5 ms·

HN is what reddit used to be like when it first started. Links to interesting Tech, programming and science stories and high quality discussion compared to some

HN is what reddit used to be like when it first started. Links to interesting Tech, programming and science stories and high quality discussion compared to something like Digg. Thankfully HN hasnt dropped in quality on that front unlike reddit. Its still so good I dont even click on the link I click on comments to get a HN summary which gives me a pretty good idea if its worth reading or not. Most of the time the comments are even better and more informative.

sbayeta 5y ago
I suspect this is what most of us do
- slap_shot 5y ago
  > Thankfully HN hasnt dropped in quality on that front unlike reddit. I've heard these sorts of shots taken at Reddit since I started using it in 2011 (I was late to the game) and I'm fascinated by it. I use Reddit every day and am in constant awe of how it is populated with such a wide breadth of people with such a strong passion and expertise about virtually any subject I enjoy. Many times a week i type "reddit <some topic I'm curious about>" and the top threads/comments are almost always someone with better knowledge on that subject than anything else I can find on the internet. It's just funny how everyone's perception is different, but I think Reddit is a modern marvel.
  - aaronsimpson 5y ago
    This may just be my confirmation bias, but I started using Reddit in 2012 and that felt like the big heyday and the peak of the site. It had reached critical mass to be interesting, but the new UI design hadn't come yet and it still felt niche enough to have the weird, interesting corners.
    - forbiddenvoid 5y ago
      I think the sad reality may be that the majority of folks out there don't want niche, weird and interesting.
  - alickz 5y ago
    I like Reddit but I think you have to be very careful about trusting any information on it, it's a populist's wet dream. There have been multiple times on Reddit I saw a comment about something I personally had deep knowledge of, and was astounded at how inaccurate the comment was relative to the thousands of upvotes and dozens of awards it had. This has made me wary of comments relating to subjects I have zero expertise in, as I can't properly evaluate if they're correct and I can't trust the responses or upvotes because those might come from people with as little expertise in the subject as me. Since upvotes don't correlate with truthfulness, they only correlate with popularity, they're useless as a measurement of how accurate a comment is. This is usually exacerbated by how popular a given subreddit is, with smaller niche subreddits being better (in my experience). That said I do indeed go to Reddit first for most of my purchasing or entertainment decisions, just have to be careful to take any info there with a massive heaping of salt.
tgv 5y ago
Not having "sub-combinators" might have contributed to that, and the relentless moderation by dang, who has mildly reprimanded me too. I think it works very well indeed! Happy 15th!
- zzleeper 5y ago
  I always thought it was the opposite. That subreddits allowed the community to expand without catering to the lowest common denominator, and reddit would have fallen off the cliff faster without those.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    In my view Reddit and Twitter occupy the same rung with respect to discourse. There’s a lot of variation between the subreddits and between the various pockets of Twitter, but on average the lowest common denominator is not an inaccurate characterization of those communities.
    - jgwil2 5y ago
      I think that Reddit is a degree better than Twitter: it's still possible to find long, substantive discussions on Reddit, but the artificial length constraint on Twitter really pushes all users toward pithy "burns" and other toxic forms of discourse.
      - throwaway894345 5y ago
        As a counterpoint, Twitter "threads" are a thing and you can find a lot of good discourse on them. I don't know how I feel about the length constraint--part of me thinks that the people who for whom the constraint is a toxicity trap are going to be the same people who don't avail themselves of Reddit's lack of length constraint and thus come across as baity and otherwise toxic no matter the platform. Similarly, I think that Reddit optimizes for groupthink even more than Twitter does. Good luck having an insightful conversation in /r/pol or /r/conservative or even some technology subreddit. And mind, I think Twitter Inc is absolutely awful and Twitter is a societal ill. I just don't perceive a significant degree of difference between it and Reddit with respect to discourse.
berkut 5y ago
Unfortunately, I'm going to have to disagree... Things aren't that bad, but I've definitely noticed a lot more cases of downvoting of "against the grain" comments or opinions with often very few responses in the last couple of years. Previously, I rarely noticed heavily downvoted comments, and in the cases they were, there were almost always reply comments explaining the opposite side, leading to IMO much better discourse and discussion.
- larrik 5y ago
  Maybe, but 5-10 years ago Apple-bashing was a karma death sentence (never guess how I learned that). Now it seems to be more of an active discussion (mostly due to the MBP keyboard situation I guess?).
  - rubatuga 5y ago
    Damn that used to be such a big deal a few years ago. You don’t see it anymore.
  - fouc 5y ago
    When I see a lot of downvotes I usually ask myself "what do they know that I don't?" I would assume some portion of downvotes are due to a knowledge disparity. And if there's a lot of downvotes against my comment, then there's a chance I'm missing some key knowledge.
  - modeless 5y ago
