

Ask HN: Do you tell other people about HN? - viggity

I've been very hesitant to tell any of my friends about HN. I've seen the kind of content that gets generated when the community population explodes, and I'd really hate to see that happen here. It's not that I don't trust my friend's content, I don't trust their friend's content.<p>I know the HN has generally rebuffed off-topic material, but at the same time it still shows up. Should the broken window theory or a video of a meteor really be on the front page today? Its not that I don't enjoy that content, but allowing some of it is a slippery slope and before you know it we could be seeing posts that stipulate that Karl Rove eats deep fried baby flesh.<p>So HN, what do you think?
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pg
Yes, I tell smart people. If their friends' friends submit stuff that's
offtopic, the editors just kill it. Though in fact I think our strongest
defense against idiots is to look boring to them.

Incidentally, the broken windows story isn't offtopic. News.YC isn't just
about hacking, because good hackers aren't only interested in hacking.

~~~
dustineichler
likewise, i tell people i think will contribute and/ or involve themselves
with the community, not just use selfishly... after-all i think what we're all
doing here is valuable. otherwise, just keep you're mouth shut. my dad always
said, "loose lips sink ships". it's trite, but still true.

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markessien
The first stage of a community falling apart is when it starts getting meta.
When your prayer group start discussing about how right their prayer group is,
and how wrong other groups are; when K5 started getting lots of articles about
K5; when the IQ club starts talking about how IQ makes them different.

That's always the step that precedes some type of change. Because when people
start looking within, they never seem to be satisfied with what's there.

~~~
unalone
That's what it was like with Reddit. Their new subreddits saved themselves
from that: AskReddit is an excellent part of the site, now.

Metafiler has AskMeFi. Maybe Hacker News could get something like that? Or
perhaps we could choose to filter out self-referential posts?

~~~
grag
I think an option to filter out (or just see) self-referential posts would be
great. I actually like AskHN posts a lot, and an option to just see those
posts would probably encourage people to post more.

------
beaudeal
As far as telling other people goes, I find that HN comes up most often when I
tell my friends about the interesting stories I find here. The reaction from
non-technical people is usually something to the effect of: "Where the hell do
you find this stuff??" The reaction from technical people is usually something
like: "Yeah, I already read that on HN." With regards to the first group, it
seems that they always find the stories interesting, but never show any signs
that they'll make HN one of their news sources, and I'm fine with that.

For me, things such as the meteor video or an article about the Broken Windows
Theory are fine, and I don't foresee any "Karl Rove eats deep fried baby
flesh" articles soon, but I'd like to keep it that way. The community at HN is
the root of the reason I keep coming back.

------
pavelludiq
Conversation with a friend:

friend: "You don't look good, whats wrong"-

I: "I haven't slept that well, i was up all night"

friend: "WTF were you doing all night"

I: "Lurking on HN of course, and reading the old Dilbert strips"

Maybe i should try this "noprocrast" feature, but i don't know what to do
about Dilbert though. :D

You people are great, i read reddit to find cool articles, but i don't bother
to read the comments, but here, i read mostly the comments, they are more
valuable than the original articles sometimes.

~~~
tlrobinson
Indeed, I often find myself reading the comments before the article here.

It's probably a bad habit though, I suppose I should form my own opinion about
the article first.

~~~
sherl0ck
I did this all the times, so I don't waste my time to read awful articles.

------
IsaacSchlueter
My _least_ favorite HN content, by far: Bitching about HN and its content.

Srsly, folks, just _don't vote it up if you don't like it_. It really is that
easy.

This isn't "startup news" or "programmer news", it's "hacker news". It's news
that is interesting to hackers. And it delivers quite well.

As it happens, some hackers are into politics or business or meteors or robots
or science or economics. Some are not.

You should expect that about 10-20% of the articles will not be interesting to
you. Consider that a success.

------
jsmcgd
I tell people about it but most people aren't interested. I think they're
happy to let me be their geek news filter, or perhaps they're just humoring
me. Either way I think the aesthetics of the site go a long way to keep out
wrong people.

------
zitterbewegung
First rule of hn. Don't tell others about hn.

------
Alex3917
None of my friends would like it. As unscientific as the Meyers-Briggs test
is, I really do think this site appeals mostly to a small subset of XNTPs. And
there aren't that many of those around.

~~~
pg
I just tried one of those tests. It said I was an INTJ. Are the letters in
order of significance? I.e. is INTJ the next door neighbor of INTP?

~~~
DaniFong
It's a weird theory, but it is somewhat coherent. INTJ is very close to INTP,
just not really for that reason. ENTP is the classic entrepreneur. INTP/INTJ
is the classic hacker; there was a poll on here and nearly 60% of the people
662 people who voted were INTP/INTJ, whereas they're each around 2-3% in the
ordinary population. 10% of the rest were ENTP.
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=204240>)

Basically, the Myers-Briggs type determines your preferences for particular
cognitive functions. The four letter indicator is like an extreme Huffman
coding of those preferences:

Your information-gathering, perceiving function (that is, input.) This can be
either i(N)tuitive or (S)ensing. Roughly, a sensing person trusts their
senses, directly what they see and hear from the world. And an intuitive
person trusts, or looks for knowledge, in their subconscious and conscious
cognitive models.

Your decision-making, judging function (that is, output.) This can be either
(T)hinking or (F)eeling. Roughly, the thinking person is at ease when they can
make a decision supported by a logical process, and the feeling person prefers
to make the decision according to their gut.

(E)xtroverted and (I)ntroverted describes the social attitudes of each of the
'functions,' in other words, whether you, when information-gathering, or
decision making, prefer to focus on behavior, action, people and things or the
internal world of ideas and reflection. There is only one letter for this,
even though each function is supposed to have its own attitude. This is
because Isabel Myers believed that there was always a balance; if you are
introverted in information-gathering, you're extroverted in decision making.

Finally, the last letter, (P)erciving or (J)udging, specifies which side of
yourself; perception (information-gathering) or judgment (decision-making),
you tend to show to the world. Perceiving types prefer to "keep decisions
open." Judging types prefer to "have matters settled." The YCombinator
practice of deciding quickly, while it may be a definite plus for both sides,
is a judging characteristic, for example.

