; it's that in the past, the lowest common denominator had a higher value, owing to the homogeneity.

protomyth 16y ago

I'm sure someone has codified a law that basically says "thing is cool when I discover it, but it is uncool when the next 1000 newbies behind me discover it". A really good example of this is this blog post: http://scobleizer.com/2010/12/22/an-industry-challenge-build-microsxsw-to-bring-back-intimacy-at-sxsw/ http://scobleizer.com/2010/12/22/an-industry-challenge-build... translation: it was cool when I started going, but now that all you "little people" are coming, it sucks.

rbanffy 16y ago

I am not sure if the moderation/flagging system can cope with a 10-fold increase in the number of noise posts.

lionhearted 16y ago

I think I've noticed three things. It's hard to say for sure, but I think these three are true - 1. Raw nastyness has gone up. Profanity, insults, and sarcasm in disagreement. HN was super civil 2-3 years ago. Now it's still far more civil than anywhere else, but gently declining. 2. Stupid arguments that agreed with the dominant view of a thread used to be left alone or even get downvoted. Now I see sometimes where a reasoned critique is at 1 point, but a response going, "How could you even think that? Everyone knows that isn't true" - proof by assertion type stuff - get voted up. 3. Also, very lately there's been a marked increase in the class warfare/social justice/inequality vibe filtering in. Whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on your views, but it was less like that a few years ago.

ThomPete 16y ago
Also more people seem to vote based on whether they agree with something rather than whether it adds to the conversation.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- tokenadult 16y ago
  Voting based on agreement has been going on since at least 1078 days ago (which is before when I registered as a user, after about a year of lurking beforehand). http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
ErrantX 16y ago
I've observed this too. But I'm not sure it is related to this '08 article (I joined about half a year after it "aired" BTW, so have no data point on how HN was before that). I think a lot of the stuff you highlight has happened in the last year - and accelerated in the last 6 months. Views are appearing to be less informed and commenting lot less jovial. We do seem to be getting more content on politics and religion now too (more than there used to be). (r.e. civility; I totally agree - I distinctly remember getting into a disagreement in my first month here and it was about the most polite argument I ever had :D Pretty sure we both converted each other in the end!)

adolfojp 16y ago

As a community grows in size it becomes more diverse. As it becomes more diverse it becomes a better representative of society in general. As a result websites that target a niche audience tend to shift to websites that target popular culture as they grow. HN is technology and startup oriented and is populated by many professionals in those fields. A popular HN will be populated by people who want broader topics and who are not experts in any of them. And less disciplined individuals tend to abuse the moderation system until it becomes nothing more than the voting system of a popularity contest. Reddit, for example, was a great place for discussing interesting topics a few years ago. Today it is a website for memes. And the technology topics are moderated not according to how interesting the submissions might be but according to how cool and popular they are. The eternal September is not a new phenomenon. And this isn't limited to websites. It happens to TV stations too. SciFi has wrestling, History has ancient aliens, and MTV stopped playing music videos a long time ago.