17 ms·
Meet the People Taking over Hacker News
- 6thSigma 13y agoHN usernames would be helpful in the post.
- pg 13y agoGood point; added them.
- jdp23 13y agoI for one welcome our new YCombinatorial overlords!
- sillysaurus3 13y agoThank you for creating HN.
- AlexanderDhoore 13y agoChanged my life.
- el_duderino 13y agoeh
- smtddr 13y agoIt's possible. An open-house at expression.edu and one minute phone call from Pixar while I was driving to my old job changed mine(long story) ...and no, I didn't get the job. I don't even work in the computer-graphics field. I just took a wild shot in the dark, but it was the small snowball that started rolling down a very tall hill. By the time it reached the bottom, my life reached the top. Inspiration to change your life can come from anywhere; especially unexpected sources. I'd say HN is more expected than my failed phone interview.
- pbiggar 13y agoMine too. I've launched 2 companies here, and learned more from HN than I thought possible: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7193213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7193213
- corresation 13y agoWhy? Ignoring questions about the honesty or self-serving nature of the invisible-hand moderation, HN's rise came at the expense of a number of other sites, including reddit's /r/programming, Slashdot, dzone, etc. The draw of HN, despite serious (and continuing) technical deficiencies, were hordes of young programmers who wanted to gain the attention and favor of Paul Graham and YCombinator. So it's a serious question when I ask whether the technology community has been made better by Hacker News. I would quite sincerely say that no, it has been a net negative for the community, even if it serves Paul Graham and YCombinator well. The technology world is worse off for it.
- sillysaurus3 13y agoOn HN you have access to the world's experts on pretty much any tech (and some non-tech) topics you can think of. The only other community I've posted to is Reddit, but... It seems like what sets HN apart is the ability to craft and hone your reputation. If you want to become known as an expert in bitcoin, all that it takes is time, intelligence, and writing good comments on HN. You can gain a reputation on Reddit, but not as easily as here, I think. And it's usually a lot easier to get a negative reputation over there than to gain a positive one on here. You can also write a profile for yourself, which a lot of people will read. Reddit doesn't have an equivalent of that. Even if you just provide contact info, you still gain value. For example, after I rather publicly lost a bunch of money on Mt. Gox, someone emailed me to see if I was okay. It was a really nice gesture, and in hindsight I'm not sure I'd get that kind of experience out of some other community. But I'm of course biased, since I've spent my time here and not in other communities.
- snowwrestler 13y agoIt concerns me that people think this is true. I would bet that HN regulars include very few of the worlds experts on tech subjects; for the most part the world's experts are too busy to hang around on a web forum to chat. That's what makes them experts: focus and hard work. Which leads to my second point of concern, which is thinking that a person's HN "reputation" means anything beyond HN. I would be very surprised if it does. Speaking of bitcoin, it seems to me that the generally accepted experts tend to be people with a deep history of working on crypto currencies, or at least a deep history with bitcoin specifically. I've been participating, moderating, and in a few cases researching forum communities for about 15 years. It's easy to fake expertise; just make sure all your comments and posts are well-researched and fact checked before posting. That's not the same thing as being an actual expert--it's the difference between a Ph.D. in physics and an undergrad writing a research paper. No matter how accurate and readable their paper is, the undergrad is not an expert. And forums tend to disproportionately reward readability, humor, and writing style, over substance. I'm not trying to criticize your posts or expertise specifically; I don't know either well enough to comment. I'm just sounding a general cautionary note about taking online forums too seriously. They are great for entertainment, social gratification, and light education. But they are no substitute for the work of creating real accomplishments.
- ElliotH 13y agoReally excited to hear about the new tools, and mobile support.
- spindritf 13y agoI have just recently started using the excellent Hacker News 2 app[1] so if you're on Android, you might give it a try. It scrapes the page so it's almost like a mobile version of HN. It's also open source and regularly updated. [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.airlocksoftware.hackernews https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.airlocksof...
- jonah 13y agoI've been using this version on my mobile devices: http://hn.premii.com/ http://hn.premii.com/ It's very slick and works well 99% of the time.
