4 ms·

Tell HN: HN is not HN anymore

25 points by prakashn27 3y ago

Why is there lot of news in HN that is nothing to do hacker, entrepreneur, technical or even anything that is remotely related what our community stands for. This is especially true for most discussed items here. 5 years back, everything I read here is interesting no matter what . Now it is more like general news website, with main emphasis on backlinks, click baits . Is anyone else feeling the same?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
toomuchtodo 3y ago
A hacker’s curiosity is not limited to code and silicon. The more context you load up, the more robust the mental model you can build. HN is still HN, but like everything, change is inevitable as we all evolve as humans (along with the environments we live in globally). There is a hide flag, which I recommend using as much as needed to ignore topics that you don’t find interesting. HN will be fine as long as forum curation remains intentional and opinionated. > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Stay curious. (Startups are just a way for a specific type of person to become economically empowered from their ambition and problem space understanding drive [“seeking product market fit and scaling”], hence why HN exists; to draw curious, driven people to investment)
minimaxir 3y ago
HN has been like that since the beginning, and nothing has changed policy-wise on the content. The larger issue is the startup information ecosystem as a whole on the internet. With social media getting handicapped due to profit-maximizing decisions and traditional media websites that normally highlighted relevant news to hackers (e.g. TechCrunch) have been hit hard by economic shifts, there isn't a good way to surface interesting news anymore.
slater 3y ago
I'm pretty sure it's a common refrain, i think dang has a list of links of every year where someone pipes up "wow this place just isn't the same any more!" / "this place is turning into reddit!!" (another perennial), etc. etc.
- minimaxir 3y ago
  See the bottom of the Hacker News Guidelines. (although given a certain company's IPO last week, it might need a rewrite.)
  - slater 3y ago
    There it is! :D
danjc 3y ago
You're 5 years older and your interests have changed.
gfs 3y ago
I think it's more of a societal shift than just purely on HN. I know there's no way for me to read every link submitted here but I don't see nearly as many technical articles. I miss the days of companies openly blogging about tough problems they solved or new OSS. There is a seemingly endless amount of articles around cryptocurrency or AI. It's gotten to the point where I don't enjoy coming back to this site.
cushpush 3y ago
Ratio of users who are [hackers, entrepreneurs, tech people] has gone down, that's all.
frankjr 3y ago
I don't know about that but I wish HN had a configurable list of words that, if present in a submission's title, would auto-hide it for me.
- wruza 3y ago
  Bookmarklet: javascript:(()=>{ let f = /\b(ai|crypto|python)\b/i; document.querySelectorAll('tr.athing').forEach(x => f.test(x.innerText) && x.nextElementSibling.querySelector('.clicky.hider')?.click()); })(); Unhide here: https://news.ycombinator.com/hidden https://news.ycombinator.com/hidden
  - mdaniel 3y ago
    https://github.com/violentmonkey/violentmonkey#readme https://github.com/violentmonkey/violentmonkey#readme is fantastic for site customization tricks like that, if one doesn't wish to remember to run the bookmarklet all the time
pvg 3y ago
HN is always getting worse - a phenomenon so old, it's listed in the site guidelines and reams of moderator commentary. You can help fight entropy by posting interesting things and flagging bad things and/or emailing hn@ycombinator.com about them.
instagib 3y ago
It’s still a decent filter for interesting things to hackers but the comments are getting worse. As the social circle increases, the quality goes down. I like the website news minimalist anti-clickbait filter for news, the scaling filter it uses, and now topic filtering. Now it just needs more hacker news content and I can move over there then drop commenting as it’s not available.
pwg 3y ago
> Why is there lot of news in HN that is nothing to do hacker, entrepreneur, technical Do you submit links to HN? The "news" on the front page only arrives there because someone originally submitted the link via the "submit" page. If you don't submit links, then begin submitting those URL's you find interesting, and some of them may make the front page. Do you browse and upvote items on the "new" page? The font page is populated by submissions that received sufficient upvotes when they were originally on the "new" page. Someone (well, enough "someones") thought each item was interesting enough on the new page to upvote it so it would reach the main front page.
ThrowawayR2 3y ago
If you think the front page is bad, you ought to see what the new queue looks like with showdead turned on. Be the change you want to see and flag clickbait and off-topic stories.
thih9 3y ago
HN frontpage from five years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2019-03-24 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2019-03-24
- az09mugen 3y ago
  Thanks fot that link. It's pleasant to see a frontpage without AI related stuff.
- 1letterunixname 3y ago
  (First preserved) https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-09 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-09 +1d https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-10 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-10 +1y https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2007-10-09 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2007-10-09 4 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2010-10-09 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2010-10-09 10 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2016-10-09 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2016-10-09 15 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2021-10-09 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2021-10-09
curious_curios 3y ago
This feels like the Eternal September[1] all over again. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

