
Evolution of Hacker News - sriramk
http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/18/the-evolution-of-hacker-news/
======
jakobe
I get the feeling that at the very top of every Hacker News comment thread,
there's someone who claims that the author of the article is an incompetent
idiot because they found a factual error somewhere in the article. Often this
leads to a pedantic discussion of some insignificant details.

With all these extremely knowledgeable people from different fields, I wish I
found more big picture insights in the comments here.

~~~
pg
Yes, this is one of the problems I spend the most time thinking about how to
solve.

FWIW, my current theory is that the problem is not the comments themselves,
but the upvotes. There are often moderately stupid comments far down the page
in any given thread, but they're comparatively harmless, like someone walking
down the street mumbling to himself. The problem is that there's a type of
stupid comment that attracts upvotes from a certain type of user. If we can
recognize either the comments or the upvoters, we can solve the problem. I've
been collecting a corpus of them for a while; it may soon be big enough to be
useful.

~~~
pseut
I understand why you're against having "advanced" features and flair, but
being able to collapse the thread that follows those comments would help
enormously. It's almost the same as sending the thread to the bottom of the
page.

Once I've decided not to read a subthread, it's a little frustrating to try to
guess where to scroll to find the next constructive comment.

~~~
DanBC
Thread collapsing helps each person who chooses to collapse a thread, but does
nothing to help upvote / downvote the posts in that thread.

If collapsing can be linked to voting or thread positioning it'd be useful.
Collapsing a thread means it's not very good[1] and thus should be further
down the page.

There is an extension / addon somewhere that does thread collapsing on HN. A
web search should find at least one.

[1] or maybe it just means that you're read it and are keeping the page tidy.

~~~
makomk
I'm not sure that's entirely true. If being able to collapse a thread means
that more people actually read and upvote threads that are below it, then that
in itself will help push the offending thread down the page.

------
kevinalexbrown
I'm curious about the degree to which decreasing quality is a consequence of
dilution in which "less desirable" individuals lower the mean quality (or some
other holistic measure), versus the social effects due purely to size.

I'm curious because a large community will probably change the behavior of all
individuals, regardless of quality. One such effect is they way discussions
happen. In a village, town halls can have discussions with every member. An
idea is brought forth, multiple people make changes, it gets amended,
reworked, changed. In short, topics have some amount of "persistence", and
opinions have more dynamism.

In a city, discussions are more like a broadcast: any member might be able to
speak, but they're not sparking discussion, they're broadcasting a point of
view, and with so many points of view broadcast at any given moment, it's hard
to have a discussion that lasts more than a few hours before the next topic of
interest is brought forth. In short, topics seem to have little persistence,
and opinions have far less dynamism.

It seems much more rewarding in a city to make comments designed to convince
the audience of how intelligent I am, because I only have the city's attention
for a moment. Perhaps this leads to the preponderance of middlebrow dismissals
or other "how can I look smart here?" comments. In a village, by contrast,
these comments are much less lucrative. If I walk around and the only comment
I can give to others is that their new crop idea might not work, I'm probably
not going to be very valued, because people will notice over time that those
are the only comments I give.

It's difficult for me to articulate quite what I mean, perhaps someone could
help.

~~~
jacquesm
HN is like democracy, it is flawed but it is the best we've got.

~~~
micampe
HN hellbanning is just infuriating, no upsides.

~~~
chalst
Are there any actual hellbanning tragedies on HN?

~~~
saalweachter
Imagine the saddest, loneliest, weirdest, most obnoxious kid from your
elementary school. Maybe you were that kid. They go up to every little clique
and say something, but no one listens. They invite everyone to their birthday
party, but no one comes.

Would you wish that on anyone, even if they were annoying or angry or wrong?

~~~
jlgreco
The jump from complete ostracization to having your HN posts hidden is pretty
damn large.

What would you suggest that we do with posters like losethos, if not
hellbanning? The guy knows he is hellbanned, and has at various times made new
accounts (which also get hellbanned). A regular banning would just have him
creating new accounts anyway, so you may as well just let him keep his regular
account. In elementary school people like him would be removed from the normal
student population and given special attention/treatment, but that is not an
option for HN.

~~~
krapp
Isn't losethos proof that hellbanning doesn't really work?

If a hellbanned user is supposed to get frustrated by the lack of replies to
their posts and then go away, then it doesn't. You're not supposed to ever
know it's there, after all, and you're not supposed to be willing to put up
with it.

In the case of someone who might not care about being replied to, or who just
doesn't notice they're never being replied to (entirely possible if they don't
post often), being hellbanned doesn't work. It's security through obscurity.