~~~
gambling8nt
"Basically, the Myers-Briggs type determines your preferences for particular
cognitive functions."

This is backwards; your Myers-Briggs type is determined by your preferences,
and is ultimately little more than a form of horoscope targeted at those who
realize that birth month has no significant correlation with personality.

~~~
DaniFong
I meant determine as in "to find out or come to a decision about by
investigation, reasoning, or calculation." I didn't say that it was
necessarily 100% accurate.

But the MBTI is not a horoscope. The INTP/INTJ slant here is _way_
statistically significant. Obviously there's something there.

~~~
gambling8nt
The same thing that is there if you ask a bunch of computer science students
whether or not they like computers. Sure, the result is statistically
significant; it just doesn't tell you anything you didn't already know. The
categories of the MBTI are sufficiently broad and vague that having an
atypical distribution of results on HN doesn't actually tell us anything about
ourselves that wasn't inherently obvious.

~~~
DaniFong
It's not as if we're just asking people if they like computers, and parroting
it back. The MBTI was published in 1962. Barely anyone had _access_ to
computers then.

I don't know how you'd measure this, but the profiles, to me, certainly aren't
broad and vague. They make very specific and very falsifiable claims about
personality, and all out of a mere 4 bits of information. The first time I
read my profile (ENFP) it was like a bolt of lightning shot through me. It had
me to a 'T.' My _parents_ couldn't describe me so well. And my experience is
far from atypical.

There are a bunch of other major statistical discoveries about the different
groups. For example, INTP's have the lowest level of emotional coping
resources, while their cousins, the ENTP's, have the highest! INTJ's have the
highest college GPA's, while the adjacent INTP's have much lower, scoring far
below what their aptitude tests would indicate. There is a lot of real
information in those few bits!

Sources: J. Shelton, in MBTI Applications by A.L. Hammer, 1996. More at:
<http://www.ransdellassociates.com/INTJ.htm>

~~~
gambling8nt
The claims made aren't all that falsifiable (like anything else in psychology,
it isn't ever possible to know to what extent a person is lying to
themselves), and the specificity of the claims is something of a red herring;
when 90% of a list of specific claims appear to describe a subject to at least
some extent, if they want to believe that the system works, they're going to
ignore the other 10%. The medium-sized fraction of the audience who fit at
least that closely into the categorization system trumpet it around as a
success, making those who fit somewhat less well more inclined to accept the
errors and inaccuracies of their classification. These effects, plus the
handful of results related in a very obvious way to the original
categorization (emotional coping resources are often defined in such a way
that the INTP/ENTP result you mention is entirely obvious, for example), make
it appear that the MBTI means much more than it actually does.

Much like an IQ test, used professionally, as part of a deeper analysis of a
subject, the MBTI can help a psychologist or psychiatrist better understand a
subject/patient. Used recreationally, such things lead to faulty
generalizations unless treated as they are--glorified horoscopes geared toward
looking at particular aspects of ourselves.

------
ig1
Have a look at the comments on the broken window theory post, a lot of them
are about the applicability of the theory to online social sites, something
which is very on-topic on HN. Just because an article isn't inherently
startupish, it doesn't mean that it's not relevent to HN.

------
siong1987
My approach is to tell only startup founders about HN. You will be surprised
that many founders do not know about HN at all. But, it becomes less and less
now.

And, my approach to meet smart people is to check out how many karma points
those people have in HN.

------
WarTheatre
I'm also cautious about writing about HN on various communities I visit simply
because I fear it would attract the wrong crowds, e.g. spammers, trolls and
your average eternal septemberists.

Right now HN is a great community for startups, Internet businesses,
developers, designers, and entrepreneurs. The signal to noise ratio is very
high and discussions are relevant, mostly civil and very interesting. Heck, I
can't name another site with so much _relevant_ content for Internet
businesses.

Furthermore, I think it's perfectly fine that HN remains a relatively small
and focus community, not every site must be like Digg or Slashdot in size.

Regards, WarTheatre

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paulgb
I'm more disappointed to see "10 Totally Stupid Online Business Ideas That
Made Someone Rich" on the front page than broken windows or a meteor. Being
on-topic doesn't make up for bad content.

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run4yourlives
The broken window theory article wasn't off-topic, the discussion immediately
evolved into how it related to online forums and was very interesting.

------
vizard
I am bored of all these posts that talk about HN. I am not on HN to talk about
HN itself dammit.

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kiplinger
I heard about it from my friend at work.

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cookiecaper
Yes, I tell others about HN, but only those that I know will be valuable and
interested users.