- balac 13y agoI have also been using this for a while, it also has an excellent tablet interface.
- compare 13y agoKilling the mean and stupid stuff is great... but wish someone would kill the genuine but dismissive and negative stuff too.
- dang 13y agoUnfortunately, I don't know of any objective and fair way to do that. That doesn't mean we don't care about the problem, though. We do care about it and are working on it, and I've been looking at the data a lot. Ultimately, though, the solutions are going to have to mostly involve the community. We'll probably be posting about this more in the coming days.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- tptacek 13y agoWell, now that you're outed and running the place, let me tell you exactly what I think you should do: 1. Click over to whatever textbox allows you to edit the site guidelines. 2. Clarify the "what's on topic" clause. 3. Add a "criticisms must be constructive", perhaps deriving it from Paul Graham's "colleagues working together to uncover the truth" wording from the Pending Comments announcement. Start by spelling out the norms you want to see here, and we can all work to move the site in that direction without having to nail down the statutory language or figure out what 100 lines of lisp will best implement them.
- compare 13y agoEvery pessimist imagines their negativity to be extremely constructive and the "best" possible response. See the comment I just replied to above :)
- tptacek 13y agoMost pessimists aren't being overtly un-constructive. But there are some very common species of negative comments that are clearly that: for instance, glib or sarcastic dismissals; and uncivil, hostile, or accusative criticisms.
- joeblau 13y agoIs it still going to run on one machine, or are we going to get that cloud upgrade? Edit: Or did we already get that cloud upgrade and I missed it?
- alexchamberlain 13y agoDoes it need to? What would the user facing benefit be? Never found HN to be slow.
- iancarroll 13y agoHN has had at least two server failures I can recall within the last year.
- jffry 13y agoWasn't the last big "server failure" due to a hard drive kicking the bucket?
- iancarroll 13y agoI don't exactly remember but a cloud solution would have prevented that. :) Edit: oh, I'm talking about failures that were not planned
- alexchamberlain 13y agoA pair of dedicated servers would have worked too. In my line everyone wants to use multiple threads, but the same thing stands: using the cloud doesn't fix everything.
- icpmacdo 13y agoHackernews is the fastest loading website I regularly visit.
- darkstar999 13y agoJust out of curiosity from a business standpoint, is this budgeted as marketing for YC?
- pg 13y agoYC doesn't have budgets.
- edanm 13y agoThat's interesting, any chance you can expand on that? E.g. obviously you have some kind of operating budget to pay staff, offices, etc. Do you simply not break it down into different categories ahead of time? With an organisation the size of YC I don't understand how you can keep everything straight without something at least semi-formal.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- dang 13y agoI don't know anything about budgets, and Kat and Garry (and Sam!) will speak for YC, but here's how I see the HN part of your question. To me, YC and HN are like the business and editorial sides of a newspaper. They're one company, but optimize for different things. YC optimizes for great startups. HN optimizes for great content, that is, for curiosity. For HN to be "marketing for YC" would be like a newspaper's stories being "marketing for its advertisers". That would be a bad newspaper. Intellectual curiosity, the core value here (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) would wither. In other words, the way for HN to benefit YC is to just have the highest-quality content it can. That seems so obvious to me that I hope it is to everybody else too.
- lifeisstillgood 13y agoThat's a great comparison - but I do empathise for the GP - Lord Beaverbrook, Rupert Murdoch, William Randolph Hearst all show that it's they guy at the top of a newspaper that makes the difference. We depend on pg to maintain that separation, and to agree with you, I am sure he will. Maybe HN is just the pamphleteer equivalent - but we need to find new ways of gathering round the campfire and sharing stories - newspapers worked well for a while, what's coming next seems to have the HN shape - and still we rely on integrity in our leaders. In an age of the blockchain as the guardian of our trust, I find that interesting.
- nubela 13y agopg: Might I ask now that you are leaving these "obligations" behind to great people, what will you be doing with the spare cpu cycles?
- pg 13y agoWhat I was doing before I started YC: writing and programming.
- mbesto 13y agoSo no interaction on HN at all anymore?