    Big Tech bashing is in fashion, is that really a surprise? It's totally mainstream now. That doesn't mean HN is more accepting of alternative viewpoints in general. Maybe even the opposite.
- Covzire 5y ago
  I've only been browsing here for about 10 of the 15 years, but I remember a time when the discussions closely matched what I and the public at large could discuss in private without fear. But there has been a chilling effect in recent years where more and more topics become verboten and someone will get downvoted, at a minimum, for even bringing them up. Interesting topics and child threads go missing on the regular. We're even at a point now where certain corporate press releases cannot even be questioned at all, despite the same corporations being stuck with heavy fines for similar past behavior they're being accused of now. I still like HN for the purely technical aspects, but I don't know anyone who still views it as a place where complex ideas that affect society can be discussed anymore.
slingnow 5y ago
> HN is what reddit used to be like when it first started. That's exactly the problem -- HN is now reddit-lite.
cakeman 5y ago
I have to agree with berkut. I had to stop using a previous hn account because it was so incredibly frustrating when people would downvote me with no explanation. I would cite my comments with reputable sources but that never helped. It was enough to prevent me from contributing to the discussion until recently. Certain beliefs or opinions in the minority are not very well tolderated here. It's still certainly better than other sites, but from my perspective it is slowly sliding downwards. If I do post, it likely would not be anything remotely controversial.
- sph 5y ago
  I don't blame HN, I blame the invention of the downvote button. I find it easier to hold a slightly controversial opinion here than it has ever been possible on Reddit, especially the programming and tech subreddits which are very low quality in general. The downvote button is awful, but why is it surprising that controversial opinions are downvoted? Being downvoted is the proof the opinion is controversial. It would be better if people weren't cancelled because they go against the grain, sure, but we don't live in a perfect utopia of perfectly rational beings.
  - kshacker 5y ago
    Talking of Reddit downvoted, I am not sure it is that bad. I have been downvoted to hell and I have downvoted. But my observation is that downvoted comments get hidden quickly so only the truly extreme comments are downvoted big or only the true believers go and find comments to downvote. Net net it happens but it is easier to get a 100 votes than to lose them and I think it may be easier to get 1000 votes than to lose 1000.
    - sph 5y ago
      Fair enough, the problem with Reddit downvotes is dwarfed by the fact that Reddit's "etiquette" is to promote witty and sharp one liners, compared to deep and thoughtful comments, and it is the opposite of HN, where you can have the witty but shallow takedowns but the amount of thoughtful comments is above any other discussion forum this size.
sillysaurusx 5y ago
I guess I'll chime in and say that I, too, have noticed more downvotes when I wouldn't normally predict them. Unlike the other commenters, I'm not worried about it. It's just a sign of growth and HN going mainstream. The mods keep everyone on a tight leash, so I think the content will remain good. It is a bit frustrating to post something that feels high quality but people disagree. But that's the price you pay for not being perfect to everyone all the time. (You see? It's impossible.) So don't let it bug you.
laumars 5y ago
The quality on HN has dropped massively in the last 5 years. It’s still better than Reddit but it’s definitely not where it once was. I also think the peer moderation on here is broken. Again, it’s better than Reddit but I still think HN can improve things. I have a few ideas on how that could work but I don’t think there’s any incentive to change the status quo (and I sympathise with why too).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
UI_at_80x24 5y ago
I've always thought HN was more like the spiritual successor to Slashdot then (most of) Reddit. On /. it was COMMON to be participating in a discussion about (for example) a camera problem on one of NASAs' probes, and very soon you would discover that the actual people from NASA that were working on it were in the forum talking about what they were actually doing and getting to the core issues rather then the press-release fluff. If there was a science/tech story you could almost guarantee that the authors of the paper themselves would show up, and all of a sudden you would get 10PHD's from different fields all "working together". There was another thread that I remember a bit better because I was involved in it. Somebody had an old/obscure bit of computer hardware that was last used in a 386. (A tape-drive backup that used the floppy-controller to read/write data to the drive.) The person was desperate to get a copy of his thesis off of the drive, but there was a hardware failure on both the drive and the old PC. Well in the thread one of the old engineers that had designed the drive at his old company chimed and said he had the part that was broken and would ship it out to him. Then another person offered to send a USB to Floppy controller so that his "new PC" (sans floppy interface) would be able to work. THEN the tech director of a major backup company (software) offered his labs to have the the whole PC & tape drive shipped to their headquarters where the lab would get the files off the drive for free because "I want my team to have the chance to train on this, and learn how to restore it all." In the end it was a happy story for the end-user. But I see a similar gathering of the minds on HN as I once did on Slashdot. My /. ID was 5 digits.... The internet was different back then, but it's nice to see that people can still be the same.

