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Ask HN: Why is Hacker News so much more successful than Slashdot?

• nextos 5y ago
  Probably because HN has no direct commercial interests. Just keeping a good community. HN has also learned from Usenet's, Slashdot's and Reddit's issues, e.g. how to avoid the eternal September effect.
  • bsilvereagle 5y ago
    I think HN does have a direct commercial interest - provide a community for YCombinator companies to promote to and hire from. YCombinator companies have access to special post types no one else has access to. Additionally there’s a paid moderation team to keep post (check out /pool) and comment quality high.
    • version_five 5y ago
      You are correct. A better way to say it might be that HN's commercial interests are better aligned with the interests of its readers. Both favor a high quality discussion. That's not necessarily true when you have ad revenue as a forcing function as with later slashdot.
• fortran77 5y ago
  How are you measuring "successful?"
  • tentacleuno 5y ago
    Successful as in terms of how many people bother with it, and the overall quality of the comments on posts.
• t-3 5y ago
• version_five 5y ago
  Slashdot had a strong community and good stewardship when it started. Eventually it got bought (and I think changed hands many times) and became a thin commercial shell of what it once was. In the mid 2000s when I used to read it, there were some (many) good technical discussions that would be similar to what you would see here. The two sites are just different places on their arcs. Check back on HN in 20 years. To add in response to the post, there is clearly a sweet spot of how many users a site has. At the beginning, fewer genuinely interested people can work, and it can get better as the number grows and more people contribute. At some point, you have too many people, and the combination of eternal September effect plus not being able to please everyone plus trolls and people looking to get upset about something means the quality goes down (that's where a lot of reddit is I guess). Then when numbers go down again, a lot of the quality users leave and you're left with the trolls etc. so that even if active users is higher than at the beginning, the quality is gone. That's where slashdot is.
  • SkyMarshal 5y ago
    > Check back on HN in 20 years. I'm sure the time period matters, rather whether it's still owned and stewarded by YCombinator, with someone like Dang actively moderating it.
  • native_samples 5y ago
    I think there might be a simpler explanation even than that - I suspect HN took over from Slashdot simply because it has a rich corporate backer, thus doesn't really have to make ends meet using banner ads. Slashdot did for a while too (VA Linux) but eventually the gravy train ended. Banner ads really make the experience worse, and they don't work well on sites targeted at geeks due to rampant ad blocking. Lacking any form of banner ads probably also contributed to allowing the HN UI to be extremely dense, so the throughput of topics can be higher. Technical people like density, fast loading, and relative lack of ads. The heydey of Slashdot was when it was itself in its 'startup phase' with Rob Malda leading the charge from the front, and back then it was great. Complex and sophisticated technical discussion, as well as other topics. Arguably way less politics than HN, though maybe more open source-oriented politics. Not many ads. Useful-ish summaries. Frankly the question why HN is more "successful" than Slashdot rankles somewhat because I feel like it's maybe not really more successful, depending on what you define the goals of such a site to be. To me it's just different. For example, Slashdot threads did a great job of mixing discussion and entertainment. They made me laugh, they made me cry, they taught me a hell of a lot about UNIX and programming and often they did all these things simultaneously. Some people don't like entertaining comments but Slashcode gave people great UI controls so you could hide them if you didn't like them. In practice, I found they made discussions way more enjoyable to read. In contrast, HN basically just bans entertaining comments. It's a crude approach. Slashdot also pioneered a lot of ideas and tech that made very big discussions work. Back then sites got "slashdotted" because Slashdot scaled far better than many of the sites being discussed. Contrast this with HN, which can't really handle threads of more than 500 posts before the UI breaks and around 2000 posts, the site itself starts to break. Finally, frankly, Slashdot moderation was way less frustrating than HN's can be. HN claims to a high minded search for intellectual curiousity, or some such. DanG makes it work, more or less. But absolutely nothing is formalized in any way. How would you replace Dan? The principles which are claimed to be enforced are sufficiently vague and inconsistent there's no way you could ever scale the model up. Slashdot, for all its faults, provided a crisp and actually formalized moderation system that tried to reflect the priorities of the user base rather than Malda himself. The current site is a shadow of its former self due to neglect and being out-competed by other sites that were able to keep on the VC train longer, but the core ideas of the site worked. Honestly I miss it sometimes.
• Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  While they both target the tech audience, they focus on different parts of it. Slashdot attracts a lot more of the detail focused folks who are implementing tech "in the trenches" but have a greater tendency to obsess over minor details (often very important to implementation). The quite visible scoring system tends reward hive thinking and a sense of self-righteousness. Places like HN, consciously or not, appear to have learned from the worst of Slashdot's forced consensus model and made adjustments to weaken that tendency. Of course it still happens, just look at how the lab leak theory was handled here. HN is still quite susceptible to hive thinking and resulting poor moderating (sorry Dang, but you did fuck you there, hope you learned from it) but it is nothing on the scale of places like Slashdot. The above is in addition to all of the meta problems the site has had with change of ownership, management, catering the advertisers, etc.
• raverbashing 5y ago
  I think in a way Slashdot is still a "Web 1.0" site. The way it works was more adapted to the way of thinking of the time Of course now the users are completely different from the time it started, and the level of discussions there is much shallower than what it was let's say, 15 yrs. ago.
• h2odragon 5y ago
  Slashdot was great before user accounts. The comment scoring put the final nails in. It took a while to die after that but the screaming and thumping were pretty good indicators of where it was headed.
  • Froedlich 5y ago
    Scoring attracts people who try to game the score system. Relevant content usually loses out in the competition for scores.
• tempnow987 5y ago
  I was an early low user-id user on slashdot (friends and family IPO for those that remember those days). The key for me is are folks willing to have a conversation and does the site support that. The ideological people (apple is evil, masks don't work (now turned into they do work), the lab leak theory is misinformation (now somewhere in between?), a fair bit of anti-racism stuff) can really drown out the conversation. When a site gets more popular that seems to happen? Someone is definitely keeping some of the politics out of here which is a relief.
• nabaraz 5y ago
  I think people get bored with a platform and move onto next. Examples - Slashdot -> Digg -> Reddit. Hi5 -> Facebook -> Tiktok. There'll eventually be "new HN".
  • kelseyfrog 5y ago
    There already is
    • tentacleuno 5y ago
      What's the new Hacker News, if you don't mind me asking?
      • kelseyfrog 5y ago
        Sorry, I really wish I could but I've seen too many small good communities eventually turn into large bad ones.
        • gitgud 5y ago
          Do you mean https://lobste.rs/ https://lobste.rs/ ?
        • tentacleuno 5y ago
          Why post the comment if you're not open to linking the website, then?
• p0d 5y ago
  HN is well moderated however I am getting bored with questions such as "Why am I not more successful?" "How do I make money fast?" "Tell me your ideas?" (so I can be successful and make money fast)
  • ffhhj 5y ago
    Also there is a daily "don't know what to do with my life" with the same two responses: get diagnosed and swallow this pill.
  • Aisen8010 5y ago
    The many topics about Rust are annoying too. The activists and fanboys turn the discussions tiresome.
  • porcoda 5y ago
    I like lobste.rs as an alternative that stays technical and has less of the fluff that HN attracts. Plus with their tagging scheme, I can just hide all of the junk that I could care less about by default.
  • tcbawo 5y ago
    I enjoy the non-technical topics as much as the next person. But the quality of commentary degrades quickly. We all know there are lots of smart people on this forum. But, I’m not certain that many of these users realize how confidently ignorant they sound on non-technical topics such as politics, economics, and medicine.
    • lost_soul 5y ago
      I've seen the term "pedantic" frequently used.
      • tomcam 5y ago
        Actually the correct usage here is “phedantic”, from the Latin “Phedantus”, meaning… Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
• screye 5y ago
  > Hacker News has so many people on it everyday, which makes me wonder why Slashdot fails in comparison. I also hear that the community at Slashdot is less than pleasant, but I'm not sure as to the validity of those claims. > Why is Hacker News so successful while Slashdot has become a relic of internet history? Dang, ruthless moderation and community effects. People underestimate the degree to which peer comments encourage and discourage behaviors in the rest of the participating population. Civility and on-topic-ness are central values of hacker news. The top 5% most active users religiously follow this, and this establishes a clear personality for the platform. This implicitly discourages new users from contributing in a way that strays from those values. There are 2 possible events where this system goes haywire. Slow takeover and viral events. Slow deterioration happens through complacency. Viral events are when there is an overnight migration of new users to your platform, replacing your culture wholesale. Dang's remarkably consistent culture reminders curb the slow deterioration. For the 2nd point, HN has likely never had a major viral event, but culture war threads are often locked quickly and deprioritized. HN is the way it is cause of painstaking effort to keep it the way it is. Don't take it for granted. I try my best to be an honest participant. It is one of the few places that still remind of the old internet. I'm willing to be a obedient child if that means it can stay that way.
