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Could you elaborate on what is HN if not things that hackers find interesting (particularly "very interesting")? Not to be pedantic, but: "On-Topic: Anything
by tc 17y ago
Could you elaborate on what is HN if not things that hackers find interesting (particularly "very interesting")? Not to be pedantic, but:
"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."
Also keep in mind that some of us no longer follow Reddit, so we might prefer if HN took a slightly broader view than Erlang innards.
- abstractbill 17y agoCould you elaborate on what is HN if not things that hackers find interesting (particularly "very interesting")? In my opinion something is on-topic if most hackers would find it interesting, and most non-hackers would not. Otherwise you might as well just drop the "Hacker", and call it "News".
- tc 17y agoI believe the referenced story qualifies under that metric. In part, it's revisionist history -- and thereby anti-mainstream. And I very much doubt that the TMZ crowd would even be interested in parsing stories told from such a business/technical perspective. But that's neither here nor there. In all actuality, I do sympathize with the rational for your proposed metric. I'm just pointing out that the nuance and angle of a story can push something distinctly into that category in cases where simply reading the title might lead one to have a "Not HN!" spasm.
- anigbrowl 17y agoVery true, but then much of the marketing and entrepreneurial fluff that gets posted here is neither news, hacking, or especially useful from a business standpoint. A few people treat HN as their personal viral marketing vector.
- jgrahamc 17y agoWell, I may be a programmer but not all things are programming related. I happen to like speaking in French, but I don't come here to hear about that. So, although I found the article interesting, it wasn't what I come here for.
- prodigal_erik 17y agoSwitching a forum from a narrow to a broad interest is a problem for people who have narrow interests. You have an alternative (use several fora), they don't.