3 ms·

I feel the same, but it's an unavoidable cycle IMHO. Any subculture that becomes popular gets diluted by more average people, and the content becomes more basic

I feel the same, but it's an unavoidable cycle IMHO. Any subculture that becomes popular gets diluted by more average people, and the content becomes more basic and banal. You can flag and downvote, but eventually there are enough people who treat a platform like HN as a general discussion board, without regard for cultural alignment. It seems that stuff like politics and random recipes are on the rise, but it's not against the rules, so maybe it really is just a general discussion board that's evolving into the mainstream.

pjerem 2mo ago
Well, it’s our fault. We had forums with categories and those had some random / chit chat category to have off topic discussions with the community while staying on topic anywhere else. And a lot of the time, this random section was the more active of the whole forum but that was ok because it didn’t impact the other discussions. But those were less engaging than social networks i guess (which hn is) so here we are.
- tkfoss 2mo ago
  ...whats "on topic" for HN?
  - dsr_ 2mo ago
    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, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
    - kergonath 2mo ago
      > If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Or, if you want to be less philosophical: anything that other people would upvote and not flag.
    - tkfoss 2mo ago
      I feel like the cocktail recipes site posted falls closer to on-topic than off-topic then, having only Ingredients and Recipes pages, not even a blog...
tkfoss 2mo ago
Just because you might prefer coffee or soylent doesn't mean some other hackers don't like cocktails. Make yourself some https://entropia.de/Tschunk https://entropia.de/Tschunk and relax!
- chickensong 2mo ago
  You've missed the point. I enjoy cocktails, and I even think the linked page here is nice, both in cocktail selection and page design, but I don't think it particularly belongs on HN. Here's an example recipe page that does feel appropriate to me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48408854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48408854 I'm not trying to win any wars here, I only provided a possible explanation to someone's question. Culture evolves and that's fine, or maybe the ratio of technical vs non-technical content is actually stable on HN? I really don't know, but to me it feels like the the volume of random content and low-grade comments is increasing. Personally, I don't think that represents the spirit of HN, but my comment was downvoted so either I'm wrong, the culture has shifted, or the mainstream is already the majority here. I'm a fan of the Caipirinha however, so thanks for the Tschunk recipe.
  - tkfoss 1mo ago
    I see what you mean, and agree that that kind of submission taking a place on front page would indeed be better, but this submission is still original, done-by-hand work, while pancakes guy served out LLM slop...

pjerem 2mo ago

Well, it’s our fault. We had forums with categories and those had some random / chit chat category to have off topic discussions with the community while staying on topic anywhere else. And a lot of the time, this random section was the more active of the whole forum but that was ok because it didn’t impact the other discussions. But those were less engaging than social networks i guess (which hn is) so here we are.

tkfoss 2mo ago
...whats "on topic" for HN?
- dsr_ 2mo ago
  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, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
  - kergonath 2mo ago
    > If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Or, if you want to be less philosophical: anything that other people would upvote and not flag.
  - tkfoss 2mo ago
    I feel like the cocktail recipes site posted falls closer to on-topic than off-topic then, having only Ingredients and Recipes pages, not even a blog...

tkfoss 2mo ago

Just because you might prefer coffee or soylent doesn't mean some other hackers don't like cocktails. Make yourself some https://entropia.de/Tschunk https://entropia.de/Tschunk and relax!

chickensong 2mo ago
You've missed the point. I enjoy cocktails, and I even think the linked page here is nice, both in cocktail selection and page design, but I don't think it particularly belongs on HN. Here's an example recipe page that does feel appropriate to me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48408854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48408854 I'm not trying to win any wars here, I only provided a possible explanation to someone's question. Culture evolves and that's fine, or maybe the ratio of technical vs non-technical content is actually stable on HN? I really don't know, but to me it feels like the the volume of random content and low-grade comments is increasing. Personally, I don't think that represents the spirit of HN, but my comment was downvoted so either I'm wrong, the culture has shifted, or the mainstream is already the majority here. I'm a fan of the Caipirinha however, so thanks for the Tschunk recipe.
- tkfoss 1mo ago
  I see what you mean, and agree that that kind of submission taking a place on front page would indeed be better, but this submission is still original, done-by-hand work, while pancakes guy served out LLM slop...