25 points by prakashn27 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

toomuchtodo 3y ago

A hacker’s curiosity is not limited to code and silicon. The more context you load up, the more robust the mental model you can build. HN is still HN, but like everything, change is inevitable as we all evolve as humans (along with the environments we live in globally). There is a hide flag, which I recommend using as much as needed to ignore topics that you don’t find interesting. HN will be fine as long as forum curation remains intentional and opinionated. > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Stay curious. (Startups are just a way for a specific type of person to become economically empowered from their ambition and problem space understanding drive [“seeking product market fit and scaling”], hence why HN exists; to draw curious, driven people to investment)

minimaxir 3y ago

HN has been like that since the beginning, and nothing has changed policy-wise on the content. The larger issue is the startup information ecosystem as a whole on the internet. With social media getting handicapped due to profit-maximizing decisions and traditional media websites that normally highlighted relevant news to hackers (e.g. TechCrunch) have been hit hard by economic shifts, there isn't a good way to surface interesting news anymore.

slater 3y ago

I'm pretty sure it's a common refrain, i think dang has a list of links of every year where someone pipes up "wow this place just isn't the same any more!" / "this place is turning into reddit!!" (another perennial), etc. etc.

minimaxir 3y ago
See the bottom of the Hacker News Guidelines. (although given a certain company's IPO last week, it might need a rewrite.)
- slater 3y ago
  There it is! :D

danjc 3y ago

You're 5 years older and your interests have changed.

gfs 3y ago

I think it's more of a societal shift than just purely on HN. I know there's no way for me to read every link submitted here but I don't see nearly as many technical articles. I miss the days of companies openly blogging about tough problems they solved or new OSS. There is a seemingly endless amount of articles around cryptocurrency or AI. It's gotten to the point where I don't enjoy coming back to this site.

cushpush 3y ago

Ratio of users who are [hackers, entrepreneurs, tech people] has gone down, that's all.

frankjr 3y ago

I don't know about that but I wish HN had a configurable list of words that, if present in a submission's title, would auto-hide it for me.

wruza 3y ago
Bookmarklet: javascript:(()=>{ let f = /\b(ai|crypto|python)\b/i; document.querySelectorAll('tr.athing').forEach(x => f.test(x.innerText) && x.nextElementSibling.querySelector('.clicky.hider')?.click()); })(); Unhide here: https://news.ycombinator.com/hidden https://news.ycombinator.com/hidden
- mdaniel 3y ago
  https://github.com/violentmonkey/violentmonkey#readme https://github.com/violentmonkey/violentmonkey#readme is fantastic for site customization tricks like that, if one doesn't wish to remember to run the bookmarklet all the time

pvg 3y ago

HN is always getting worse - a phenomenon so old, it's listed in the site guidelines and reams of moderator commentary. You can help fight entropy by posting interesting things and flagging bad things and/or emailing hn@ycombinator.com about them.

instagib 3y ago

It’s still a decent filter for interesting things to hackers but the comments are getting worse. As the social circle increases, the quality goes down. I like the website news minimalist anti-clickbait filter for news, the scaling filter it uses, and now topic filtering. Now it just needs more hacker news content and I can move over there then drop commenting as it’s not available.

pwg 3y ago

> Why is there lot of news in HN that is nothing to do hacker, entrepreneur, technical Do you submit links to HN? The "news" on the front page only arrives there because someone originally submitted the link via the "submit" page. If you don't submit links, then begin submitting those URL's you find interesting, and some of them may make the front page. Do you browse and upvote items on the "new" page? The font page is populated by submissions that received sufficient upvotes when they were originally on the "new" page. Someone (well, enough "someones") thought each item was interesting enough on the new page to upvote it so it would reach the main front page.

ThrowawayR2 3y ago

If you think the front page is bad, you ought to see what the new queue looks like with showdead turned on. Be the change you want to see and flag clickbait and off-topic stories.

thih9 3y ago

HN frontpage from five years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2019-03-24 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2019-03-24

az09mugen 3y ago
Thanks fot that link. It's pleasant to see a frontpage without AI related stuff.
1letterunixname 3y ago
(First preserved) https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-09 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-09 +1d https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-10 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-10 +1y https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2007-10-09 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2007-10-09 4 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2010-10-09 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2010-10-09 10 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2016-10-09 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2016-10-09 15 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2021-10-09 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2021-10-09

curious_curios 3y ago

This feels like the Eternal September[1] all over again. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September