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To begin with, this would be a non issue if HN just introduced something like user provided tags and users can vote for/against (to circumvent abuse) Then the

• photonthug 1y ago
  Most platforms don't grow this feature because they can benefit from redirecting user energy into places that the platform is choosing. Or some vocal minority of the user base benefits from redirecting the platform to a place of their choosing. Similar to nest usurpation with eusocial insects, this is by definition parasitism when the energy-redirection is unwanted or unavoidable. In the specific case of AI it's way worse than the usual suspects where everyone is effected and so everyone has to have some opinion (looking at you politics). Because even some rant about how much you hate AI is directly feeding it at least 3 ways: first there's the raw data, then there's the free-QA aspect, then there's the free-advertisement aspect when others speak up to disagree with your rant. So yeah, even people who like some of the content sometimes quickly start to feel hijacked.
• Kiro 1y ago
  No. HN is good as it is and I find it disrespectful when newcomers are demanding changes like this. There's a good reason the forum has stayed the same for almost 20 years.
  • pxc 1y ago
    Topic tags wouldn't kill HN.
    • ivape 1y ago
      I don’t want the visual clutter.
      • andybak 1y ago
        greasemonkey / custom css
        • pxc 1y ago
          If the main purpose of topic tags is to allow filtering and aggregation, the tags don't need to be that visible/prominent in the first place. I'm not saying this is the answer either, because I don't know if it's a great fit for HN, but managing and verifying such tags would fit well into somethingkme the ol' the moderation and Meta-moderation systems from Slashdot. (Using LLMs to generate initial topic tags once per article instead of having independent implementations burn up compute over it dynamically also seems like a way more reasonable way to use them toward this end.)
  • ethbr1 1y ago
    > There's a good reason the forum has stayed the same for almost 20 years. You mean like when vote changing was added?
  • bookofjoe 1y ago
    1. I joined in 2016. I guess it all depends on what the cutoff is for "newcomers." I suppose you could call anyone who signed on after 2007 a newcomer. 2. "demanding?" I wrote: >Is it time to fork HN into AI/LLM and "Everything else/other?"I would very much like to enjoy HN the way I did years ago, as a place where I'd discover things that I never otherwise would have come across. The increasing AI/LLM domination of the site has made it much less appealing to me.
    • NaOH 1y ago
      >The increasing AI/LLM domination of the site has made it much less appealing to me. Since you say this, I'm curious why you've also submitted about a dozen AI/LLM or adjacent articles in just the last two weeks. One was even a few hours before posting this Ask HN. That makes me think I'm not understanding something about your thinking.
      • bookofjoe 1y ago
        You make sense. In my ideal world there would be HNxAI and HN. I'd submit to both, and also regularly frequent each.
  • c23gooey 1y ago
    The UI might be the same but there's clearly been a lot of work done on the backend of the site in that time edit to add: Don't gatekeep by using the pejorative "newcomers". Unless you're PG there will always be someone who has been around here longer than you
  • morgoths_bane 1y ago
    [dead]
  • DeusExMachina 1y ago
    I would like to be able to filter topics I don't care about. My acocunt is older than yours so I guess my opinion holds more weight according to your metric.
• kamaal 1y ago
  >>To begin with, this would be a non issue if HN just introduced something like user provided tags and users can vote for/against (to circumvent abuse) HN's power is its simplicity. We don't need any of those features. This is one of those rare old internet places that still has no feature clutter, ads and other distracting and irritating UI elements. Sometimes something works fine and it doesn't need to be changed.