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Yeah. The Hacker News Guidelines say "No the website is not going downhill". But I can point to a shitton of threads from 2018 on often identical topics to thre

by fao_ 3y ago

Yeah. The Hacker News Guidelines say "No the website is not going downhill". But I can point to a shitton of threads from 2018 on often identical topics to threads today, where the quality of debate is quantitatively higher quality than it is today. Most of the people I know in Technology(tm) have not only stopped reading HN, but also derisively refer to it as The Orange Hellsite, because the quality of comments is often consistently worse than Reddit for comparable topics, these days.

drakenot 3y ago
Where are people going?
- avery17 3y ago
  Outside.
radiojosh 3y ago
Where have your technology acquaintances gone instead? It seems like the entire Internet is declining in quality.
- fao_ 3y ago
  Mostly they use private discord servers and self-grown communities. Fediverse, IRC, XMPP, etc.
username332211 3y ago
> Most of the people I know in Technology(tm) have not only stopped reading HN, but also derisively refer to it as The Orange Hellsite, because the quality of comments is often consistently worse than Reddit for comparable topics, these days. That's very unlikely. This website has not implemented the features that continuously make Reddit worse as time goes by - self-segregated communities and extensive down voting.
- renewiltord 3y ago
  I just went to a random front page thread on /r/homelab (a subreddit I know well) https://old.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/1922ddn/since_no_one_makes_a_rack_mount_cable_modem_i/ https://old.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/1922ddn/since_no_o... You can read for yourselves and see the difference between that and this. Here's the same post as this on /r/aviation https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/13k43rj/meet_the_x65_darpas_new_plane_has_no_external/ https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/13k43rj/meet_the_... For every reddit comment there R, you can find a distinct comment here H, such that H is worse than R. There's just way more informed expertise on Reddit. The big advantage of HN is that some tech luminaries post here. But the overall quality is much lower than the topic-reddits. It's more like an /r/technology.
  - mrintegrity 3y ago
    Your aviation example is not good, that reddit thread is rife with memes and "in jokes", very little informed discussion that I can see.
    - renewiltord 3y ago
      Yeah but it is still true that for every R there, there is a distinct H here that is worse.
ahoka 3y ago
There's a button the the profile page that brings you to the front page on the day you signed up. I just checked it the other way, things really went downhill. There is actually an open source project that banned referrals from HN due to the kind of toxic people they get from here. That's something.
- fao_ 3y ago
  Even the articles are higher quality, to be honest.
BobaFloutist 3y ago
>the quality of debate is quantitatively higher quality than it is today. That is one hell of a claim...
- fao_ 3y ago
  Not really.

by fao_ 3y ago

drakenot 3y ago

Where are people going?

avery17 3y ago
Outside.

radiojosh 3y ago

Where have your technology acquaintances gone instead? It seems like the entire Internet is declining in quality.

fao_ 3y ago
Mostly they use private discord servers and self-grown communities. Fediverse, IRC, XMPP, etc.

username332211 3y ago

> Most of the people I know in Technology(tm) have not only stopped reading HN, but also derisively refer to it as The Orange Hellsite, because the quality of comments is often consistently worse than Reddit for comparable topics, these days. That's very unlikely. This website has not implemented the features that continuously make Reddit worse as time goes by - self-segregated communities and extensive down voting.

renewiltord 3y ago
I just went to a random front page thread on /r/homelab (a subreddit I know well) https://old.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/1922ddn/since_no_one_makes_a_rack_mount_cable_modem_i/ https://old.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/1922ddn/since_no_o... You can read for yourselves and see the difference between that and this. Here's the same post as this on /r/aviation https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/13k43rj/meet_the_x65_darpas_new_plane_has_no_external/ https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/13k43rj/meet_the_... For every reddit comment there R, you can find a distinct comment here H, such that H is worse than R. There's just way more informed expertise on Reddit. The big advantage of HN is that some tech luminaries post here. But the overall quality is much lower than the topic-reddits. It's more like an /r/technology.
- mrintegrity 3y ago
  Your aviation example is not good, that reddit thread is rife with memes and "in jokes", very little informed discussion that I can see.
  - renewiltord 3y ago
    Yeah but it is still true that for every R there, there is a distinct H here that is worse.

ahoka 3y ago

There's a button the the profile page that brings you to the front page on the day you signed up. I just checked it the other way, things really went downhill. There is actually an open source project that banned referrals from HN due to the kind of toxic people they get from here. That's something.

fao_ 3y ago
Even the articles are higher quality, to be honest.

BobaFloutist 3y ago

>the quality of debate is quantitatively higher quality than it is today. That is one hell of a claim...

fao_ 3y ago
Not really.