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Okay so first, web.py is sort of old news. That being said, shouldn't the inherent nature of HN filter "old news" itself? If 14 people (at this time) found th

Okay so first, web.py is sort of old news. That being said, shouldn't the inherent nature of HN filter "old news" itself? If 14 people (at this time) found this link interesting enough to up vote then who are we to say its not newsworthy? The slope gets a bit slippery. The other day someone posted a link to the Sinatra framework, which I've heard of but never looked at until it it made the front page here. I think the democratic nature of HN should do the filtering for us. and _that_ being said I'd still like a downvote button ;-) (and why are you being downvoted? is this too meta HN? I'm not sure where else to discuss these topics)

mr_luc 17y ago
Right, the democratic component (and inability to do digg-style burying that results) is what makes the news on these kinds of sites better than other options. The danger, of course, is: how is HN different from reddit.com/r/programming ? How does it stay different? I think it's clear that we would want it to retain a distinctive flavor, but it seems almost inevitable that it would morph into proggit -- unless, perhaps, pg made the user interface purposely difficult. ;) Suggested solutions are sometimes code, sometimes convention. Code: longer time limits on deeply nested conversations. Like this one. Convention: no blog spam wrapping other people's content. (Filters fail here because it's worth a human's time to write just enough almost-relevant 'content' to surround a link, so humans are essential). Different communities can adopt different conventions, and those can shape and inform the voting going forward -- which may be one of the only things that let different democratic news sites retain their distinctive characteristics. So, meh. Heh, it was just an idea. /grumble