And as a result of hellbanning, people can become paranoid about speaking
their opinion because they never really _know_ if they're actually
participating in a conversation or if the system has decided to make a silent
mockery of them.

~~~
jlgreco
It doesn't matter if losethos gives up and leaves or not because he is
hellbanned.

That is part of the beauty of hellbanning, if you realize you have been
hellbanned, give up and leave... then great! If you realize you have been
hellbanned, don't care and keep on posting... then great! If you realize that
you have been hellbanned, come back with a new account and keep it up, you'll
be hellbanned again (and quickly. losethos's new account was hellbanned again
with its first comment... so great!) If you realize that you have been
hellbanned, come back with a new account and clean up your act... then great!
If you don't realize that you have been hellbanned... then great!

Hellbanning is not about security; it is about removing people from the
conversation. For that it works wonderfully (though I would argue that it is
actually too hard to become hellbanned).

~~~
guylhem
By default, I have configured HN to show me hellbanned posts - because
someday, maybe I'll be too, and because time to the time I still find some
interesting content!

IMHO, hellbanning is both cruel and damaging - the community may lose
potential interesting contributions.

For example, I've watched a bit of what losethos wrote for his 64 bit OS -
it's an interesting approach. There are not so much at the time, but he seems
to submit articles time to time.

I sometimes even read losethos comments, which sound to me like hybrid talk
from Galactica. Words linked by references obscure to me, but which still
might have a sense (the old greeks did believe in Oracles, so do I. My fault:
I shouldn't be a believer, and just accept the traditional medical theory who
claims it's just nonsense)

~~~
jlgreco
He _has_ done some pretty fascinating stuff, but aside from discussions about
that particular stuff in particular I think we would gain nothing from
permitting him to spam^Wcomment as a normal user.

I also have showdead enabled, mostly because I like to look back in hellbanned
posters histories and see why they were hellbanned. In _very_ few cases do I
find someone for which I don't understand the hellbanning. In those cases I
usually try to give the person a heads up, but in the _vast_ majority of the
cases I realize that the person was excessively abusive, spamming their pet
project, participating at a stereotypically "reddit" level, or otherwise
submitting crap.

(Also, I am pretty certain that losethos's comments are computer generated. He
thinks that a god talks to him through a RNG when he initializes markov chains
with the bible or something... Any meaning derived from what he says after
"god says:" is likely just apophenia)

------
scott_s
_Another subtle feature addition: a flame-war detector. Graham has been
consistently deploying and updating proprietary software that determines
whether there is a flame war, where people argue heatedly. When these flame
wars take place (which Graham says can often get ugly and personal), the story
in which the commenting is taking place is moved further down the page._

Remember the above the next time someone claims that a rogue contingent _must_
be flagging stories on a particular topic because it is further down the page
than other stories submitted at a similar time and with a similar number of
points.

~~~
krapp
It might just be me, but this seems like the kind of feature you wouldn't want
automated. How do you algorithmically tell the difference between a flamewar
and a spirited debate?

~~~
revscat
It would go a long way to partly explaining why Apple stories get buried so
quickly while ones related to Google get to the top and stay there. For
whatever reasons Apple engenders strong emotions, positive and negative, while
Google does not, at least to that degree.

~~~
lclarkmichalek
Did you see the stuff related to Google demanding the Windows Phone Youtube
app be removed? Massive threads, accusations of shilling all over, along with
claims of organized flagging. At least 2 of the major contributors to those
threads/flame wars (recoiledsnake and CloudNine) have been hellbanned, and the
whole thing was rather unpleasant to read. It also spilled over into most
other Google posts on HN, which was quite a few as it was in the middle of
Google IO. Along with that there is the inevitable comment on every story
about a Google service suggesting that Google will shut it down in 6 months.
There is a sizable subset of HN which isn't crazy about Google.

~~~
Systemic33
His solution was to put flamewars further down the comment list, but if almost
all of the comments get flagged as flame war, then it's free to flourish.

Maybe what HN needs, could be some way of giving people who want the heated
discussion, a way to express these seperate from rest. Maybe a tab that shows
controversial comments, so you can switch between the "calm" and the "heated"
discussions.

~~~
dirkgently
> Maybe what HN needs, could be some way of giving people who want the heated
> discussion, a way to express these seperate from rest.