  • dorianmariefr 5y ago
    At least a few years ago (maybe 5 or 6 at least) there was a limit on the number of new users per day/hour. I remember coming sometimes from Reddit to Hacker News and not being able to sign up
  • chefandy 5y ago
    I figured I'd check out Slashdot after a decade-plus long hiatus... clicked on a comment section to be greeted by a pages-long scrolling message with some QAnon drivel and dozens of huge ascii swastikas. Flagged it. Never got taken down. Same message in damn near every other story on there. Ok... bye. It's not like they're just being inundated and not able to respond— that site is so low-volume they could hire a task rabbit for $5 every day to go through and delete all of the swastikas and it would drastically less off-putting. Or maybe just require logins? No allow monospaced text in posts? Not sure what signals you'd need to realize your formerly excellent site is a giant moldering dumpster and you should just throw archives from the first 15 years somewhere and call it a day— but I'm pretty confident they were just ignoring those signals like 10 years ago.
• spacemanmatt 5y ago
  Is it even fair to say they have similar goals such that relative success could be compared? I'm not convinced this makes sense.
• tpmx 5y ago
  HN didn't kill Slashdot - it was Digg. The chain is for practical purposes: Usenet -> Slashdot -> Digg > Reddit -> HN (Yes, I know that HN predates reddit. Talking about the where programmers hang out, though.)
• mancerayder 5y ago
  Slashdot always struck me as snarkier and snippier and sarcastic compared to HN. There were some pure tech topics (my interest was in the Linuxy and systemsy stuff)... but I remember the snark. However it's been so long my memory might be tainted.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• liketochill 5y ago
  One of the things I got tired of was the same jokes always upvoted to +5 funny, whereas tired memes are discouraged here.
  • Agingcoder 5y ago
    At the same time, HN is quite distinctly not funny, with jokes being so exceedingly rare that they never even get the chance to turn into a meme. Sometimes, when I read discussions on HN, I wonder whether a little bit of humor might help from time to time (I know it's difficult in writing). Slashdot was a little bit messy,and less obsessed with facts and technical accuracy, and with being civil and polite, but it was also, well, more human I think. And being a bit messy is ok, as long as most people recognize it (including the people messing about ) and mark things as such for those who don't (the funny, flamebait, etc tags).
    • dimator 5y ago
      I never reflected on that until you mentioned it. It seems even when someone does attempt a joke here, I always wonder why the comment hasn't been down voted away. It's just not that venue, I guess. Which is a shame, because smart folks are often some of the funniest.
• twox2 5y ago
  The interface is MUCH better for one.
• westcort 5y ago
  It probably comes down to quality moderation.
• badcarbine 5y ago
  I honestly don't think it's a relic, it's a staple at this point. Yeah it's been around a while, but slashdot is doing much better than you're assuming.
• wizzerking 5y ago
  wider range of subject matter ? Maybe us nerds/tech heads like other subjects ? Could also be the comments, but I don't comment very often and rarely read the comments except to be sure I am not repeating what was already there
• themadturk 5y ago
  It's not quite the same (not a hacker hangout, as such) but another good community is Metafilter. Not only do they moderate relentlessly, but there's a charge $5 to join...just enough friction to make the trolls think twice.
  • tomcam 5y ago
    I would happily pay the five dollars but their hostility to people with different politics makes it impossible for me to enjoy the community. Nothing wrong with that, it’s just not for me. On this site, I still feel greatly outnumbered, but they are infinitely more polite. And I would pay for this site in a heartbeat.