sbayeta 5y ago

I suspect this is what most of us do

slap_shot 5y ago
> Thankfully HN hasnt dropped in quality on that front unlike reddit. I've heard these sorts of shots taken at Reddit since I started using it in 2011 (I was late to the game) and I'm fascinated by it. I use Reddit every day and am in constant awe of how it is populated with such a wide breadth of people with such a strong passion and expertise about virtually any subject I enjoy. Many times a week i type "reddit <some topic I'm curious about>" and the top threads/comments are almost always someone with better knowledge on that subject than anything else I can find on the internet. It's just funny how everyone's perception is different, but I think Reddit is a modern marvel.
- aaronsimpson 5y ago
  This may just be my confirmation bias, but I started using Reddit in 2012 and that felt like the big heyday and the peak of the site. It had reached critical mass to be interesting, but the new UI design hadn't come yet and it still felt niche enough to have the weird, interesting corners.
  - forbiddenvoid 5y ago
    I think the sad reality may be that the majority of folks out there don't want niche, weird and interesting.
- alickz 5y ago
  I like Reddit but I think you have to be very careful about trusting any information on it, it's a populist's wet dream. There have been multiple times on Reddit I saw a comment about something I personally had deep knowledge of, and was astounded at how inaccurate the comment was relative to the thousands of upvotes and dozens of awards it had. This has made me wary of comments relating to subjects I have zero expertise in, as I can't properly evaluate if they're correct and I can't trust the responses or upvotes because those might come from people with as little expertise in the subject as me. Since upvotes don't correlate with truthfulness, they only correlate with popularity, they're useless as a measurement of how accurate a comment is. This is usually exacerbated by how popular a given subreddit is, with smaller niche subreddits being better (in my experience). That said I do indeed go to Reddit first for most of my purchasing or entertainment decisions, just have to be careful to take any info there with a massive heaping of salt.

tgv 5y ago

Not having "sub-combinators" might have contributed to that, and the relentless moderation by dang, who has mildly reprimanded me too. I think it works very well indeed! Happy 15th!

zzleeper 5y ago
I always thought it was the opposite. That subreddits allowed the community to expand without catering to the lowest common denominator, and reddit would have fallen off the cliff faster without those.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  In my view Reddit and Twitter occupy the same rung with respect to discourse. There’s a lot of variation between the subreddits and between the various pockets of Twitter, but on average the lowest common denominator is not an inaccurate characterization of those communities.
  - jgwil2 5y ago
    I think that Reddit is a degree better than Twitter: it's still possible to find long, substantive discussions on Reddit, but the artificial length constraint on Twitter really pushes all users toward pithy "burns" and other toxic forms of discourse.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      As a counterpoint, Twitter "threads" are a thing and you can find a lot of good discourse on them. I don't know how I feel about the length constraint--part of me thinks that the people who for whom the constraint is a toxicity trap are going to be the same people who don't avail themselves of Reddit's lack of length constraint and thus come across as baity and otherwise toxic no matter the platform. Similarly, I think that Reddit optimizes for groupthink even more than Twitter does. Good luck having an insightful conversation in /r/pol or /r/conservative or even some technology subreddit. And mind, I think Twitter Inc is absolutely awful and Twitter is a societal ill. I just don't perceive a significant degree of difference between it and Reddit with respect to discourse.

berkut 5y ago

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to disagree... Things aren't that bad, but I've definitely noticed a lot more cases of downvoting of "against the grain" comments or opinions with often very few responses in the last couple of years. Previously, I rarely noticed heavily downvoted comments, and in the cases they were, there were almost always reply comments explaining the opposite side, leading to IMO much better discourse and discussion.

larrik 5y ago
Maybe, but 5-10 years ago Apple-bashing was a karma death sentence (never guess how I learned that). Now it seems to be more of an active discussion (mostly due to the MBP keyboard situation I guess?).
- rubatuga 5y ago
  Damn that used to be such a big deal a few years ago. You don’t see it anymore.
- fouc 5y ago
  When I see a lot of downvotes I usually ask myself "what do they know that I don't?" I would assume some portion of downvotes are due to a knowledge disparity. And if there's a lot of downvotes against my comment, then there's a chance I'm missing some key knowledge.
- modeless 5y ago
  Big Tech bashing is in fashion, is that really a surprise? It's totally mainstream now. That doesn't mean HN is more accepting of alternative viewpoints in general. Maybe even the opposite.
Covzire 5y ago
I've only been browsing here for about 10 of the 15 years, but I remember a time when the discussions closely matched what I and the public at large could discuss in private without fear. But there has been a chilling effect in recent years where more and more topics become verboten and someone will get downvoted, at a minimum, for even bringing them up. Interesting topics and child threads go missing on the regular. We're even at a point now where certain corporate press releases cannot even be questioned at all, despite the same corporations being stuck with heavy fines for similar past behavior they're being accused of now. I still like HN for the purely technical aspects, but I don't know anyone who still views it as a place where complex ideas that affect society can be discussed anymore.

