
Ask HN: What makes Hacker News so special? - nodivbyzero
I&#x27;m wondering what makes Hacker News so special?
Simple UI? Karma? Traffic?
======
brianclements
I think it's a careful combination of things:

1) Simple UI and only one "channel". This forces all the users to take part in
all the submissions resulting in a diverse set of comments and expertise on
any given submission plus many eyes on fact checking.

2) As a result, the high volume of views on each submission, and the simple
karma and voting system, quickly highlights the most enlightening comments and
directs the conversation.

3) Votes are democratic across all users, this makes the results of voting
less "tribal" and more appealing to the entire audience.

4) Branding. HN has the branding as a place for intelligent discussion with
high expectations for professional quality responses and specific links to
sources, and a minimum of commentary that doesn't move the conversation
forward. The community holds these values very dear and they seem to me at
least to be maintained pretty well.

In closing though, I think it's the branding and ethos part that really does
it. Nothing about the sites simple design _forces_ this ethos I think. And as
soon as people stop enforcing the ethos, or in the other extreme, become
complete d __* 's in doing so, nothing about the technical design of the site
will keep it here.

follow-up: When I bookmark anything that I find on HN, I don't ever just
bookmark the link itself, I'll bookmark the HN page with all the comments as
they are an incredible resource of context and introduction to the topic at
hand.

~~~
nodivbyzero
Do you know how karma and voting system work? I mean algorithms?

~~~
brianclements
Other then what is described on the FAQ[1], I don't know specifics, no.

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

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RickS
Traffic: relatively low, and still specialized around a few industries,
meaning not only is there a small number of people, but they're more mature
than a random sampling of internet users.

Culture: There's a "this is not reddit. do not make your one line pun here"
attitude that is massively healthy. Prevents attention seekers from clamoring
over each other for points at the expense of discussion.

Feature inequality: downvoting, etc are restricted to significantly more
senior users. (this is related to low traffic and terse culture - which make
it hard to game your way to becoming an influential user)

Good moderation: It's stiff, relative to other communities, but fair and based
on easily cited guidelines. This is made possible by low traffic. ?id=dang
couldn't pop into every reddit thread, but it seems to be possible here.

------
jseliger
* Moderation is unusually good: [http://jakeseliger.com/2015/03/16/the-moderator-problem-how-...](http://jakeseliger.com/2015/03/16/the-moderator-problem-how-reddit-and-related-news-sites-decline/). In addition, and as noted there, the economic incentive attached to keeping HN smart helps a lot; sites like Reddit don't have that incentive for moderators.

* Attention to culture is unusually good, and so is feedback: [http://jakeseliger.com/2012/01/15/commenting-community-deter...](http://jakeseliger.com/2012/01/15/commenting-community-deterioration-and-hacker-news/) . I actually got a real response for this.

* UI that encourages more serious / intellectual people. This is a signaling / filtering issue, but it works. When I've brought this up before I've read cries about elitism, but, again, the UI thing _works_.

* Meta posts like this one are rare.

~~~
krapp
>UI that encourages more serious / intellectual people. This is a signaling /
filtering issue, but it works.

Is there actual evidence to support this, because I suspect it's confirmation
bias more than anything. I can see how certain behaviors are limited, for
instance by not being able to post images, memes aren't really going to become
a thing, but I don't see a lot in the UI that could encourage or discourage
serious behavior. Evidence to the contrary abounds in the comments throughout
the site (even some of my own, if I have to be honest.)

~~~
acheron
_by not being able to post images, memes aren 't really going to become a
thing_

Slashdot would beg to differ... :)

~~~
krapp
fair enough.

------
nailer
I personally don't find Hacker News particularly special. A lot of the
conversations on HN are the same one we would have had on Slashdot in the
early 2000s, with largely the same audience.

~~~
pavlov
That same audience is now 15 years older and more experienced.

~~~
brianclements
Interesting idea. That will be an interesting study many decades from now when
we have entire lives of Internet usage to study. I wonder if web site
populations, particularly the ones around news/commentary forums such as HN,
slashdot, reddit, etc., as a whole migrate from one site to the next as a
collective or stay married to single sites. I'm curious if it's the same for
social media sites too? My prediction is that the sites will stick around, but
different age groups and populations will adopt different sites in somewhat
unexpected ways in the same way that fashion or music fads reemerge with
populations without warning; that people choose their site/community based on
their friends, social allegiances and/or aspirations rather then the "tech" of
the site.

~~~
hfourm
I also think its fascinating to think about where the source of "news" or some
type of idea, picks up critical mass to become viral. Are they concentrated to
tiers of sites for example?

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jlgaddis
For me, it's the quality of the submissions and comments (which are often
better than the articles themselves).

~~~
nicklaf
_For me, it 's the quality of the submissions and comments (which are often
better than the articles themselves)._

Funny, I remember reading this sentiment exactly in a Slashdot comment, circa
2003.

HN is great because the site (for whatever reason) has been picked up as the
place to go for intelligent and knowledgeable individuals to discuss the
latest news in tech with each other.

It's also much better than /., though, since HN isn't just about filling in
the gaps left by mainstream tech reporting, but also about sharing cool
software and ideas.

------
splawn
As cheesy as it sounds... I think its simply the people that hang out here.
(Of course the software helps maintain the culture too im sure)

~~~
devopsproject
Not cheesy at all. HN, Reddit, Digg, Slashdot are all powered by its users.
Unfortunately, management needs to "add value for shareholders" and users
left\are leaving for greener pastures. Lets see how long HN can hold out.