- naiyt 13y agoHe mentioned that he'll still be around in the link: > I'll still be around as a user, but less frequently than when I felt I had to check the site every hour or so to make sure nothing had broken.
- S4M 13y agoDo you have particular projects worth mentioning here? How about Arc?
- pg 13y agoI'm going to keep writing essays. I don't usually decide what to write very far in advance though. Yes, I'll be working on Arc again. (I've been working in Arc regularly, since HN is written in it, but I haven't been able to spend much time thinking about the core language for the last 5 years or so.)
- oskarth 13y agoIt'd be interesting to hear what you think about Rich Hickey's work on Clojure. Things that surprised you in a good way, and things that you think it got wrong (i.e. things that won't be on the surviving main branch). I'm sure other lisp programmers would like to know your thoughts on this since Clojure has got itself quite a reputation in the last five years.
- tsomctl 13y agobut users will be happy to hear he has a plan to make it work better on mobile devices. iPhone 4s user here. This scares me. Unlike almost every other site, Hacker News currently works great in mobile Safari.
- jbeja 13y agoI love this site!.
- jbeja 13y agoAnd the downvotes are for?
- brudgers 13y agoI suspect it is because the comment adds little to the conversation. The possible responses are: Me too. No, you don't. Consider the downvotes as editorial feedback. How could your post be better? Adding supporting rationales, details, or examples which explain why you love HN might improve the communication of your ideas. On the other hand, sometimes posts are simply reactive and cannot really be improved. In that case, consider just deleting the post...in the best case, do so before receiving downvotes.
- jbeja 13y agoI don't realy mind the downvotes, just asking out curiosity and turn out to be a very interesting view: The world is getting darker and darker by seconds.
- mst 13y agoI would suspect the complete lack of content; we like our signal to noise ratio to be as high as possible around here, and applause lights don't really contribute to signal. Sorry.
- rafeed 13y agoGreat news on the mobile front. Thanks for HN, pg!
- tptacek 13y agoDaniel Gackle ('gruseom) is an absurdly great choice as moderator. I've never been so optimistic about HN. Great call. Daniel is possibly one of the least knee-jerk people I know. Uncloaked human moderation is also fantastic news.
- tokenadult 13y agoDaniel Gackle ('gruseom) is an absurdly great choice as moderator. Hear. Hear. His submission list https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=gruseom https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=gruseom is a fine example of articles that "gratify intellectual curiosity." This leadership adjustment bodes well for the future of HN as a community for thoughtful discussion.
- mbrutsch 13y agoWow, those are great posts. Pity I never saw most of them on the front page...
- k-mcgrady 13y ago>> "His submission list https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=gruseom https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=gruseom is a fine example of articles that "gratify intellectual curiosity."" While I agree with you it's interesting that only one submission in the last 84 days has had significant up votes. What does that say about the people on HN or the kind of stories they are looking to find here?
- sillysaurus3 13y agoIt seems like the problem might be that there's such a short amount of time to discover good content that gets submitted. During peak times, a submission can be pushed off the first page of /newest within ~20 minutes. If that's a problem, then one solution might be to change the number of items displayed on the new page from 30 to 120. I wouldn't be surprised if the first page of /newest gets 5x to 10x more views than the second page. People like scrolling; people click much less frequently. So upping the number of posts shown on the new page to 120 should give better content more time to be discovered. Another idea is to tweak the new page so that the first page of /newest shows every new submission for exactly two hours. That is, page 1 would consist of submissions that are 1 minute to 2 hours old. Also, maybe some kind of reminder to check the new page every so often would help, but that's probably a bit heavy-handed.
- suyash 13y agoPG: '... the fact that we get roughly equal grief for HN comments being bad and for being too quick to ban people is a sign he's been doing a good job so far.' - Not in all cases, some times honest opinions and straight talk might come across as rude but it's not meant that way. Strict Policing should also provide a way for sincere members to Voice their concern or Appeal if they get 'removed' or 'shadow banned' which happens quite often. Let me know your thoughts please.
- DanBC 13y agoPeople who get banned can either start again with a new account or can write a short email showing understanding of why they got banned and asking to be unbanned. Sometimes bans are weird accidents and writing a short email asking why you were banned will get an unban.