• ddaalluu2 5y ago
  TBH HN is a milder Reddit but it flows on the same river. Whenever you create an unpopular post your karma goes down. I have no adblocked the karma display because I will not be judged for my posts. Should I get shadow banned I'll create a new account. Why HN? Being an old Isonews member I like the orange. And even if the quality has degraded there are still some interesting posts here. I'm also not a "slashdot" I'm a "hacker", well I don't call myself hacker but commonly hacker is synonymous for creator, developer, entrepreneur. Slashdot never mattered in my world. The internet is a tool, a means to and end, not the center of my life. I don't even remember when I first stumbled upon HN. Was it on Google+? I miss Google+ and the spirit and people it had. I felt right at home. Unlike Facebook where is never really fit in. A platform for consumers and their producers but more consumers who have no clue about the creative spirit. How I despise Facebook. Then Google+ became more like it instead of continuing with doing its own thing. The final UI changes made it as terrible as Facebook. The post was the main attraction and comments and discussions were no longer wanted. And when it died there was Reddit which was and still is the worst Troll-infested... platform of stupid. And there was HN, which I always viewed as being too much ivory tower/first world problems, but compared it has the most interesting topics. Twitter then is a platform for the permanently "how dare you" crowd. Someone always has something to bitch about. And while many seem to like it, I never could, smartphone stupidity. And HN then, old school, low effort design. Not the best input methods. But interesting enough and more positive than reading mainstream news, which in the last 2 years and nowadays especially is unbearable. That's also why I strongly react when I see a propaganda post for either side of the war, which doesn't really concern me. Idc about it. It's all lies anyway. What's the relevance for a IT tech news site? None. Ok if it gets IT techy but a ship sinking? idgaf. If you ask me, the Ukraine is being used so the "west" can sell weapons. 1000 million € loan and more from Germany alone... anyhow not on topic. HN without karma would be an improvement. I will not change my ways or truth just because someone with a larger pot thinks they have more power or the right to judge. Why is there no Google+ replacement? A social network for devs, artists, businessmen, but not big businesses, where you can stay up to date on the latest in tech and directly talk to people without having to "friend" them and where you're not judged and censored via "karma". Not owned by big tech. Where the focus in on discussion and meeting people and not POST BIG comment small but all equal.
• xony 5y ago
• neverheardit 5y ago
• rramadass 5y ago
  Simple; The Page layouts. There is nothing else other than relevant content and the density of information per page is very high. Hence no distractions.
  • fatnoah 5y ago
    This is it for me. I find that I can easily skim and read threads on HN, plus the actual content takes up the vast majority of the screen. On Slashdot (and maybe I'm doing it wrong), less that 50% of the screen is actual content, and I have to constantly click to open comments deeper in threads.
• paulcole 5y ago
  Hacker News is a marketing campaign for a VC fund. Slashdot is a business. Different motivations give different options and lead to different outcomes. Personally I find HN a worse community because the motives are hidden/glossed over.
  • tomcam 5y ago
    The motives aren’t hidden. They are indeed glossed over. But are you telling me that alone makes it a worse community? In other words, if they were explicit you would regard this site as the better one? To me HN is an order of magnitude better than Slashdot but of course your mileage obviously varies.
    • paulcole 5y ago
      Yeah, I think the blindness to what this “community” is makes it insidiously toxic in a way that SlashDot isn’t.
• sumedh 5y ago
  I find the comments in Slashdot very confusing so I never opened the site. I checked it right now and I still find the comments confusing, HN on the other is easy to understand.
• nootropicat 5y ago
  I think slashdot is simply too old and younger millennials+zoomers went elsewhere. I remember reading it as a teenager for news, but felt completely disconnected from the community and never even created an account. Jokes about Micro$oft from the 90s. My subjective impression was that the average age of users was about 40. Similar fate awaits HN eventually. I don't see alpha gen coming here, the culture is going to feel too old - like mingling with their parents
  • tomcam 5y ago
    I like hearing your perspective. Mine is different. My filter is that this format works well because there will always be a use for sites with a fairly high information density, and with high quality commenting.
• zaphirplane 5y ago
  First post
• srvmshr 5y ago
  1. HN community typically frowns on fluff, jokes and loose comments. Its a good thing. The discussion stays to the point. 2. No commercial algorithm boosting a topic over other. Plain upvoting. This helps a lot. It becomes matter of the community's collective choice. 3. Unlike reddit for e.g. the mob down voting is reduced to an extent because the hard limit is -3. (Fun fact: I had reddit account a while ago where a popular sub's mod got personal and his cronies downvoted me everywhere. I was shadowbanned on several of the subs. My max karma drops was ~300-400 points in a single day. It was due to a thread which wasn't even fluff or lame/ funny/ sarcastic, but because I had questioned the moderation morals. The post was sick and hurtful & the crowd gets murderous. If slashdot is snarky, reddit is outright toxic.) 4. No amount of praise is enough when I mention @dang. The guy ruthlessly keeps everyone in line. Hats off to him. HN is much better because of his untiring efforts to curate.
  • yesenadam 5y ago
    I agree, and I know you didn't mean it literally but s/ruthlessly/tirelessly/ ! He's the exact opposite of ruthless.
• jmrm 5y ago
  I've never used Slashdot, but I have just looked its homepage and its content is more like The Verge, Wired, or similar websites, i. e., generic tech articles, but more oriented to techie people. HN is a lot more niche in different kind of matters, like finding obscure problems with a compiler, how a company is using some technology and why, or simply articles about work/life balance and what to do and what not to do to achieve a fulfilling life.