42 ms·

Great to see HN getting more readers. But I'm scared for the future of commenting. More readers != more intelligent commenting.

• peteretep 15y ago
  Either I've grown up a whole lot in the last two years (possible), or the influx of new Redditors from ... well, everywhere ... pretty much killed the appeal the place had for me. It lost its exclusive feel, and now a 'Redditor' is just any random American college kid. It's HN that I check when I wake up or when I'm bored now - comments here are likely to be things I want to read.
  • repsilat 15y ago
    "Culture" subreddits (/r/askscience in particular, sometimes /r/truereddit and the ones like it) are still mostly alright, though they still get bad when posts hit the front page. A good set of default subreddits is absolutely essential. HN has some of that emphasis on civility, but it (and the moderation system) are certainly less visible than reddit's. Hellbanning certainly has quite a different effect to pages full of deleted comments' "tombstones". I think the passivity of HN will could speed a cultural decline, and the lack of things like subreddits will certainly limit its usefulness if it ever does happen. Even with its countermeasures, though, I'm falling out of love with Reddit. I think the prominence of the karma system rewards a sound-bite circlejerk in the comments. More opaque, curated collections of articles like [www.aldaily.com] and [longform.org] are a more reliable way of finding thoughtful content (though I still need to get news content from somewhere else).
  • dbattaglia 15y ago
    For me its the mix of juvenile college kids and (as Steve Yegge pointed out) the Simpson's "Comic Book Guy" type meta-commenters that drive me nuts. 4/5 times I hit the "load more comments" link I feel a deep sense of regret. =P