

Where have all the hackers gone? - raganwald

I've enjoyed reading the comments for "Turtles all the way down, please" here on Hacker News:<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=110541<p>Thanks! Meanwhile, over on programming.reddit.com, this is what people have to say:<p>http://reddit.com/r/programming/info/67xk0/comments/
======
mixmax
IT seems like there is a cycle that social news sites go through.

First they cater to an elite

Then they grow

Then the masses swarm in and make youtube comments look like they were written
by Einstein.

The only site that I know of that has seemed to steer clear of this is
slashdot. The secret is in the voting algorithm, and it needs to be adjusted
when the site starts to grow.

I heard that there is a pretty smart guy who has written this site in a pretty
smart language, and I am confident that he has both the intent and ability to
keep it in line.

~~~
Xichekolas
Funny that you mentioned Slashdot as a paragon of intelligent community. I
recently stopped going to /. all together because the signal-to-noise ratio
got too low. You can't talk about anything there without getting past a bunch
of 'first post' and GNAA comments, and once you find a decent thread of
discussion, it is inevitably hijacked by some amateur Grammar Nazi pointing
out the difference between _its_ and _it's_ (since the person who misused it
obviously did it on purpose... definitely couldn't be a typo).

You could say "just browse at 4 and higher," but then you miss a lot of good
stuff that was downmodded for political reasons, or was too far down the page
to ever get upmodded to begin with. This gives more weight to early comments
than later ones, and hence everything must be hastily done, and hence there
will be a typo which will bring out the Grammar Nazis, etc.

Slashdot has a lot of problems. The only reason it hasn't become a Digg or
Reddit is because human moderators actually screen the stuff that gets posted,
rather than rely on the (lack of) wisdom of the crowds. Content-wise, Digg and
Reddit tread a lot of the same territory as Fark nowdays, only on Fark the
main point is writing a funny headline or photoshopping a funny image, not the
story itself.

I think YC News works because it is small, and I think it stays small because
it is focused. So thank you all for keeping it focused.

~~~
nkohari
If I could vote you up twice for this comment, I would. :)

~~~
raganwald
I'll lend a hand and upmod it.

------
thehigherlife
I think the problem is when people start commenting for the sake of
commenting... And the more polluted your user base the more likely that is to
happen. I mean, i'm not going to lie, i know very little about programming but
i do find interest in reading the stories and comments regardless of my own
inability to code. I knew that i had nothing to bring to the table to that
conversation, so i minded my own business and tried to be a good observer.
Once the user-base becomes to crowded people get a false sense of entitlement,
not necessarily because they feel like the have the right to comment, but that
they need to comment. I feel that if a social news site is going to succeed
they have to find a way to curb that need as the community grows.

~~~
raganwald
> I think the problem is when people start commenting for the sake of
> commenting...

Commenting is hard, let's go shopping!

<http://reddit.com/user/consultant_barbie>

~~~
Xichekolas
Sadly I am kind of amused at that consistent record.

People pick strange things to excel at, and I'm pretty sure that guy is
unique.

~~~
raganwald
It was amusing for me the first few times I saw it, then irritating, then
amusing again when he(?) actually quoted some Haskell.

However, what I found interesting is not so much whether there are novelty
comments like that, but rather the ratio of novelty comments to on-topic
comments. It seemed rather extreme at the time I posted this: AFAICT, _none_
of the reddit comments were on-topic, they were all attempts to make jokes.

Just an observation really, who am I to tell people whether my own posts
provoke any sort of technical discussion?

------
dfranke
The Reddit comments aren't so bad. At least they're civil. I feared far worse
before I followed the link.

------
cstejerean
They left reddit and came here

------
michaelneale
Ssshhhh... don't attract their attention.

~~~
iamelgringo
Yeah. I'm not really spreading the news about Hacker News so much. I like it
smaller and more manageable.

------
danteembermage
I had a similar experience; I submitted a Putnam problem here and there were
several excellent proofs and a good discussion.

At programming.reddit I got "try homework.reddit.com"

------
davidw
I think it's a human thing, not an algorithm thing. Without someone to kind of
play cop, these things sort of degrade with time. Maybe it's not even that,
maybe past a certain number of people it just degrades. It's a frustrating
pattern though.

------
nickb
Reddit's comments are on a similar level as digg's comments... a step above
YouTube's comments. None of the comments are even close to /.'s comments,
however.

/. might not be as big as reddit/digg but at least the community is focused
and that probably matters more to a community than size. Not when you're
selling the site though ;).

------
dottertrotter
maybe we should make everyone take some type of programming quiz before
they're allowed to comment or submit links?

~~~
cos
I suggested that at reddit about 6 months ago. Right around the time of the
digg exodus. and I was called a Nazi/elitist/asshole. But I was right.

<http://reddit.com/goto?id=2c2ux>

~~~
cos
Are we Elitists if we really are better?

You're not paranoid if they're really out to get you.

~~~
aggieben
No, you could still be an elitist, even if you (we?) really are better.
Elitism is thinking that being better counts for something.

~~~
jraines
It does, by definition.

------
raganwald
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=110541>

<http://reddit.com/r/programming/info/67xk0/comments/>

------
yawn
Maybe people just didn't like the article.

~~~
raganwald
At the moment I checked, 101 people liked it and 30 did not:

<http://reddit.com/r/programming/info/67xk0/details>

AFAICT, none of the six comments I've seen on reddit are critical, but on the
other hand they don't praise it either.

~~~
yawn
At least 30 people (the ones who voted) didn't like your article. A lot of
your articles have shown up on Reddit, in part due to your strong branding of
yourself. Maybe some people are tired of seeing them. Who knows? Apparently it
is enough to get you whining about the site that made you popular.

~~~
raganwald
Who's wining? My article made the top ten on programming.reddit.com. That is
very positive from my perspective. I was pointing out a difference in
character between the two sites.

I get the feeling that perhaps _you_ are tired of my writing. That's a
completely reasonable feeling to have, and if you feel strongly about it, I
have good news for you:

<http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/8751>

Cheerio.

