

Ask HN: Why are off-topic articles upvoted on Hacker News? - kurtvarner

I'm confused as to why the Hacker News community supports the submission of blatantly off-topic articles. For example, currently the number 5 submission is "I Think You're Fat", which is an article about lying. It has 102 upvotes in 3 hours. Why are articles like this upvoted?<p>I understand that not all submissions should be about the tech world, but they should be intellectual at a minimum. Although there is some definite gray area, here are the Hacker News Guidlines:<p>"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.<p>Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."
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makecheck
I also wish that the site would be more "on topic".

I imagine what's happening is that people submit and up-vote anything that's
remotely interesting or important regardless of whether or not it is really
"hacker news". But this site isn't supposed to be the only news source in the
world. Even an important story can be an _irrelevant_ one as far as HN's
boundaries are concerned, if it would already be reported in the news
somewhere.

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swiecki
In my opinion, the quality of content on HN has plummeted since SOPA became an
internet issue.

It is reminiscent of how the Digg community stopped caring about interesting
stories and instead became wrapped up in its own cycles of bullshit, RIAA,
Blu-Ray, iPhone, etc.

~~~
kurtvarner
Although the SOPA submissions may be a little excessive, they directly relate
to the hacker community. SOPA is an important issue that deserves attention.
Plus, the popularity on HN is having a real effect on the issue. For example,
Go Daddy has lost thousands of domains, and has since retracted their support
of SOPA.

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Zev
'cause enough people who are on the site like it.

I personally think that most of that off-topic content that you mentioned
sucks to have here (even if I do enjoy it elsewhere), but despite my flagging,
they still get up there. So, I visit HN less.

The majority has spoken, what else is there for me to say, really?

~~~
kurtvarner
_I personally think that most of that off-topic content that you mentioned
sucks to have here (even if I do enjoy it elsewhere)_

Exactly. It's not about if it's interesting to you... It is if it's
interesting AND fits the purpose of HN.

~~~
Zev
The equation is: _I liked this story_ \+ _I like to think of myself as a
hacker_ \+ _Hacker Hews is for hackers_ [1] = _I'm going to post this on
Hacker News_

Or, in the reduced form[2]: _I found this interesting_ \+ _I think this
article would make other people think about this topic after reading it_ =
_I'm going to post this on Hacker News_

Hacker News was previously called Startup News -- if you were around before
July '07-ish. That was changed when the site was only a few months old. And
you're kidding yourself if you don't think that HN changed since then. Maybe
the next step is Amalgamated News? Who knows. To be honest? I doubt even pg
knows for sure.

1\. For whichever of the multitude of definitions of the word you prefer to
use

2\. From the guidelines: "If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer
might be: _anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity_." -
<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>. Emphasis mine.

------
Mz
_On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity._

This piece of it means that many articles will be viewed by one person as "on
topic" and by another "off topic". It's pretty subjective. This same issue
used to come up constantly on a homeschooling list I once belonged to. The
issue boiled down to the fact that some people interpreted "on topic" very
broadly and other people did not. I was on that list for some years and the
issue was never settled and remained an on-going bone of contention. Given
that HN has a far larger membership, I don't imagine it will ever be settled
here either.

I saw no problem with the "I think your fat" piece. It was interesting and
there was good discussion about morality in practical day-to-day terms, even
in terms of business people trying to be honest without shooting themselves in
the foot. But I was always one of those people on the homeschooling list who
interpreted "on topic" more broadly there as well.

~~~
malandrew
It is also important to keep in mind that the HN community has grown a lot in
the past few years and that most of that growth has come from people who are
interested in tech and startups, but are not necessarily hackers.

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md1515
Who cares. The genius part about Hacker News is that it is democratic
(mostly). If it is a good thread/discussion then the people want to keep it
even if it is off topic.

My two cents anyway...

------
billpatrianakos
Maybe we're witnessing the diluting of the community? My first instinct would
be to say "yeah! Seriously! What's up with that?" but then if you think about
it for even a second you see that the reason is because these are the kind of
stories hackers are either finding interesting or are intellectually
stimulating to them.

The problem with vague guidelines like the ones here are that what qualifies
as meeting those guidelines changes with the community. This could be a good
thing in cases where the community is made up of all high caliber individuals
that are simply maturing or changing as a group but if those changes are a
result of the community simply being diluted with riff raff then it turns
against us.

Anyway, I know what you mean. I don't think anyone can definitively say you're
right or wrong or if this is a good or bad thing. It's just a pattern to be
interpreted.