- stefantalpalaru 13y agoThe whole point of shadow-banning is tricking the banned user into thinking he doesn't need to make a new account. Yes, sometimes groveling in front of the abuser will get you a pass ("but just this once"). No, not all those abused will do it. I can't decide if a scenario where people are banned by accident is better or worse than one with evil moderators abusing their powers.
- namenotrequired 13y agoI can't decide if a scenario where people are banned by accident is better or worse than one with evil moderators abusing their powers. Would it be correct to paraphrase this as "Perhaps I'd rather be the victim of evil abuse than of a human error"? I'm simply wondering if I'm misinterpreting this or if it's a difference in values.
- TheLoneWolfling 13y agoI took it as "I'm not sure which alternative is worse: incompetence or malice" Of course it's not my comment, so take this with a grain of salt.
- JeremyMorgan 13y agoThis place is one that really seems to "get" their community and what we really want out of this place. I think not relying on it as a revenue source gives the powers that be the freedom to really serve the community. They're lucky to be in that spot and they're using it wisely. Nice choices and it'll be cool to how it's going to move forward.
- susi22 13y ago"Kat Manalac (katm) and Garry Tan (garry) will be the voice of YC on HN. They'll be the ones who respond to most "Ask YC" posts and individual comments related to YC." but the guidelines say: "Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something (e.g. to ask us questions about Y Combinator, or to ask or complain about moderation). If you want to say something to us, please send it to info@ycombinator.com." Should they be updated?
- pg 13y agoIt's ok to ask something of general interest. The point is that HN is not YC customer support.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Titanous 13y agoNow that the moderator's identity is public, a useful next step would be a public log of all moderator actions. lobste.rs has one[1] and the transparency is great. [1] https://lobste.rs/moderations https://lobste.rs/moderations
- tptacek 13y agoA log of moderator actions seems like an invitation to many years of debate over the moderator's actions. The current system, of sporadic conspiracy theories regarding moderation, actually seems preferable to me.
- Pacabel 13y agoThe debate will still be there either way, will it not? It's probably preferable to base such discussion on a correct log of the events, rather than speculation and unsubstantiated allegations.
- DanBC 13y agoMod logs are a call to concern trolls and bike shedding. They're usually a bad idea. Better is to assume good faith and accept that mistakes happen, rather than assume mods need to be kept in check and all actions need to be scrutinised.
- krapp 13y agoI don't know. Concern trolls and bike shedding already happens here. Given the conspiratorial nature of some of the community, maybe a bit more transparency is a good idea. Although, where this would really be useful is with banning. Unfortunately, banned users aren't supposed to know they're banned and being able to actually see what straw broke the camel's back might give the game away. But it might help demonstrate to users what's expected of them.
- hueving 13y ago
- nikcub 13y agoI guess i'll hijack this thread to ask anybody else if they have noticed a slip in quality of front page? I used to check HN first thing and read 50%+ of frontpage stories, now I barely click one or two. When there is something interesting, I've often read it elsewhere, or its an Ars re-hash of a story from yesterday. When I submit stories I find interesting and HN-worthy, I find them at 3-4 points having been submitted 12 hours ago. My perception is that the HN frontpage is being gamed more by social marketing teams, journalists who work for re-spamming blogs and growth hackers. The types of stories are more soft news, marketing from co's etc. than much more hard-tech. As an aside, right now the homepage is unusually good - must be because it's a weekend and the social media hackers are at home.
- pg 13y agoActually we're pretty sure there is less of that now than a couple years ago, because Daniel has written some amazingly effective software for detecting it.
- angry-hacker 13y agoHow does it work in general terms?
- grinich 13y agoThere are two rules for success: 1. Never reveal everything you know.
- tptacek 13y agoIt's not as good as it has been in the (far) past, but it's better than it was at its nadir, when the front page was saturated by stories from a few obviously baiting sites on a very few topics. One thing that does seem to have gotten persistently worse is the process of getting a good story onto the front page. Mediocre stories with immediate or simple appeal do seem to be doing a better job of outcompeting Rilke than they ever have in the past. It's a good site for halfway-decent posts about Golang or CSS compilers. Thankfully, it's become less hospitable for nakedly ambitious Bitcoin cheerleading or comically inept copyright law analyses. It would be great if the site could come up with some way to let the kinds of posts 'gruseom's submission log models get some space on the front page, but it would be bad if that attempt reverted us back to the worst of the Venturebeat and Techdirt days.
