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I have the same misgivings in reaction to your comment as the siblings comments mention about gatekeeping... but at the same time, I agree with you. And I'm one

I have the same misgivings in reaction to your comment as the siblings comments mention about gatekeeping... but at the same time, I agree with you. And I'm one of the people you mention. Speaking solely for myself, your description of me, someone seeking smarter people than myself and mostly chiming in on political/business things, it is insightful and spot on. I don't contribute much, if any, to highly technical discussions, nor do I demonstrate my own expertise. I do have it (technical expertise), but I rarely see relevant times to bring it up, and when I do see those times it's usually better to stay silent or somebody else has already said what I wanted to better than I could. So I contribute more (not much; I resisted creating an account for many years, and now try to limit myself) to the generalized topics we can all share interest in. If stories on those topics weren't there, I wouldn't say anything. In fact, I could get those exact same stories elsewhere with accompanying forum. The only reason I prefer it here is because of the smarter people. Will that make HN more like reddit or <insert normie platform>? Yeah, probably, and maybe that's not great. In other words I'm near the epitome of the strawman you created, and I agree with you. I'll consider if my own participation can be modified to alleviate our shared concerns.

MathYouF 5y ago
Glad you were open to seeing what I'm talking about, and why it concerns me. I also feel I have been guilty of it, and have hesitated to comment in technical conversations as often for the same reasons as you. I've been trying to correct that in myself as well, seeking out more technical conversations where my statements can be clearly evaluated to be true or false based on technical merits, and thus valuable to anyone reading it. Unfortunately, a part of nurturing a certain type of community, is to make it slightly unapproachable to those you don't want in it. I think the very plain css of the site already does a great job of that, but I wonder if it's still not enough to curate the community long term.

MathYouF 5y ago

Glad you were open to seeing what I'm talking about, and why it concerns me. I also feel I have been guilty of it, and have hesitated to comment in technical conversations as often for the same reasons as you. I've been trying to correct that in myself as well, seeking out more technical conversations where my statements can be clearly evaluated to be true or false based on technical merits, and thus valuable to anyone reading it. Unfortunately, a part of nurturing a certain type of community, is to make it slightly unapproachable to those you don't want in it. I think the very plain css of the site already does a great job of that, but I wonder if it's still not enough to curate the community long term.