5 ms·

Eternal September

37 points by hubraumhugo 3y ago

joshka 3y ago
I do love the meta irony of people finding this and posting it as if it's news....
- 082349872349872 3y ago
  I love all the people who said "Oh, no, generative AI will flood the online world with crap", as if generative natural intelligence hadn't already done so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law (periodic reminder: https://search.marginalia.nu https://search.marginalia.nu )
  - com 3y ago
    I think that while the signal/noise ratio on the internet is much lower when I joined as a wee person in the 1980s, we are simply not prepared for the poisoning of the commons that is coming. The people who began circling wagons in the late 1990s creating invite-only “smart friends” stealth communities will turn out to have been bang on the money. It’s probably not too late to start - but which platforms other than private email lists and RocketChat exist for the endless hunker-down?
    - largbae 3y ago
      We do pretty well with a free-tier Slack instance. They only keep a rolling 10k messages or so, but this seems to be enough for more than 100 friends and colleagues to keep comm lines open. LinkedIn could be a model for making vouch-networks as we fight the evil bots(or more accurately the evildoers who abuse neutral bots)
      - aragilar 3y ago
        90 days now, which actually makes free-tier Slack really bad.
- chucksmash 3y ago
  I believe the canonical response to this would be the "today's lucky 10,000" xkcd. When the blooming of the perennials no longer moves you, perhaps it's time to take a walk outside the garden ;-)
- pavlov 3y ago
  IMO, an important part of HN culture that has allowed it to mostly avoid Eternal September is that this is not just a strict news site: old and well-known things can be posted and discussed again, thus introducing them to the newer crowd without making them feel bad about not already knowing something.
  - berkes 3y ago
    Interesting how you look at Eternal September from the newb's angle. As if "making them feel bad" (or unwelcome?) is the main problem of ES. I never looked at it that way. Always looked at it from the disgruntled Unix beard view that I have entrenched myself in. "get off my lawn". While also lamenting how new generations keep reinventing solutions that "we" have proven to not work decades ago. Or reinventing solutions to problems that have long been solved. When the solution is not to shout "get off my lawn" harder, but to go out there, with empathy, and help the newer generations find their way around in the history and practices of ICT and CompSci so they too can reach out to that experience and knowledge when confronted with a problem (rather than blindingly running towards a cliff that "we" the seniors fell off several times already)
Phiwise_ 3y ago
A favorite more recent fact about this of mine: You might have heard about reddit's several early influxes from other websites as metaphorical eternal septembers, but did you know they had a literal eternal september just over a year after the release of the official mobile app? Check out the inflection point: https://subredditstats.com/r/teenagers https://subredditstats.com/r/teenagers
- mjfl 3y ago
  The second thing I noticed was the comments and posts per day cratering recently. Is that real?
  - Phiwise_ 3y ago
    If you're referring to the sharp drop at the end of the graph, no. It's an artifact of the api change making it much harder to capture comments. We can verify this by how the comments/day rank didn't budge, because it happened on literally every sub simultaneously. If you're referring to the gradual dip from its peak, I have no idea.
- hubraumhugo 3y ago
  Since the blackouts last year and the recent IPO, it feels like astroturfing and spam have increased on Reddit, while quality contributions have decreased. All usage metrics are up according to Reddit's IPO filings, but it feels like engagement is actually down, or at least lower quality. Many niche subs feel like ghost towns now. Is this just my subjective impression or do you feel the same?
  - sussmannbaka 3y ago
    (anecdata for n=1:) Everyone I personally know who contributed meaningfully to subs I was active in has moved on to other sites. What used to be places sprawling with activity are still places sprawling with activity… but it’s mostly reduced to reposts and posturing and especially posting photos of the thing you bought (I guess consumers can’t do much more). This has been a trend before the blackouts but it feels like those mark the point where it all broke down.
edent 3y ago
The problem with Eternal September isn't that n00bs are stupid lusers - but that we do a terrible job introducing people into our culture. So many online spaces seem to have an attitude of "if you don't already know the rules, you can't play". There's no helping newbies and neophytes learn the how and why of a community. Most organisations are desperate for new members. And yet, when people show up, they're laughed at, blocked, or sent away. Eternal September should be a cause of joy! Look! All these new people want to talk about our hobby! New friends to play with! New people we can tell our jokes to! New blood to help give us new ideas! Instead, they're treated as an annoyance or irrelevance. Why is that?
- somedude895 3y ago
  Because a sudden influx of new users tends to change the culture of an existig community. People don't like that. I know I was shunned for making low effort comments when first arriving here from Reddit, and in retrospect I'm glad that I wasn't coddled, I wasn't made to feel welcome, I had to learn the rules and now this is my favorite corner of the internet, because HN changed me, not the other way around.
  - berkes 3y ago
    I think we can differentiate between rules that are in place to uphold a certain standard, and those that stop change from happening at all. The latter is guarantee for obsolence. The former a way to allow change, but not have that change affect the core of the community. E.g. at HN, deep conversations are core. So it makes sense to protect that with rules on friendlyness, effort and topics. But it's always a thin line and a spectrum. Something many (software) communities or community-leaders have a hard time with. So they go for absolutism. And often don't allow any change. The worst reason for (not) doing something is "we've always done it this way". Yet in many (software and FLOSS) communities that is exactly what is upheld. Keeping out new influences but also keeping out fresh members, ideas and users.
  - theaussiestew 3y ago
    He never suggested that the influx of newbies should change the existing culture, precisely the opposite. The existing culture doesn't do a good enough job of helping onboard the newbies in a gentle way that integrates them. Instead, there's just indifference to this process.
raverbashing 3y ago
I wonder if the knowledge of Eternal September is also getting e.s. itself
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
myth_drannon 3y ago
I'm familiar with this term for over a decade and also experienced it during the 90's and I just had the realization that Canada is experiencing something similar right now with influx of immigrants, asylum seekers and temporary foreign workers. I'm pessimistic about the future and sad about the loss of the culture. I still use Usenet but it's not the same, Canada will continue to exist but it will be very different country .
zilti 3y ago
The software dev world also had its eternal september about 15 years ago I'd say. Since then we're even more being flooded with bullshit hypetrains and all.
SillyHNDorks 3y ago
Yawn. Nothing interesting happening in the world right now, innit? Submitter must be 20 or something.

