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Ah yes, Hacker News... the go-to place for all your news on religion.

• deleted 14y ago
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  • lutusp 14y ago
    > What is up with all of the non-HN-appropriate stories today? Problem 1: there's no easily accessible, concisely worded description of HN's purpose. After a few click-throughs, I find: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html -- "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." "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." So the rules are out there, but nearly no one reads them. Also, the sentence "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity", taken out of context, might seem to allow any topic a poster might judge interesting. Problem 2: As HN becomes more popular, the discipline of the small, specialized audience evaporates. This happens to all growing online communities over time. I saw this happen on a number of occasions during the old Usenet days, 20 years ago. In short, it's an inevitable consequence of having a growing audience of contributors and readers, not all of whom fit the description of "hacker".
    • dccoolgai 14y ago
      Thanks for your response..I deleted my original response because after reading the guidelines I noticed one that says "don't complain about things not being appropriate for HN, flag them instead". Which makes sense. I guess you just have to take the lumps with your oatmeal and not complain about it.