- Nux 13y agoThough having a community obsessed with speed, optimisation and scale, HN is the slowest site in my bookmarks, by FAR, not to mention the times when it's not working at all, sending people to a twitter page (happens every day). I hope this issue will get addressed, too.
- DanBC 13y agoI have a lousy connection and HN is pretty snappy for me. (Chrome on iOS on iPhone 4) http://imgur.com/o8HOoDX http://imgur.com/o8HOoDX Image is proof of lousy connection.
- ypodeswa 13y agoIt's actually pretty fast for me.
- jedberg 13y ago> HN is the slowest site in my bookmarks, by FAR You must not use reddit. (I'm allowed to say that since it's partly my fault reddit is slow)
- riffraff 13y agofunny, for me HN is fast enough that is the first thing I try to load of something seems broken with my connection. Gmail, twitter, facebook, kongregate etc will fail miserably but the tiny table-based HN code will load 99%& of the time.
- kshay 13y agoThis may just be the cache headers. Most sites have caching that tells browsers either "never cache this site" or "cache for a short time, but after that you must fetch a fresh version and can't use the cached version." HN's say "always try to fetch a fresh version, but if that fails, it's fine to show the user the cached version." So if your connection is actually down (vs. just slow), your browser's old cache of HN may still display, unlike most other sites.
- corresation 13y ago
- coupdejarnac 13y agoI recently began reading HN, and I really appreciate the quality of this forum. I was on Slashdot at the beginning, and having watched it slide into irrelevance with poor quality comments, it's heartening to find a place like HN. So, thank you.
- Pacabel 13y agoAs a former long-time Slashdot reader, the progressively-worse site designs were far, far more disruptive and harmful than any changes in the quality of the discussion might have been. Their beta site was what made me stop visiting earlier this year. The fact that such an unusable design could seriously be considered in the first place was partly responsible. Their lack of action when confronted with lots of very legitimate concern regarding the beta site was also responsible. Maybe things have changed since then. But I wouldn't know for sure, having not bothered to go back there.
- jasonwen 13y agoI was indeed surprised when i checked HN on mobile last week. The simple layout would suggest it would scale on mobile. Glad it's being worked on.
- dang 13y agoA couple of personal points that I may as well insert here. The account I'm now using, dang, was used briefly in 2010 by someone who didn't leave an email address. I feel bad for not being able to ask them if they still want it, so I'm considering this an indefinite loan. If you're the original owner, please email me and I'll give it back to you. The reason I want the name dang is that (a) it's a version of my real name and (b) it's something you say when you make a mistake. Second, very minor, but I need to leave this discussion for a bit while I bike to a different location. After that, I'll be in the thread... but I'm not giving up my bike ride for this :)
- ericb 13y agoBeing a moderator and giving the name back sort of smells funny to me. Sort of like selling a used police car with the original lights and paint job to non-police? Just a thought... Maybe limit the offer to return it to some time period, then keep it if you don't hear back?
- dang 13y agoGood point. I was thinking that because it's just software, we could restore the old account to its exact prior state. But the attention that accrues to a moderator account would make that impossible. So I guess I'll keep the offer open for three months, after which we can make some other arrangement. I probably should have picked a different name, but I was swayed by sentimental considerations: it was my email handle at my first job, and, my code tends to be about twice as long as pg's so maybe my username should be too.
- argumentum 13y agoMaybe you could give yourself and other admin/mods a different color for your username. Then there can be 2 "dangs" (of course this may need some hacking).
- CamperBob2 13y agoI don't think I've seen any mention of what's going to happen with the "pending comments" plan that raised some controversy on HN a few days ago (and which I feel is a suboptimal idea that solves a problem nobody has while creating a host of brand new ones). Is this still in the works?