Eternal September

37 points by hubraumhugo 3y ago

joshka 3y ago

I do love the meta irony of people finding this and posting it as if it's news....

082349872349872 3y ago
I love all the people who said "Oh, no, generative AI will flood the online world with crap", as if generative natural intelligence hadn't already done so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law (periodic reminder: https://search.marginalia.nu https://search.marginalia.nu )
- com 3y ago
  I think that while the signal/noise ratio on the internet is much lower when I joined as a wee person in the 1980s, we are simply not prepared for the poisoning of the commons that is coming. The people who began circling wagons in the late 1990s creating invite-only “smart friends” stealth communities will turn out to have been bang on the money. It’s probably not too late to start - but which platforms other than private email lists and RocketChat exist for the endless hunker-down?
  - largbae 3y ago
    We do pretty well with a free-tier Slack instance. They only keep a rolling 10k messages or so, but this seems to be enough for more than 100 friends and colleagues to keep comm lines open. LinkedIn could be a model for making vouch-networks as we fight the evil bots(or more accurately the evildoers who abuse neutral bots)
    - aragilar 3y ago
      90 days now, which actually makes free-tier Slack really bad.
chucksmash 3y ago
I believe the canonical response to this would be the "today's lucky 10,000" xkcd. When the blooming of the perennials no longer moves you, perhaps it's time to take a walk outside the garden ;-)
pavlov 3y ago
IMO, an important part of HN culture that has allowed it to mostly avoid Eternal September is that this is not just a strict news site: old and well-known things can be posted and discussed again, thus introducing them to the newer crowd without making them feel bad about not already knowing something.
- berkes 3y ago
  Interesting how you look at Eternal September from the newb's angle. As if "making them feel bad" (or unwelcome?) is the main problem of ES. I never looked at it that way. Always looked at it from the disgruntled Unix beard view that I have entrenched myself in. "get off my lawn". While also lamenting how new generations keep reinventing solutions that "we" have proven to not work decades ago. Or reinventing solutions to problems that have long been solved. When the solution is not to shout "get off my lawn" harder, but to go out there, with empathy, and help the newer generations find their way around in the history and practices of ICT and CompSci so they too can reach out to that experience and knowledge when confronted with a problem (rather than blindingly running towards a cliff that "we" the seniors fell off several times already)

