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That's a simplistic view. This site serves the startup community, and it's warped by the wants/needs of YC because of its genesis. Bringing in moderators like

That's a simplistic view. This site serves the startup community, and it's warped by the wants/needs of YC because of its genesis. Bringing in moderators like dang has helped a lot - the site definitely got too cultish around pg and YC, and it seems like things have improved since then, both content and attitudes of people on the site. There seems to be more of a chinese wall between decision making for YC and HN now. I would hope/think over time that the remaining unfairness will drift away, like the fact that YC founders see each other highlighted, so they can form a casual voting rings around YC stories (and the job ads I agree are unfair and bad for the community too). It's not even healthy for HN/YC long term - the community will go elsewhere if the values of the site don't lead to good content/community.

brudgers 11y ago
Following the money is rarely simple and is an heuristic of high utility. Alas, it often leads to a world view that is less comforting than I would wish. The success of HN is, in my opinion, due to the large degree of alignment between YC's motivation for HN and the benefits of HN for individual users. The alignment is possible because YC's business thrives on monetizing extreme outliers and ignoring the fat middle. This enables it to thrive on HN's exhaust fumes. If for no other reason, job postings for YC companies is useful for reminding the HN community that HN is a business asset not Usenet. The reason it is useful is to rationalize a set of standards somewhat similar to a workplace.
noir_lord 11y ago
> This site serves the startup community, No the site serves YC that it happens to have some overlap with serving the general startup scene and hacker crowd is a good thing but it's not the primary thing. > the community will go elsewhere if the values of the site don't lead to good content/community. Only if a threshold is reached and there is a consensus that it's time to move on, there appears to be no sign of that, realistic people realise that HN while a valuable resource belongs to YC.
garry 11y ago
This comment is unfair to PG. There's no way for you to know this, but behind the scenes PG has always been protective of Hacker News and has been aware that HN exists outside of YC and has utility for the community at large. YC founders are actually subject to voting rings as well, and often get dinged. I get that there is a knee-jerk anti-authoritarian kind of sentiment here, but in this case, the tone and attitude is undeserved.
- andrewljohnson 11y ago
  1) I wish you'd dispute the meat of what I said: * That YC founders can see each other differently on the site (colored names). * This naturally leads to more upvotes for YC stories. * These upvotes would be unlikely to trigger voting rings. * This provides a non-transparent (unfair?) advantage for YC startups, and a false signal about the interest in these startups overall for people unware. 2) The job listings thing I have less to harp on, but I still find it a little weird that there is a hugely popular job board reserved for a few hundred companies. 3) The comment wasn't intended as an attack on pg, and I understand the YC is from the top down well-meaning and full of good people. But the site is better, more transparent, and more fair under the new management, at least it seems that way to me. I imagine the cultishness is recognized and unwanted... hence pg not being on the leaderboard: https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders (and totally withdrawing from the site overall)

brudgers 11y ago

Following the money is rarely simple and is an heuristic of high utility. Alas, it often leads to a world view that is less comforting than I would wish. The success of HN is, in my opinion, due to the large degree of alignment between YC's motivation for HN and the benefits of HN for individual users. The alignment is possible because YC's business thrives on monetizing extreme outliers and ignoring the fat middle. This enables it to thrive on HN's exhaust fumes. If for no other reason, job postings for YC companies is useful for reminding the HN community that HN is a business asset not Usenet. The reason it is useful is to rationalize a set of standards somewhat similar to a workplace.

noir_lord 11y ago

> This site serves the startup community, No the site serves YC that it happens to have some overlap with serving the general startup scene and hacker crowd is a good thing but it's not the primary thing. > the community will go elsewhere if the values of the site don't lead to good content/community. Only if a threshold is reached and there is a consensus that it's time to move on, there appears to be no sign of that, realistic people realise that HN while a valuable resource belongs to YC.

garry 11y ago

This comment is unfair to PG. There's no way for you to know this, but behind the scenes PG has always been protective of Hacker News and has been aware that HN exists outside of YC and has utility for the community at large. YC founders are actually subject to voting rings as well, and often get dinged. I get that there is a knee-jerk anti-authoritarian kind of sentiment here, but in this case, the tone and attitude is undeserved.

andrewljohnson 11y ago
1) I wish you'd dispute the meat of what I said: * That YC founders can see each other differently on the site (colored names). * This naturally leads to more upvotes for YC stories. * These upvotes would be unlikely to trigger voting rings. * This provides a non-transparent (unfair?) advantage for YC startups, and a false signal about the interest in these startups overall for people unware. 2) The job listings thing I have less to harp on, but I still find it a little weird that there is a hugely popular job board reserved for a few hundred companies. 3) The comment wasn't intended as an attack on pg, and I understand the YC is from the top down well-meaning and full of good people. But the site is better, more transparent, and more fair under the new management, at least it seems that way to me. I imagine the cultishness is recognized and unwanted... hence pg not being on the leaderboard: https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders (and totally withdrawing from the site overall)