- pg 13y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484304 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7484304
- CamperBob2 13y agoThanks -- sounds like a good call.
- rdl 13y agoThis seems like a great change. A dream team, and it's interesting to learn who the secret moderator has been! My fantasy would be some way of fixing /newest as well as adding topic tags; perhaps topic tags just within /newest. I'd be happy to read everything in /newest which matches: security, crypto, hypervisor, hardware, wireless, ...; I basically find it unusable as it is now. I don't find the level of (in)civility to be a personal deterrent, but I grew up on EFnet and alt.*, so that would be an almost 4chanian bar. I do dislike when it deters worthwhile contributions from people who are less thick skinned. I'd generally err on the side of "let people say stupid things so they can be debunked in public" vs. "censorship", but at some point lack of filtering becomes a form of censorship of its own (crapflooding, etc.)
- jl 13y agoIt's funny, I just wrote a blog post yesterday about how I don't contribute to many public discussions because I'm too afraid of the hostility that can come along with my participation (I'm pretty thin skinned). I haven't posted it yet specifically because I was agonizing over what I say getting picked apart sentence by sentence by an angry HN mob. I probably won't ever publish it. I hope Daniel can do more to fix the nastiness that can exist here on HN.
- Pacabel 13y agoQuality discussion isn't supposed to always feel good. Nor is it a bad thing when what you've expressed is heavily analyzed and perhaps contested. It's really no different than physical exercise. Yes, it can be painful in the short term, but over time it allows adaptation that increases strength and robustness.
- reeses 13y agoThis comment is a fine example of jl's points. While the tone was not rude or aggressive, commenting merely to contradict and to attempt to invalidate specific points, out of context, is unhelpful to someone who is self aware enough to admit they are pretty, thin, and skinny. (We know our own and can read through the code.) Jl is probably aware that this sensitivity can be overcome, and how to do so. Sometimes it's ok to pass over a thing in silence instead of telling a stranger to smile.
- stickhandle 13y ago>> I don't think he plans to change much about the appearance of the site On the whole, that's good. I would ask @kevin to make comment threads collapsible. Works that way on my hn android app and I love what it adds to the comment reading experience.
- pbiggar 13y agothe hacker news enhancement suite (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhancement-s/bappiabcodbpphnojdiaddhnilfnjmpm?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhanc...) is attractive and has collapsible comments. It would be great to see HN incorporate the design and some of the features (notifying you of the changes since you last read the story, for example, is amazing!)
- TheLoneWolfling 13y agoAny alternative for FF?
- krg 13y agoFor the collapsible comments, I've been using Greasemonkey along with this user script: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/138037 http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/138037
- kevin 13y agoThere is a very high likelihood of collapsable threads coming to HN.
- stefantalpalaru 13y agoSo which one of you guys knows how to make non-expiring pagination links?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jedberg 13y agoI was hoping you would hire Nick too so that he'd have more time to work on the code. I've been trying to get some changes to the spam filter through for a while. :)
- kogir 13y agoI've actually been full time for 1.5 years now, but large parts of that were learning, chasing down theories, and fighting fires. For spam and abuse, I'd love to move the logic to a separate system where I can use resources less carefully and not worry about taking down the site.
- gus_massa 13y agoI hope that you are still going hang out here to write oneliners.
- grinich 13y agoHow big is HN today? Pageviews, MAU, votes/day, etc.
- wdr1 13y agoOn behalf of the community, thanks PG!
- hyp0 13y agoInto these winds of change, I'd like to again toss my suggestion that never takes off: Divide HN into two "sub-HNs", one for "intellectual curiosity", the other for everything else (e.g. startup news, web frameworks, A/B testing, meta-HN... even those YC startup announcements).
- sktrdie 13y agoIf they change the UI they'll probably break 100+ apps that are using HTML scraping to get HN's data.
- krapp 13y agoWell, they should have an API, then it wouldn't matter. Until they changed the API.
- jebblue 13y agoAbout making it look better on mobile, I'm getting back into front end work lately and am finding jQuery Mobile to very interesting. It takes a lot of the pain out of dealing with JavaScript and looks it nice. This means it is possible to teach old dogs new tricks.
