

If you're really upset about having topics you personally don't like on HN... - mvandemar

Lately I have seen more than a few "why is this here?" type comments on topics that have already gone popular on HN. The bottom line is that happens because not everyone has the same interests, and this is a social site with many different people on it.<p>If the fact that you have to share this wonderful digital playground with the other kids really, really bothers you, then this is for you. It's a Greasemonkey script called "HN Toolkit":<p>http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039<p>Part of the functionality is the ability to blacklist submissions, either by keyword in the title or in the domain (or entire domains, whichever way you want to look at it). It cycles through the list of stories and matches each against the blacklist, adding style = 'display: none;' to each match found.<p>Hope this helps.
======
pook
If you haven't read Clay Shirky's essays on the difficulty of maintaining an
online community, do it now (
<http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html> and
<http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_user.html> ). Actually, read all the
source articles in Spolsky's Best Software Writing I (
<http://brevity.org/misc/bestswi.html> )

Every online community, from the very beginning, has faced its own crisis of
identity as it scales. Perpetual September is as inevitable as the second law
of thermodynamics.

I long considered HN to be a counterexample precisely because the group is not
only self-selecting, but constitutionally disinclined to enjoy shallowness. A
group of true geeks and entrepreneurs does not have to be coerced into
expressing a love of Erlang internals and a hatred of celebrity gossip.

But, inevitably, any given community will attract people with different
interests. A war of sorts inevitably occurs as both subcultures clash and try
to gain power. The result is one we've seen in every single online community
that has ever been created.

imho, the culture of HN is smart enough to either find a solution or at least
a way to delay this process. There's a reason PG tells us not to complain
about "redditization": such complaints are the very thing that dissolves a
sense of community and shared values.

~~~
DenisM
_constitutionally disinclined to enjoy shallowness_

The 154 people who upmodded this article didn't get the memo:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1162832>

------
icco
I find that it's pretty easy to determine what is on topic. I usually click
through about 60% of the articles that make it to the front page, plus a few
random new articles from time to time. 95% of the time, one makes the
realization that this is a new school of thought or an interesting piece of
commentary on a current topic. 5% of the time it is just people self promoting
their restating of things that someone else already said (on hacker new no
less) and other people self promoting their company. On that 5% I leave a "why
is this here" comment. And every time I get a well written comment telling me
why this product is interesting or why this persons opinion should be
considered. If you can't stand people asking questions about things they don't
understand, then maybe you sir have problems sharing this "digital
playground".

But whatever the case may be, thanks for the link, although not sure why this
post is here instead of just a link post ;)

also, here is the on-topic rules for people too lazy to click the link: "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.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're
evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters,
or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-
topic."

~~~
mvandemar
How did my suggesting a solution for people who apparently want it become "If
you can't stand people asking questions about things they don't understand,
then maybe you sir have problems sharing this "digital playground"."...?

There were people discussing the fact that they would like to see certain
keywords actually banned from HN, and they were suggesting it on submissions
that already had over 100 points and plenty of people participating in the
comments. If you happen to be one of those people who thinks their opinion on
what belongs > what the actual majority thinks then this can help. This was
posted for them or those who feel the same way but didn't comment.

The reason this is a post instead of a link is that I wanted to explain why I
was posting it, and what element of the script was relevant.

~~~
icco
There was a little bit of facetiousness in there, sorry if it offended you.

I haven't seen many +100 vote posts with "why" posts, so I was more thinking
about the posts that have no comments, or at least none than really contribute
anything to the conversation. I do think "The reason this is a post instead of
a link is that I wanted to explain why I was posting it, and what element of
the script was relevant." is interesting though. I found your explanation was
actually what made me want to comment. I'm not entirely sure your explanation
added anything, and you probably would have gotten a better response with just
a link and the title you selected.

------
Scriptor
HN is still supposed to have a fairly narrow range of topics. With the
userbase growing so quickly, a lot of people may not read the guidelines and
the content could start spilling into subjects not really meant for HN. In
that case, I think just educating people about what should and probably
shouldn't be here isn't bad.

~~~
keefe
People should be able to do whatever they are able to do. If it's supposed to
have a fairly narrow range of topics, use the voting system to achieve that.

~~~
endtime
The problem is that HN is not evolutionarily stable. We are susceptible to
large numbers of new users upvoting each other's undesirable content.

------
thinkbohemian
Any way to easily hide the articles you've already clicked/read and show
stories from the "New" archives? I don't like toggling between the two, so i
therefore look at much less "new" submissions than i would otherwise.

------
rufius
Holy hell this is awesome. Now I can weed out some of this crap.

