

The ascendancy of Hacker News & the gentrification of geek news communities - bootload
http://anarchogeek.com/articles/2008/7/7/the-ascendancy-of-hacker-news-the-gentrification-of-geek-news-communities

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maximilian
The whole gentrification argument doesn't really hold well with the definition
of gentrification. Plus, I don't think that link-sites other than digg will
get really popular with the general population. I guess reddit could, but
definitely not smaller sites like this one. Gentrification usually means
restoring an old shitty/ghetto neighborhood and making it nice and desirable.
I think this is a repost too..

~~~
bootload
_"... Plus, I don't think that link-sites other than digg will get really
popular with the general population ..."_

Digg is a newbie. There are others. Slashdot for example caught on in the
general population after the hoards of readers would bring down servers after
a single post ~ <http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/office/stans/slashdot.html> and
news organisations through Journalists started using Slashdot as their geek
filter and quoting it in news.

 _"... The whole gentrification argument doesn't really hold well with the
definition of gentrification ..."_

Depends on what you mean by gentrification. I think in this case it might be
the gentrification of ideas, implementation and audience. An inability to
improve the quality of the site. Slashdot at the start (suid 2774) when I
joined was full of new and interesting ideas. Full of readers with technical
backgrounds who you could pose questions you would never get the answers to
reading a book, news groups even the source. You had to be on the ball to
answer or you would be howled down with logic and facts. I left slashdot when
the discussion and flow of new ideas deteriated into low quality opinions.
Just like this one.

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gaius
Very true (1359 myself). I abandoned it when it gave up any pretense of being
"stuff that matters" became "controversy for the sake of driving page views".
The quality of comments there now is only one notch above YouTube.

Oh, and Slashdot PT Cruiser. 'Nuff said.

~~~
bootload
_"... Very true (1359 myself). I abandoned it when it gave up any pretense of
being "stuff that matters" became "controversy for the sake of driving page
views". The quality of comments there now is only one notch above YouTube
..."_

Wow. It was partly your posts & ideas I was reading back then. Great stuff.

