
Ask HN: What makes HN the superior intellectual forum on the web? - abhiminator
Personally, I find these two below mentioned reasons for HN&#x27;s appeal toward intense intellectual discussions, unparalleled to any other place on the web --<p>1. Bare-bones design -- This acts as a great filter and barrier-to-entry of sorts, wherein only those who _actually_ want to consume (or contribute) content stick around.<p>2. Text heavy content -- Again, I personally find this super appealing. Text only content keeps the reader&#x27;s focus on what the author is trying to convey, which more often than not brings out the best in one&#x27;s writing. Contrast that with many competing &#x27;multimedia-heavy&#x27; forums where there&#x27;s a greater chance of a reader getting distracted by unrelated content (suggested, similar, etc).<p>Bonus: Well implemented nested comments -- Following two HN users have a go at each other (respectfully, that is) in a fine display of one-upmanship is absolutely gratifying with a super-low chance of it going ad hominem.<p>What&#x27;d you guys think?
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cjbprime
That's quite a premise! I disagree with it extremely strongly.

People mostly don't go back to any HN thread that's more than a day old. So
any conversation that requires more than a few hours of thinking can't happen
here, because by the time you finish thinking hard about what you just read,
no-one is reading anymore. How could that possibly lead to the superior
intellectual forum on the web? It's a place for people to share their initial
opinions about something in response to news. That can be good! Often people
have interesting first opinions! But it's not the pinnacle of intellectual
thought.

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nailer
Additionally, people commonly don't read the articles posted, then make
comments asking about or mentioning things that are discussed in depth in the
article, because they want to get in early and get those upvotes before the
thread becomes too crowded.

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azeirah
Occasionally, you can find great discussions on HN because HN has a large
amount of domain experts on various sciencey topics. Apart from that, I don't
really think HN is that incredibly fantastic.

If you compare it with your average social media (facebook, twitter,
mainstream reddit), then yeah, you could say HN is more intelectually
sophisticated than that.

The realest, greatest and most fantastic forums are the tiny ones, ones
dedicated to a very specific topic, attracting only those who have a major
interest in that topic.

Think of various tiny dedicated subreddits, or Lambda the Ultimate, or a huge
collection of sites no-one here has ever heard of...

HN's great, but absolutely doesn't deserve the title of "superior intellectual
forum on the web". That's _way_ too much.

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planteen
> Occasionally, you can find great discussions on HN because HN has a large
> amount of domain experts on various sciencey topics. Apart from that, I
> don't really think HN is that incredibly fantastic.

Exactly. HN has experts, especially in some areas of computing. But many
people sound off without knowing what they are talking about. I usually wonder
why I even bothered to comment on something related to space. Space seems to
be a topic the HN loves, but there aren't a ton of people here with real
domain knowledge in it.

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soneca
> _" The superior intelectual"_

??

I believe this is arrogant and wrong. Both the words _the_ and _superior_ give
me that impression.

I also believe both points you mentioned are just characteristics that fits
the culture of its members in a self-reinforcing loop. Not causation for the
quality of its comments.

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DoreenMichele
1\. The actual people who choose to be here.

2\. The reasons they choose to be here.

3\. Good moderation, in part because it is paid, but in part for other
reasons. (I know a forum where, in my opinion, the paid staff are The
Problem.)

4\. "Table Stakes" \-- for some people here, there is potentially a lot on the
line. This means the most influential people have intrinsic motive to reign
themselves in and cooperate with the moderating staff's agenda instead of
taking some big stand _on principle_ etc.

5\. The nature of those "table stakes" probably helps to combat classism,
sexism, racism, etc.

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bskxilfllfmm
Most submissions and comments here are far from intellectual. I don’t know
what your frame of reference is, but seriously?!

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zamalek
It's the zeitgeist. HN aggressively self-moderates, the actual moderators have
a light but objective touch. With exception to a few characters, I've chatted
with people here who have not only changed my beliefs but also changed theirs.
The community believes in scientific rigor, but also share illuminating
anecdotes.

You can't distill HN into a formula. It is the sum of the participants.

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volkisch
I think this thread is satire. Have a good one.

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DEADBEEFC0FFEE
While I do think the user base is intellectual, theres really not much
conversation.

In the good old day there would be a proper forum with conversations that went
for months.

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krapp
None of the features you mention have any but the weakest relationship to the
intellectual quality of Hacker News.

Take all of them together, you could describe Reddit before the rebuild. Minus
the nested threads, you could be describing 4chan (which, despite being an
imageboard, has a lot of textual content.)

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JamesBarney
I think the key is heavy handed moderating. It creates a culture where certain
types of comments aren't allowed(aggressive, and flippant) which brings up the
level of commentary.

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danmg
... just like boards2go forums.