- ancarda 13y agoAre there any plans to opensource HN? A while ago there seemed to be an indication it would happen eventually but it was removed about a month later: https://github.com/HackerNews/HN/commit/350fba6dfec1c23a0b764851c634a3e0fdcc3ac0 https://github.com/HackerNews/HN/commit/350fba6dfec1c23a0b76...
- staunch 13y agoI just wish Hacker News would become a much better place for showing off and discussing projects. We have so many hackers here making things and it's almost entirely hidden from view. There's too much noise and no real place to post. A very simple but huge improvement would be a dedicated place for "Show HN" posts, but so much more could be done.
- dang 13y agoI particularly want to do more in this area. HN ought to be a hotbed of experimentation and maximum technical aliveness.
- DanBC 13y agoIt would be great if the criticism that accompanies "Show HN" posts was more useful and less vicious.
- cmbaus 13y agoI have to agree. I've been working on a prototype for an app that I think is pretty cool, but I'm afraid to release here it in an early state. I'm concerned the focus will be on what it isn't versus what it could be. It is one thing to provide constructive criticism. It is another to be condescending. Unfortunately, and maybe it is just human nature, but I think we see too much of the second. I'd love to see more help in getting projects off the ground. That would be a great compliment to Y Combinator. Since many Y Combinator alum are on the site, they could use their experience to help HN contributors who aren't in the YC program.
- mrfusion 13y agoI was kind of hoping to read about leftover swap space on Linux :-( What gets put there? Could passwords be on it even after you shut down your computer?
- jl 13y agoAs PG's wife, I think I am the only person who knows exactly how much time, energy and thought he devoted to Hacker News. More than most HN users would guess, that's for sure. I don't think he ever planned it that way and I'm certain this site stole valuable brain power that could have been focused on writing essays. So thank you Paul for spending so much time making Hacker News such a great place to visit each day.
- Zenst 13y agoThanks JL, he's a good man with good plans and thank you for sharing him. Now you folks have some personal time, you over earned it on many levels, smell those roses.
- raymondh 13y agoThank you both. My wife and I love this site.
- x0x0 13y agosince his duties have to be handed off to three people it makes clear, at minimum after the fact, how much work he was doing
- noonespecial 13y agoI was a fan of the essays from way back. It seemed to me like HN was an extension of that process. Almost like "the final essay". The one that is still being written.
- EC1 13y agoI smell an HN movie.
- BerislavLopac 13y agoNah, not enough drama.
- 13y ago
- EGreg 13y agoWhat are the two senses of the word thoughtful? Is it a Cali thing? :)
- roryokane 13y agoI’m guessing “kind to others (thinks of others’ well-being)” and “thinks a lot (about intellectual things)”.
- orlandob 13y agoHN is my #1 source of information on the internet. Without HN (an HN ALGOLIA!) I'd be lost.
- phillijw 13y agoCongrats, Dang! It's a little ironic that you won't even see this message.
- craigmccaskill 13y agoDaniel Gackle (dang/gruseom) is a great guy. My wife and I have had the fortune of hosting him via Airbnb during a couple of his visits to MTV. Fantastic conversation from what's obviously a really smart dude.
- davidw 13y agoA few comments: I hope that with perhaps a bit more time available, dang will be able to kill more political stories as well as 'outrage' stories about things not very directly connected to tech/startups - those articles that get you riled up, but really don't lead to any productive or interesting discussions. More importantly, a big thanks to everyone involved! I live pretty far from Silicon Valley or anywhere else where everyone eats sleeps and breathes tech, so it's always been nice to have this window into that world.
- dang 13y agoHi David. Yes, we're going to move further in that direction. You probably noticed, to pick one example, that there have been almost no Ukraine/Crimea stories on the front page. I doubt that we'll try to ban political stories altogether, partly because some (e.g. Snowden) do overlap with HN's core topics, but mainly because it's hard to define "political". But "articles that get you riled up, but really don't lead to any productive or interesting discussions" is, to me, a narrower and clearer criterion that is pretty easy to apply fairly. PG has spoken about it in similar terms. I think we'll probably get more active about those. But we won't do anything major very quickly.
