

Why I Quit Hacker News - Nathanael
http://nathanael.hevenet.com/why-i-quit-hacker-news/

======
petercooper
_News aggregators bring us news, but I for one feel my knowledge is best
served by thorough analysis, which in turn is best consumed at a slow to
medium pace. So I quit._

That's.. a good point.

Yesterday, I was listening to a podcast about publishing and they had a guy
from _Delayed Gratification_ on - <http://www.dgquarterly.com/> .. it's a
quarterly "slow journalism" magazine that summarizes the news of the last 3
months _and_ follows up with that news (extra things that happened, reactions,
etc.)

Maybe something similar would work for Hacker News. We have Hacker Monthly
which beautifully brings together a handful of interesting articles, but it's
not really analysis or summarizing the last three months in terms of trends,
goings-ons and the aftermath of what occurred.

Should this exist? If not for Hacker News, then the tech scene in general? I'd
subscribe to such a publication even if only for archival & reference
purposes.

~~~
nathan_f77
This sounds like a great idea to me. I would certainly read it, and perhaps
pay something for it. Hacker News and Reddit are useful for keeping up with
the latest announcements, but there's definitely a place for more reflective
content that summarizes and analyses what's been happening and how they turned
out.

I think it would be useful for both the general tech scene, as well as
specific technologies like Ruby and Rails.

------
petercooper
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY0WxgSXdEE>

(Edit: Sorry to be flippant but I thought it'd make a change from the hand-
wringing of why these posts aren't a good idea. Plus, a bit of Queen can't
fail to brighten the day.)

------
bps4484
I don't want to overshadow the general point, because I think it has some
merit, but one problem I had with the article was the quote, "If I read 10 or
15 interesting articles on different subjects in a row, what’s left of it an
hour later? And how substantial can one Internet article really be? Books in
comparison seem to have brought me much more." That may be true (it's going to
come down to each person individually), but he shouldn't be comparing 10 or 15
articles in an hour (you can probably read more than that) to a book. A book
probably takes you at least 5 hours to read. If you read 20 articles an hour,
that's equivalent to reading 100 articles. So the real question is, does a
book bring you "more" (however you personally want to define it) than 100
articles (or more) from a place like hacker news?

------
webwanderings
Not sure about HN but I dropped scanning news from my radar a few weeks ago
and I am totally happy about it. My take is that news in general is usually
long distance from where you are, so why bother about it? One can save time
and energy by reducing the unnecessary noise out of the system.

But I don't think same applies to HN if your work and your world revolves
around the same field. Consequently, I wouldn't have dropped the news from my
daily habits if my life/work was dependent upon it.

------
eranation
ok, I know this will be downvoted to oblivion, but I have to say it:

"If you want to quit, quit, don't post"

but seriously, I suffer from the same addiction

~~~
georgemcbay
I always think of these as "Leaving, forever" posts since that's what we
called them over on PlanetCrap (which I haven't been an active member of in
quite some time, though I still read Quartertothree.com a bit, and that has
some significant overlap in users).

A big part of the meme is that people who post such posts before they leave
are nearly guaranteed to come back, and sooner rather than later. (Though
often under a different pseudonym if the forum allows it).

------
moepstar
One could say the same about everything that will divide your attention from
the task at hand - for me this is my RSS Aggregator (with HN, among a few
others) and IRC.

Solution? Close every program that isn't needed for what you currently do and
only open it up when you're done or having a break...

This needs some serious willpower though once you return from the break and in
general..

------
bryanlarsen
There are less drastic options. Set up blocking software to give yourself
limited access so you can get your fix without the distraction. LeechBlock &
Chrome Nanny are what I use, there are lots of others.

------
hapkins
I had this exact feeling as an inkling in the back of my mind - "I'm spending
way too much time here".

Goodbye HN.

