4 ms·

I love Hacker News because it's a place people share their expertise. People usually don't get away with b.s. because other experts will correct them. So many t

I love Hacker News because it's a place people share their expertise. People usually don't get away with b.s. because other experts will correct them. So many times I've read an interesting article and then checked the comments to find out why it was flawed and or conversely, why my interest was well placed. HN can be a tough crowd for your medium article or weekend project, but it wouldn't be interesting or useful if it wasn't. Diversity of thought is encouraged but personal attacks are not. It's a good balance. I'd like to thank dang for his hard work in making HN what it is day in and day out.

bombcar 4y ago
Surprisingly comments sections often have this - if you can wade through them. Watching a video on a repair on YouTube? Before commencing check the comments and see if there’s anyone pointing something out. Often there is and you can find tips or pitfalls to avoid. The value of HN-style moderation becomes clear when reading years old threads - most everything is on point and relevant even decades later.
walls 4y ago
… and then you hit a COVID related thread and realize it’s really just Reddit for people with more self confidence.
- JBits 4y ago
  In general, I don't think hn is great for politics. In general, people here seem good at using articles submitted as a prompt for discussions. I think this works wonderfully for tech as lots of people have interesting adjacent knowledge and it helps put things into context. The thing with this though is that reading the article properly isn't always necessary to join the conversation. For politics, I find that people tend to fixate on certain points while ignoring the rest of an article's argument.
- pavlov 4y ago
  Epidemiology isn’t an obvious core competence for a site named Hacker News, though. IMHO the best part of HN is anything that benefits from a perspective on software history because somebody will jump in with “Yeah I was there at Sun in 1986…” and tell the story. The closer it gets to everyday politics or JavaScript framework du jour, the worse the signal-to-noise ratio.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  Or cryptocurrency-related. Or Europe-related. All threads, where reading the comments usually gives you very little information besides how toxic a decent chunk of the userbase can be.
- mc32 4y ago
  Indeed. People have a hard time knowing when they are going outside their areas of expertise and sometimes extrapolate their confidence in one area into others and can sometimes be right and other times wildly wrong. Diet and exercise might be one such topic, for example. Economics another. I'm not hammering speculation or suggestions, I'm specially referring to confident assertions.
- michaelwww 4y ago
  Maybe you skipped reading my sentence "People usually don't get away with b.s. because other experts will correct them."
  - walls 4y ago
    My point is that a lot of them aren’t experts, they’re just educated enough to sound like one.
    - michaelwww 4y ago
      I get it. Well, I don't take HN comments as the last word on something I need to know
    - clove 4y ago
      To me, this is why HN is sometimes worse than Reddit. At least with Reddit, it's pretty easy to tell when someone is objectively wrong. With HN, I feel sometimes, after reading something convincing, that perhaps I've just been hypnotized by good rhetoric. I see people making objectively wrong comments here on HN all the time in my own niches. So, I'm sure when I'm reading something outside my niche here that I'm reading BS - but it doesn't read like BS. The only thing outside my niche that I know I can trust here is tech stuff, and that's why I started coming here many years ago. But I've also seen HN's quality go down over the past few years, slowly becoming Reddit-like, unfortunately. I think dang's emphasis on discourse style will ultimately keep HN's quality satisfactory, though, no matter how many Redditors migrate here. HN will probably remain the best forum for discussions on a wide variety of subjects for the near future.
      - michaelwww 4y ago
        > I feel sometimes, after reading something convincing I feel like I get good arguments from both sides here, then it's up to me to decide. The pros and cons arguments are usually better here than any other site open to the public

bombcar 4y ago

Surprisingly comments sections often have this - if you can wade through them. Watching a video on a repair on YouTube? Before commencing check the comments and see if there’s anyone pointing something out. Often there is and you can find tips or pitfalls to avoid. The value of HN-style moderation becomes clear when reading years old threads - most everything is on point and relevant even decades later.

walls 4y ago

… and then you hit a COVID related thread and realize it’s really just Reddit for people with more self confidence.

JBits 4y ago
In general, I don't think hn is great for politics. In general, people here seem good at using articles submitted as a prompt for discussions. I think this works wonderfully for tech as lots of people have interesting adjacent knowledge and it helps put things into context. The thing with this though is that reading the article properly isn't always necessary to join the conversation. For politics, I find that people tend to fixate on certain points while ignoring the rest of an article's argument.
pavlov 4y ago
Epidemiology isn’t an obvious core competence for a site named Hacker News, though. IMHO the best part of HN is anything that benefits from a perspective on software history because somebody will jump in with “Yeah I was there at Sun in 1986…” and tell the story. The closer it gets to everyday politics or JavaScript framework du jour, the worse the signal-to-noise ratio.
Semaphor 4y ago
Or cryptocurrency-related. Or Europe-related. All threads, where reading the comments usually gives you very little information besides how toxic a decent chunk of the userbase can be.
mc32 4y ago
Indeed. People have a hard time knowing when they are going outside their areas of expertise and sometimes extrapolate their confidence in one area into others and can sometimes be right and other times wildly wrong. Diet and exercise might be one such topic, for example. Economics another. I'm not hammering speculation or suggestions, I'm specially referring to confident assertions.
michaelwww 4y ago
Maybe you skipped reading my sentence "People usually don't get away with b.s. because other experts will correct them."
- walls 4y ago
  My point is that a lot of them aren’t experts, they’re just educated enough to sound like one.
  - michaelwww 4y ago
    I get it. Well, I don't take HN comments as the last word on something I need to know
  - clove 4y ago
    To me, this is why HN is sometimes worse than Reddit. At least with Reddit, it's pretty easy to tell when someone is objectively wrong. With HN, I feel sometimes, after reading something convincing, that perhaps I've just been hypnotized by good rhetoric. I see people making objectively wrong comments here on HN all the time in my own niches. So, I'm sure when I'm reading something outside my niche here that I'm reading BS - but it doesn't read like BS. The only thing outside my niche that I know I can trust here is tech stuff, and that's why I started coming here many years ago. But I've also seen HN's quality go down over the past few years, slowly becoming Reddit-like, unfortunately. I think dang's emphasis on discourse style will ultimately keep HN's quality satisfactory, though, no matter how many Redditors migrate here. HN will probably remain the best forum for discussions on a wide variety of subjects for the near future.
    - michaelwww 4y ago
      > I feel sometimes, after reading something convincing I feel like I get good arguments from both sides here, then it's up to me to decide. The pros and cons arguments are usually better here than any other site open to the public