- davidw 13y agoAwesome, thanks! Here's another random idea. I think it would be more difficult to code up, but there are certain comments where I think "ok, this is a wrong answer, but in good faith". Those should get "pinned" at 0 karma. Other comments should get pinned at 1 - I wouldn't want to see them cross over into negative territory, but they aren't great either. I would envision this working by clicking a 1 or a 0, and as votes go up or down for the comment, my contribution changes as a consequence. Say I click 0 when it's at 1. It goes to 0. Others pile on, and it goes to -1. At that point my downvote actually becomes an upvote to push it back towards 0. All those dynamic calculations would probably be a PITA, so I can completely understand something like that not seeing the light of day, but I just thought it was an interesting idea in terms of being able to say "ok, this is not a good comment, but it's not a mean one or anything, so it should have a floor under it".
- brubaker 13y agoAre they going to add a few servers to the mix so response time isn't atrocious.
- pron 13y agoI'd like to make what might probably be an unpopular suggestion, but I'll make it nonetheless :) Perhaps you should simply block all comments on those stories that are likely to cause some "nonconstructive" (I don't really like the term) controversy or those whose subject has already been discussed on other stories, rather than killing them (dropping them from the front page, that is). The reason I'm offering this is because of an argument I had with dang (gruseom) about a week ago over a story that expressed a very clear political opinion (which was particularly pertinent to HN). The reason it's important for these stories to be featured on the front page is that much of what is done in Silicon Valley is extremely political – from Uber to the latest GitHub scandal. I completely understand the desire for HN to stay away from politics, but that's not the result. Seemingly shying away from politics is itself a very powerful political statement, which is often apparent to anyone reading HN when something important is going on. It either communicates that you don't understand what politics is and your role in it, reduces the role of engineers to that of mere technicians at the same time most of them claim to be the exact opposite, or sends a message of silent agreement with the status quo. In fact, this was one of the main points of that killed story. Just as an example – unrelated to that particular argument – featuring stories about Uber's success while dropping stories expressing outrage over their practices either expresses agreement with their behavior or a lack of understanding of how political is everything they do. "Outrage" over Uber isn't any less "constructive" or political than a discussion of, say, how much money they're making and how. HN isn't /r/programming. It is not a technical discussion site (although it is that, too), but one for all things SV or hacker-related, including the effect of technology on society and vice-versa. As such, HN can't hide from political discussions over those very issues. But because "political" stories can and often do generate heated and sometimes bigoted debates, it might be best to conserve the site's desired collegial atmosphere by simply banning comments on certain stories. Dropping them from the front page sends a clear message that leaves a very bad taste in many of the readers. Letting them be, but prohibiting debate in the comments says: this is an important opinion that many of our readers think you should be exposed to. Read it or not as you wish, or post an opposite thoughtful opinion, but don't bicker over it.
- SeanDav 13y agoI can testify personally to the effort that these guys put in. Nick Sivo (kogir) spent much more time on me with a problem than I ever would have expected. Thanks Nick and congrats to all the HN guys on their official roles!
- bakhy 13y ago"the fact that we get roughly equal grief for HN comments being bad and for being too quick to ban people is a sign he's been doing a good job so far." - lol. spoken like an economist :) it's a pretty weak sign* , but i will assume the decision is not based solely on counting emails. (*) try banning constructive commenters on the site. you would then probably also receive complaints about banning and comment shittiness in equal measure.
- argumentum 13y agoOne of the things I admire most about PG is that everything he creates seem like extensions of his mind. He, more than anyone else I've ever met, seems to take life as a genuine exploration: not just of the world, but of himself. It's kind of sad to see him "sign of" HN and YC so quickly and without fuss. Part of me wants a grander send-off, with commemorations, "look backs", speeches etc. He certainly would deserve this, though I doubt he'd want it. But it's not really that sad, because each act of his life's play has been greater than the last. Having been so inspired by what he's done so far, I can only imagine what comes next. Thanks PG for Hacker News and Y-combinator .. both have changed the world for the better. Also, thanks for handing them off to such awesome hackers, who will certainly carry them on and up.