slingnow 5y ago

> HN is what reddit used to be like when it first started. That's exactly the problem -- HN is now reddit-lite.

cakeman 5y ago

I have to agree with berkut. I had to stop using a previous hn account because it was so incredibly frustrating when people would downvote me with no explanation. I would cite my comments with reputable sources but that never helped. It was enough to prevent me from contributing to the discussion until recently. Certain beliefs or opinions in the minority are not very well tolderated here. It's still certainly better than other sites, but from my perspective it is slowly sliding downwards. If I do post, it likely would not be anything remotely controversial.

sph 5y ago
I don't blame HN, I blame the invention of the downvote button. I find it easier to hold a slightly controversial opinion here than it has ever been possible on Reddit, especially the programming and tech subreddits which are very low quality in general. The downvote button is awful, but why is it surprising that controversial opinions are downvoted? Being downvoted is the proof the opinion is controversial. It would be better if people weren't cancelled because they go against the grain, sure, but we don't live in a perfect utopia of perfectly rational beings.
- kshacker 5y ago
  Talking of Reddit downvoted, I am not sure it is that bad. I have been downvoted to hell and I have downvoted. But my observation is that downvoted comments get hidden quickly so only the truly extreme comments are downvoted big or only the true believers go and find comments to downvote. Net net it happens but it is easier to get a 100 votes than to lose them and I think it may be easier to get 1000 votes than to lose 1000.
  - sph 5y ago
    Fair enough, the problem with Reddit downvotes is dwarfed by the fact that Reddit's "etiquette" is to promote witty and sharp one liners, compared to deep and thoughtful comments, and it is the opposite of HN, where you can have the witty but shallow takedowns but the amount of thoughtful comments is above any other discussion forum this size.

sillysaurusx 5y ago

I guess I'll chime in and say that I, too, have noticed more downvotes when I wouldn't normally predict them. Unlike the other commenters, I'm not worried about it. It's just a sign of growth and HN going mainstream. The mods keep everyone on a tight leash, so I think the content will remain good. It is a bit frustrating to post something that feels high quality but people disagree. But that's the price you pay for not being perfect to everyone all the time. (You see? It's impossible.) So don't let it bug you.

laumars 5y ago

The quality on HN has dropped massively in the last 5 years. It’s still better than Reddit but it’s definitely not where it once was. I also think the peer moderation on here is broken. Again, it’s better than Reddit but I still think HN can improve things. I have a few ideas on how that could work but I don’t think there’s any incentive to change the status quo (and I sympathise with why too).

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

UI_at_80x24 5y ago

I've always thought HN was more like the spiritual successor to Slashdot then (most of) Reddit. On /. it was COMMON to be participating in a discussion about (for example) a camera problem on one of NASAs' probes, and very soon you would discover that the actual people from NASA that were working on it were in the forum talking about what they were actually doing and getting to the core issues rather then the press-release fluff. If there was a science/tech story you could almost guarantee that the authors of the paper themselves would show up, and all of a sudden you would get 10PHD's from different fields all "working together". There was another thread that I remember a bit better because I was involved in it. Somebody had an old/obscure bit of computer hardware that was last used in a 386. (A tape-drive backup that used the floppy-controller to read/write data to the drive.) The person was desperate to get a copy of his thesis off of the drive, but there was a hardware failure on both the drive and the old PC. Well in the thread one of the old engineers that had designed the drive at his old company chimed and said he had the part that was broken and would ship it out to him. Then another person offered to send a USB to Floppy controller so that his "new PC" (sans floppy interface) would be able to work. THEN the tech director of a major backup company (software) offered his labs to have the the whole PC & tape drive shipped to their headquarters where the lab would get the files off the drive for free because "I want my team to have the chance to train on this, and learn how to restore it all." In the end it was a happy story for the end-user. But I see a similar gathering of the minds on HN as I once did on Slashdot. My /. ID was 5 digits.... The internet was different back then, but it's nice to see that people can still be the same.