------
PhantomGremlin
Overall, HN is quite good. However, there is a considerable amount of
groupthink here, an avoidance of many legitimate sources of information. Kind
of like Gollum covering his ears and saying "I'm not listening".

For example, submissions from many sites are silently banned. E.g. not long
ago I tried to submit something from breitbart.com, but that's impossible to
do. It just gets quietly blackholed.

Still, it's not like there's a shortage of stories (or comments) on HN. So,
"it's all good".

------
EliRivers
Amongst other reasons, you only see someone's karma if you go specifically
looking for it, and the old-style average score per post has been withdrawn
anyway, so there's no way of knowing if someone's really good, or just hangs
around all day every day saying things.

So unless it happens to be a commenter a reader has seen before and recalls
the quality of their comments, a reader has no groupthink preconception about
how valuable this line of text is. I suspect this significantly improves the
odds of evaluating it on its own merits.

I'd like to see karma vanish entirely from everyone's view and be only a
hellbanning/moderation assistant, but to be honest most of the benefit came
with removing the average post score.

------
Mz
It is part of the business model for YC, so for both the company running it
and some portion of the members participating, there are potentially millions
of dollars at stake. Thus, like at your job, this is not a great place to
casually be a butt for giggles. It cuts down on the trolling.

Edit: Of course, it is more complicated than that. But I think that is the
heart of the matter and often overlooked by members analyzing the dynamics
here.

~~~
pavlov
Do people really take it that seriously? It's not like you can exchange karma
points for VC investment...

IMHO, anyone who takes HN like that is bound to be disappointed. What rises to
the top is pretty much a crapshoot.

A few weeks back I made a small side project that got to #1 on the HN
frontpage:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10117297](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10117297)

Thing is, I had posted the same site as a "Show HN" the previous week, and
that time it didn't get a single upvote! It's just a matter of luck. (The
moderators will even sometimes send you an email asking for a repost if they
think your submission should have got more attention.)

Also worth mentioning is that the only reason I was inspired to make the
WordSafety site was a discussion on HN (it's mentioned in the comments on the
post I linked above). That to me is the real value of Hacker News: finding the
motivation to do something. Showing off the finished product feels kind of
secondary even.

~~~
Mz
_Do people really take it that seriously? It 's not like you can exchange
karma points for VC investment..._

HN is the funnel for YC. You cannot (or could not -- perhaps they have changed
it, I have not looked at their application recently) apply to YC without
having an HN handle. The last time I looked, every member of your team needed
an HN handle to apply, even if they created it solely to apply and never
posted anything.

Paul Graham has commented in the past about the fact that he read HN enough
that he sometimes recognized the handles and already had an opinion about the
applicants based on their handle before they applied.

Not everyone on HN is here to apply to YC. But some are. Successful YC
companies can go on to be worth millions. YC itself is currently worth
billions as I understand it. They have a paid moderator. This is, in fact,
part of their business model.

I don't really understand why you would question my assertion given the market
value of some of the YC alumni, who are, as I understand it, the only
companies allowed to advertise jobs here and get to use HN in other ways to
develop and promote their business. Granted, there are a great many more
participants that will never apply to YC than there are YC alumni. But, yes,
for some people, HN is a first step towards becoming very wealthy.

That doesn't mean every last person here feels a need to be on their best
behavior. But group culture does not require every last member here to view it
as a possible path to millionaire status for that expectation to influence the
culture as a whole. The ones who relate to it that way are some of the most
influential people here.

~~~
nodivbyzero
How do you know that they have a paid moderator???

~~~
geofft
[https://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-the-people-taking-over-
hac...](https://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-the-people-taking-over-hacker-news)

"Finally, I'm delighted to announce that Daniel Gackle (pronounced Gackley),
who has already been doing most of the moderation for the last 18 months, is
going to join YC full-time to be in charge of the HN community."

------
mod
I think the inability to post images is a filter on users, to a large degree.
One-liner jokes aren't tolerated here, by and large. You can't vote for a very
long time. HN is not for drive-by consumers.

A few things like that and you are selecting for people who enjoy, and
probably produce, good discussion and informative, factual comments.

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DrNuke
Latest trends, experienced people, successful actors, ambitious wannabes, $$$
flavour, general respect of the rules aka good moderation. That said, the flow
is a bit fast and futile threads sometimes get too much attention imho.

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AnimalMuppet
They've built a community that is intolerant of abuse and trolling (partly due
to the people they initially attracted, partly due to moderation). That
dramatically improves the signal/noise ratio.

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claysmithr
Probably the lack of "mainstream" popularity. Once a site gets big enough it
goes to shit.

I remember once upon a time both reddit and dig had smaller, higher quality
tech oriented communities.

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ThrustVectoring
It's the community, and the moderation that keeps the community from getting
worse.

------
brudgers
Constructive participation by really fucking smart people™.

