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I thought this was a good interview, and interesting to see what has changed in the past 13 years. IMO HN still has by far the best commentary compared to any a

I thought this was a good interview, and interesting to see what has changed in the past 13 years. IMO HN still has by far the best commentary compared to any aggregator. I think there is a lot shittier commentary than there used to be, but that still tends to get downvoted to the bottom or flagged, and dang somehow manages to keep the flame wars to a minimum. One glaring omission in this interview, though, was how Slashdot died. As a former heavy Slashdot user, it wasn't that it got "too big", it was a useless redesign that did it. The redesign that finally killed it for me wasn't as bad as the infamous Digg V4 redesign, but it was still pretty awful. Could tell that some designers who didn't understand how users actually used the site got control: the redesign was perhaps "prettier", but it made it impossible for me to use. LOADS of unnecessary whitespace made it hard to skim threads, and I don't remember all the details but they royally f'd up the sorting, so it became near impossible to find high quality comments bubbling to the top. I was a frequent daily user who basically stopped overnight because I found the new design so hard to use.

UberFly 3y ago
When old.reddit goes it will have the same effect for many browser users I'm sure.
- cykros 3y ago
  Assuming that crowd isn't mostly the crowd that's already left over the API and nsfw issues, as well as the general unpleasant attitude the CEO has toward the user base. Lemmy sure has gotten a lot more traffic in the last few weeks.
nunez 3y ago
Yeah, Slashdot's UI refresh definitely killed the site for me. Reddit was a breath of fresh air by comparison. I still remember when a coworker told me about it back in 2012. I literally stopped browsing Slashdot ever since that day. Reddit had a lot of the same energy that /. did, but in areas other than tech, which I found fascinating. I've learned so much about so many things thanks to Reddit. It's a real shame that their management seems to be interested in making it yet another "social media, but different" kind of experience.
- joe_the_user 3y ago
  The sad thing is that having a high quality site seems to be actually worth little to the owners of the site. If your income is advertising, engagement and users with little impulse control seem to be the thing that brings value. And there seem to be few other ways to monetize a site.
  - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    Exactly. The only thing that really makes HN "work" is that YC has a very different incentive structure for what they get out of this site, versus all the other news aggregator/social media sites out there who need to maximize revenue.
- fsckboy 3y ago
  >Yeah, Slashdot's UI refresh definitely killed the site for me. Reddit was a breath of fresh air by comparison. the major exodus from slashdot to digg after a redesign was in 2007 Then the digg exodus to reddit after a resdesign was 2010
  - xp84 3y ago
    Heh. Clearly, Reddit only survived their redesign because they kept the old one around too. All the cranky nerds have still never accepted the new one what, 8 years later? Tbh I find new Reddit far more usable than old, but perhaps if I had a slow computer or didn’t run JS or something, I could disagree?
joe_the_user 3y ago
The thing about slashdot is they tolerated/encouraged low-quality posts ("first post!") from the start - and it worked... for some people while there were also good quality posts. But I think it had the problem that when some factor causes your good posts to decline, the garbage ratio goes up and then you can't recover. I've seen similar dynamics with smaller forums - tolerating various kind of bullshit can work for a fair while but the end is sudden. I'd say HN has overall declined in quality over the last years but it's managed to avoid a precipitous decline by having basic standards.
- sam0x17 3y ago
  It was more a funy/quirky part of slashdot culture though. As a teen at the time this was a useful hook for getting me interested in tech news.
  - jhbadger 3y ago
    It also allowed you to upvote a comment in different categories. So you could, for example, ignore the upvotes for "funny" comments in favor of "informative" ones if that's what you wanted.
    - pxc 3y ago
      And 'funny' posting didn't earn you post karma, which eventually conferred moderation powers (by lottery, sort of). IIRC there was at least one other way that they nerfed using humor to farm visibility and karma, as well.
lllllkkkk 3y ago
[flagged]
cykros 3y ago
Fuck Beta. Soylent News was a nice spinoff that the refugees founded, and it is still going, but it does suffer from a bit of a dearth of userbase. The codebase is pretty old, but design wise, it's the old Slashdot you remember from decades ago, in red rather than green.

UberFly 3y ago

When old.reddit goes it will have the same effect for many browser users I'm sure.

cykros 3y ago
Assuming that crowd isn't mostly the crowd that's already left over the API and nsfw issues, as well as the general unpleasant attitude the CEO has toward the user base. Lemmy sure has gotten a lot more traffic in the last few weeks.

nunez 3y ago

Yeah, Slashdot's UI refresh definitely killed the site for me. Reddit was a breath of fresh air by comparison. I still remember when a coworker told me about it back in 2012. I literally stopped browsing Slashdot ever since that day. Reddit had a lot of the same energy that /. did, but in areas other than tech, which I found fascinating. I've learned so much about so many things thanks to Reddit. It's a real shame that their management seems to be interested in making it yet another "social media, but different" kind of experience.

joe_the_user 3y ago
The sad thing is that having a high quality site seems to be actually worth little to the owners of the site. If your income is advertising, engagement and users with little impulse control seem to be the thing that brings value. And there seem to be few other ways to monetize a site.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  Exactly. The only thing that really makes HN "work" is that YC has a very different incentive structure for what they get out of this site, versus all the other news aggregator/social media sites out there who need to maximize revenue.
fsckboy 3y ago
>Yeah, Slashdot's UI refresh definitely killed the site for me. Reddit was a breath of fresh air by comparison. the major exodus from slashdot to digg after a redesign was in 2007 Then the digg exodus to reddit after a resdesign was 2010
- xp84 3y ago
  Heh. Clearly, Reddit only survived their redesign because they kept the old one around too. All the cranky nerds have still never accepted the new one what, 8 years later? Tbh I find new Reddit far more usable than old, but perhaps if I had a slow computer or didn’t run JS or something, I could disagree?

joe_the_user 3y ago

The thing about slashdot is they tolerated/encouraged low-quality posts ("first post!") from the start - and it worked... for some people while there were also good quality posts. But I think it had the problem that when some factor causes your good posts to decline, the garbage ratio goes up and then you can't recover. I've seen similar dynamics with smaller forums - tolerating various kind of bullshit can work for a fair while but the end is sudden. I'd say HN has overall declined in quality over the last years but it's managed to avoid a precipitous decline by having basic standards.

sam0x17 3y ago
It was more a funy/quirky part of slashdot culture though. As a teen at the time this was a useful hook for getting me interested in tech news.
- jhbadger 3y ago
  It also allowed you to upvote a comment in different categories. So you could, for example, ignore the upvotes for "funny" comments in favor of "informative" ones if that's what you wanted.
  - pxc 3y ago
    And 'funny' posting didn't earn you post karma, which eventually conferred moderation powers (by lottery, sort of). IIRC there was at least one other way that they nerfed using humor to farm visibility and karma, as well.

lllllkkkk 3y ago

[flagged]

cykros 3y ago

Fuck Beta. Soylent News was a nice spinoff that the refugees founded, and it is still going, but it does suffer from a bit of a dearth of userbase. The codebase is pretty old, but design wise, it's the old Slashdot you remember from decades ago, in red rather than green.