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Have "good" small webs EVER prevailed? Every content system seems to get polluted by noise once it hits mainstream usage: IRC, Usenet, reddit, Facebook, geocit
by solardev 2y ago
Have "good" small webs EVER prevailed?
Every content system seems to get polluted by noise once it hits mainstream usage: IRC, Usenet, reddit, Facebook, geocities, Yahoo, webrings, etc. Once-small curated selections eventually grow big enough to become victims of their own successes and taken over by spam.
It's always an arms race of quality vs quantity, and eventually the curators can't keep up with the sheer volume anymore.
- squigz 2y ago> Have "good" small webs EVER prevailed? You ask on HN, one of the highest quality sites I've ever visited in any age of the Internet. IRC is still alive and well among pretty much the same audience as always. I'm not sure it's fair to compare that with the others.
- solardev 2y agoWell, niche forums are kinda different when they manage to stay small and niche. Not just HN but car forums, LED forums, etc. But if they ever include other topics, they risk becoming more mainstream and noisy. Even within adjacent fields (like the various Stacks) it gets pretty bad. Maybe the trick is to stay within a single small sphere then and not become a general purpose discussion site? And to have a low enough volume of submissions where good moderation is still possible? (Thank you dang and HN staff)
- rovr138 2y agoYes. That's the small web. A good example of the generalization problem you discuss is reddit. You have to unsubscribe from all the defaults and find the small, niche, communities about specific topics. If not, it's the same stuff, reposted, over and over, across different subs and/or social sites.
- squigz 2y agoI'm not entirely sure it's about content (while HN is certainly tech-focused, politics, health, philosophy all come up with regularity) or even content moderation, although they both certainly play a part (particularly the moderation around here. Thanks, staff!) I wonder if it is more to do with the community itself. HN users tend to have very intelligent discussions on pretty much anything, and discourages shitty, unnuanced, one-line takes. This, coupled with a healthy moderation system, makes it hard for the lower quality discussion to break in and override the good stuff.
- nick3443 2y agoThe car headlight forums seem to expose the weakness of small web though, in that a lot of the forums that show up in search are "sponsored" by one or two major brands and any open discussion or validation of off-brand solutions, AliExpress parts, etc are quickly shunned or banned.
- bongodongobob 2y agoIt's high quality when the content is within HN's bubble. Anything related to health, politics, or Microsoft is full of misinformation, ignorance, and garbage like any other site. The Microsoft discussions in particular are extremely low quality.
- squigz 2y agoI disagree. Even politics spurs intelligent, nuanced discussion here on HN. And to hold up discussions about MS as an example of 'extremely' low quality discussion is, ah, interesting. Do you have any recent examples of such discussions?
- bongodongobob 2y agoI hide every single article about MS because it's filled with all the neckbeardy tropes about their products being garbage spyware, switch to Linux, they're stealing your data, the OS is trash etc. It's comments from people who have never managed large scale MS based environments comparing their Windows Home to the other 90% of the business ecosystem that has nothing to do with home users or MS's main cash cow, businesses, Azure/Entra and M365. I'm done wasting my breath on MS here.
- squigz 2y agoThis is a funny comment in a thread about low quality discussion.
- bongodongobob 2y agoI'm describing why I no longer engage with MS related posts.
- skissane 2y agoI’ve posted four comments here on Microsoft in the last 30 days: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41499957 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41499957 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41408124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41408124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41335757 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41335757 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41327379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41327379 None of which fit your description of “neckbeardy tropes about their products being garbage spyware, switch to Linux, they're stealing your data, the OS is trash”. And it isn’t just me, because if you look at those comments, I was talking to other people who weren’t invoking those “neckbeardy tropes” either
- 38 2y agoits so easy to solve this problem, not sure why anyone hasnt done it yet. 1. build a userbase, free product 2. once userbase get big enough, any new account requires a monthly fee, maybe $1 3. keep raising the fee higher and higher, until you get to the point that the userbase is manageable. no ads, simple.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jachee 2y agoUntil N ad views are worth more than $X account creation fee. Then the spammers will just sell ad posts for $X*1.5. I can’t find it, but there’s someone selling sock puppet posts on HN even.
- abridges6523 2y agoThis sounds like a good idea. I do wonder if enough people would sign up for it to be a worthy venture because I think the main issue with ads is I think once you add any price at all dramatically reduces participation even if it’s not about cost some people just see the payment and immediately disengage.!
- htrp 2y agoAny curation mechanism that depends on passion and/or the goodwill of volunteers is unsustainable.