4 ms·

We're participating in it right now. HN is a living example of a simple website facilitating discussion between humans with a shared interest. That's why I come

We're participating in it right now. HN is a living example of a simple website facilitating discussion between humans with a shared interest. That's why I come here more than any other news/social site now.

sieabahlpark 1mo ago
[dead]
Xorakios 1mo ago
agreed
zem 1mo ago
what would be amazing would be a resurgence of the old style forums, but where users could choose to see a flat or tree view of a discussion (and even customize those views, e.g. the tree could be reddit style without subject lines, or slashdot style with them)
- spockz 1mo ago
  SwedeSpeed has this. It is a forum, posts have threads. It isn’t always nice because the threading/three view also breaks the sense of time and makes it harder to see new posts. I actually prefer a linear view with posts that quote what they want to reply to. This also allows a single post to reply and combine multiple remarks. So it allows more for convergence instead of divergence as with a tree.
  - zem 1mo ago
    right, i agree with you - there's no one size fits all. that's why the best thing would be to let the reader toggle views on any given post/thread. one could even experiment with fancier views like a flat layout but with a git tree like sidebar that shows the perhaps multiple parents for any post and support for clicking on a post and popping up a mini thread with just the posts it's replying to.
tavavex 1mo ago
I didn't live long enough to see the entire lifetime of HN, but it's definitely part of the old web in my book. Its functionality is the same it's always been, it's rock solid, lightweight and simple. No personalization or engagement maximizing, no modern-style ads. Being spun off from something as big as Y Combinator meant they can run this site almost indefinitely.
- CoastalCoder 1mo ago
  > I didn't live long enough to see... Whoa, careful with your verb tenses! You just wrote a ghost story :)
  - tavavex 1mo ago
    Have seen. Too late to edit it now...
    - apsurd 1mo ago
      havent lived. “I didnt live long enough” means your life ended! past tense. hasn’t means its still going “have not (yet)”. I don’t know the formal rules behind it all though. its interesting because it sounds more correct to use have not yet because your life is still going on but its going on in the forward direction, not backwards in time to overlap an earlier HN state. So you could say its not right, but the sentence sounds/feels more right to preserve that your life is still going on. We like that you are still here with us.
      - sebastiennight 1mo ago
        > your life is still going on but its going on in the forward direction, not backwards in time to overlap an earlier HN state Wouldn't the proper tense be "I won't have lived long enough to see the entire lifetime of HN" then? > We like that you are still here with us. Same here, and it feels like a very "old web" kind of feeling, as we're expressing this empathy towards an anonymous stranger with a very deemphasized username. I find it surprising how much empathy has seemingly been on a decline as the Web went from anonymity to pseudonymity to everyone's full name and face being attached to their online presence.
amazingamazing 1mo ago
A simple website controlled by VCs, lol
HaloZero 1mo ago
Isn't there a vested interest here for bots though to communicate here though? HN is a certainly a smaller but more targeted market but there's no reason to assume we're communicating with other humans here necessarily especially given HN demographics.
- cucumber3732842 1mo ago
  Does it matter? A 3rd world getting paid to post content, the bot that replaces the shill, and a first world office worker that's been indoctrinated by and is parroting either of the former are functionally equivalent as far as the next user cares because the text they put bore that next user's eyes is the same.
  - AlecSchueler 1mo ago
    Talking with other humans actually has real world effects.
- sharts 1mo ago
  HN these days is like the tech chat-rooms of old internet.
abc123abc123 1mo ago
This is the way! The old web never went away. It is still there for the people who care to look. If you are curious, good places to start is here, gopher/gemini, mailinglists, usenet, irc, webrings/blogs, mastodon/pleroma instance etc. Basically every area that is either forgotten by the mainstream, or completely unknown, and make sure the author is a person and not a company and you'll be on your way to way more interesting discussions, texts, content and interaction, that the B.S. of facebook, twitter and commercial web sites.

sieabahlpark 1mo ago

[dead]

Xorakios 1mo ago

agreed

zem 1mo ago

what would be amazing would be a resurgence of the old style forums, but where users could choose to see a flat or tree view of a discussion (and even customize those views, e.g. the tree could be reddit style without subject lines, or slashdot style with them)

spockz 1mo ago
SwedeSpeed has this. It is a forum, posts have threads. It isn’t always nice because the threading/three view also breaks the sense of time and makes it harder to see new posts. I actually prefer a linear view with posts that quote what they want to reply to. This also allows a single post to reply and combine multiple remarks. So it allows more for convergence instead of divergence as with a tree.
- zem 1mo ago
  right, i agree with you - there's no one size fits all. that's why the best thing would be to let the reader toggle views on any given post/thread. one could even experiment with fancier views like a flat layout but with a git tree like sidebar that shows the perhaps multiple parents for any post and support for clicking on a post and popping up a mini thread with just the posts it's replying to.

tavavex 1mo ago

I didn't live long enough to see the entire lifetime of HN, but it's definitely part of the old web in my book. Its functionality is the same it's always been, it's rock solid, lightweight and simple. No personalization or engagement maximizing, no modern-style ads. Being spun off from something as big as Y Combinator meant they can run this site almost indefinitely.

CoastalCoder 1mo ago
> I didn't live long enough to see... Whoa, careful with your verb tenses! You just wrote a ghost story :)
- tavavex 1mo ago
  Have seen. Too late to edit it now...
  - apsurd 1mo ago
    havent lived. “I didnt live long enough” means your life ended! past tense. hasn’t means its still going “have not (yet)”. I don’t know the formal rules behind it all though. its interesting because it sounds more correct to use have not yet because your life is still going on but its going on in the forward direction, not backwards in time to overlap an earlier HN state. So you could say its not right, but the sentence sounds/feels more right to preserve that your life is still going on. We like that you are still here with us.
    - sebastiennight 1mo ago
      > your life is still going on but its going on in the forward direction, not backwards in time to overlap an earlier HN state Wouldn't the proper tense be "I won't have lived long enough to see the entire lifetime of HN" then? > We like that you are still here with us. Same here, and it feels like a very "old web" kind of feeling, as we're expressing this empathy towards an anonymous stranger with a very deemphasized username. I find it surprising how much empathy has seemingly been on a decline as the Web went from anonymity to pseudonymity to everyone's full name and face being attached to their online presence.

amazingamazing 1mo ago

A simple website controlled by VCs, lol

HaloZero 1mo ago

Isn't there a vested interest here for bots though to communicate here though? HN is a certainly a smaller but more targeted market but there's no reason to assume we're communicating with other humans here necessarily especially given HN demographics.

cucumber3732842 1mo ago
Does it matter? A 3rd world getting paid to post content, the bot that replaces the shill, and a first world office worker that's been indoctrinated by and is parroting either of the former are functionally equivalent as far as the next user cares because the text they put bore that next user's eyes is the same.
- AlecSchueler 1mo ago
  Talking with other humans actually has real world effects.
sharts 1mo ago
HN these days is like the tech chat-rooms of old internet.

abc123abc123 1mo ago

This is the way! The old web never went away. It is still there for the people who care to look. If you are curious, good places to start is here, gopher/gemini, mailinglists, usenet, irc, webrings/blogs, mastodon/pleroma instance etc. Basically every area that is either forgotten by the mainstream, or completely unknown, and make sure the author is a person and not a company and you'll be on your way to way more interesting discussions, texts, content and interaction, that the B.S. of facebook, twitter and commercial web sites.