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> I can't find the official page on why Paul Graham created HN, but to me, HN is the place to find the most interesting links and have a healthy discussion abou
by prepend 4y ago
> I can't find the official page on why Paul Graham created HN, but to me, HN is the place to find the most interesting links and have a healthy discussion about various topics. In fact, discussions are my favorite part, except for the useless comments.
Is there an official reason? I’ve wondered this as well and sort of assumed it was because hackers like having some community aspect and are novelty-seeking so YC created this due to the largesse of PG for the YC group and someone said “why not just make it public so applicants and future YCers can participate.” And job postings were added on to generate some revenue so it wasn’t a pure cost center.
This headcanon reenforces my belief that the best community sites are accessories to something else and that you can’t make money from a community without diminishing its value (since the incentives for monetizing conversation are not the same and I’d guess 90% at odds with good conversation- mainly because bad things draw attention).
- krapp 4y agoAFAIK the "official" reason for creating HN was as a proof of concept for a viable web forum written in Arc, the lisp dialect PG was writing at the time. And bear in mind it was called Startup News before it became Hacker News.
- paulcole 4y agoRemember that there’s often the story and then the ret-conned “story.” From Wikipedia: > Initially called Startup News or occasionally News.YC. HN exists to serve the interests of YC. It’s a marketing/advertising tool. It’s great to believe that it’s a community, a place where interesting conversations happen, etc. (and those things may also be true) but remember what it is at its core.