Phiwise_ 3y ago

A favorite more recent fact about this of mine: You might have heard about reddit's several early influxes from other websites as metaphorical eternal septembers, but did you know they had a literal eternal september just over a year after the release of the official mobile app? Check out the inflection point: https://subredditstats.com/r/teenagers https://subredditstats.com/r/teenagers

mjfl 3y ago
The second thing I noticed was the comments and posts per day cratering recently. Is that real?
- Phiwise_ 3y ago
  If you're referring to the sharp drop at the end of the graph, no. It's an artifact of the api change making it much harder to capture comments. We can verify this by how the comments/day rank didn't budge, because it happened on literally every sub simultaneously. If you're referring to the gradual dip from its peak, I have no idea.
hubraumhugo 3y ago
Since the blackouts last year and the recent IPO, it feels like astroturfing and spam have increased on Reddit, while quality contributions have decreased. All usage metrics are up according to Reddit's IPO filings, but it feels like engagement is actually down, or at least lower quality. Many niche subs feel like ghost towns now. Is this just my subjective impression or do you feel the same?
- sussmannbaka 3y ago
  (anecdata for n=1:) Everyone I personally know who contributed meaningfully to subs I was active in has moved on to other sites. What used to be places sprawling with activity are still places sprawling with activity… but it’s mostly reduced to reposts and posturing and especially posting photos of the thing you bought (I guess consumers can’t do much more). This has been a trend before the blackouts but it feels like those mark the point where it all broke down.

edent 3y ago

The problem with Eternal September isn't that n00bs are stupid lusers - but that we do a terrible job introducing people into our culture. So many online spaces seem to have an attitude of "if you don't already know the rules, you can't play". There's no helping newbies and neophytes learn the how and why of a community. Most organisations are desperate for new members. And yet, when people show up, they're laughed at, blocked, or sent away. Eternal September should be a cause of joy! Look! All these new people want to talk about our hobby! New friends to play with! New people we can tell our jokes to! New blood to help give us new ideas! Instead, they're treated as an annoyance or irrelevance. Why is that?

somedude895 3y ago
Because a sudden influx of new users tends to change the culture of an existig community. People don't like that. I know I was shunned for making low effort comments when first arriving here from Reddit, and in retrospect I'm glad that I wasn't coddled, I wasn't made to feel welcome, I had to learn the rules and now this is my favorite corner of the internet, because HN changed me, not the other way around.
- berkes 3y ago
  I think we can differentiate between rules that are in place to uphold a certain standard, and those that stop change from happening at all. The latter is guarantee for obsolence. The former a way to allow change, but not have that change affect the core of the community. E.g. at HN, deep conversations are core. So it makes sense to protect that with rules on friendlyness, effort and topics. But it's always a thin line and a spectrum. Something many (software) communities or community-leaders have a hard time with. So they go for absolutism. And often don't allow any change. The worst reason for (not) doing something is "we've always done it this way". Yet in many (software and FLOSS) communities that is exactly what is upheld. Keeping out new influences but also keeping out fresh members, ideas and users.
- theaussiestew 3y ago
  He never suggested that the influx of newbies should change the existing culture, precisely the opposite. The existing culture doesn't do a good enough job of helping onboard the newbies in a gentle way that integrates them. Instead, there's just indifference to this process.

raverbashing 3y ago

I wonder if the knowledge of Eternal September is also getting e.s. itself

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

myth_drannon 3y ago

I'm familiar with this term for over a decade and also experienced it during the 90's and I just had the realization that Canada is experiencing something similar right now with influx of immigrants, asylum seekers and temporary foreign workers. I'm pessimistic about the future and sad about the loss of the culture. I still use Usenet but it's not the same, Canada will continue to exist but it will be very different country .

zilti 3y ago

The software dev world also had its eternal september about 15 years ago I'd say. Since then we're even more being flooded with bullshit hypetrains and all.

SillyHNDorks 3y ago

Yawn. Nothing interesting happening in the world right now, innit? Submitter must be 20 or something.