I like this idea. I'd say all who are hellbanned should see other hellbanned
users' and they can nuke each other from the orbit in their own little
sandbox.

~~~
pseut
You can set "showdead" in your profile to see hellbanned users. But you still
can't reply to them (that's kind of the point).

------
clicks
I too have noticed pg's growing frustration with HN a little bit. I joined HN
almost 6 years ago -- then I was a naive teenager with a scattered view of the
world, though with a ferocious appetite for intelligent debate. I used to do
light design work then and usually shied away from hardcore backend
programming. I have HN to thank for getting me to take the jump. I also have
HN to thank for keeping me informed on various fronts so I could make right
decisions that were key in seeing my first 'startup' project surviving (thanks
patio11 for your instructive thoughts on a/b testing; grellas for legal stuff;
potatolicious for thoughts on design, etc. etc. :)).

One thing I want to say is: I think it's okay to be ... well, a little bit
mean sometimes. My favorite commenter on this site is rayiner -- one of the
reasons I like him is he's never afraid to say what he really believes
(sometimes in a slightly mean diction), even if it's going against HN userbase
consensus. He's not out to get karma (as some other opportunist high-karma
users here are sometimes... complete with amazon affiliate links in their
comments, indeed, that is singularly the only thing that annoys me about HN).
There's inevitably going to be disagreement when we're discussing important
things we have strong feelings on. As long as the discussion doesn't devolve
into corrosive name-calling and ad hominems it's fine, and I don't think we go
that low very much. I think HN will be fine going forward -- there's a strong
identity that is enforced by all users. Thanks pg et al. for keeping this
hangout alive and rocking.

------
pshin45
> _If you are a YC founder, your username will show up in orange to other YC
> founders to enable these entrepreneurs to recognize and meet each other._

Silicon Valley is supposed to be this great meritocracy where it doesn't
matter where you went to school or who you know, all that matters is how well
you can build and "make something people want."

However, it always amazes me how much cronyism (for lack of a better word)
there still is in Silicon Valley. Even Y Combinator is not immune to it. To
their credit, PG et al are great at pattern recognition and identifying what
separates good/great teams from the bad, but I feel like there is still too
much cronyism, personal bias, and subjective judgment in their model that
excludes a lot of entrepreneurs who don't fit their "type".

Given how influential PG's essays and YC's model have been on other VCs and
angel investors, I wonder if it's becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy and/or
vicious cycle in the industry where because YC prefers a certain subset of
successful founder, it causes many/most investors to also prefer that subset,
which makes it easier and easier for this subset of founders to quickly get
funding and access to critical resources and networks, while it becomes harder
and harder for new subsets of entrepreneurs to break through this walled
garden.

DISCLAIMER: I really like YC and I read HN every day. I just think that if
e.g. Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins were VC 1.0 and YC was VC 2.0, a new VC 3.0
that addresses the shortcomings of the current model is way overdue.

~~~
jacques_chester
I actually used to think a bit like how you do.

But humans form groups. That's what we do. And this group is pretty easy to
join. You don't need a particular skin colour or religion. Just rock up and
rock on.

------
gregpilling
I am happy HN is here, even if the small village has become a big city. On a
given day, there is a decent percentage of the front page that I don't
understand at all, and I enjoy reading the articles and comments. I find it an
interesting way to learn new things.

Thank you PG for creating Hacker News. I read it daily.

~~~
amboar
This is exactly what drew me to it as well; I was awed by the opportunity for
so much learning. Anecdotally I've found the focus of the front page has
shifted a little from hard-core CS (my degree) and maths topics to more
startup and web-development oriented projects and articles. However, there is
still often one or two articles that give me the hn hit of old.

I don't often comment or submit links, and when I do I don't really care for
the karma beyond hoping I've provided something constructive, but despite the
shift in focus I continually enjoy the spirited, structured and technical
discussion that hn provides. Like gregpilling I read it daily, and would like
to thank pg amongst others for continuing to curate such an interesting
community.

------
lazyjones
It's sad and indicative of the quality of tech journalism when this line gets
written by thenextweb and then quoted by techcrunch without being questioned:

> Having a big audience isn’t really the goal. In comparison, Hacker News’
> inspiration and the first big YC exit, Reddit has seen as much as 4.4
> million page views in a given day.

If 4.4 million page views in a given day were special for Reddit, it would not
be the hugely successful page it is and tech journalists should have a rough
idea of traffic figures like these. The same thenextweb post claims further
down that Reddit averaged 3 billion page views a month in 2012.

(it was the Obama AMA subreddit that hit 4.4 million page views in a single
day)

~~~
chrisacky
I'm a Brit, so take my token apology for calling you out on this [1], but the
way you frame your comment is actually the thing that frustrates me the most
about a lot of HN comments. So much negativity, which is often based on some
extremely esoteric fact, that actually takes away from the original point of
the article, and is just counter to _any_ continuing discussion. Branching off
is great. We get some really great discussions on HN that side-step the
original point of an article, but when it's just for the sake of bashing, I
can't ever support such comments.

[1] : We like to apologise for things

~~~
larrys
I'm not sure I agree with you unless I'm misunderstanding the point of what
you mean by what the parent said that was "extremely esoteric".

The point seems to be that we are reading a story about hacker news and
someone takes issue with what appears to be an example of lazy journalism.

I could find my own examples in the article. Right off the top there are only
quotes from PG and tptacek when it would have been really easy to email other
users and get some thoughts to round out the story. (Not to mention the fact
that it left out a fairly important point - that tptacek has the most karma on
HN other than PG).

------
throwaway125
What bothers me personally the most is the way in which downvotes seem to
happen. Don't get me wrong, a lot of users downvote in a good way, so it's not
all bad.

Still, I often find grey comments that are brought in a completely respectable
way. I feel like these comments are getting downvoted because someone
disagrees with them, rather than because they are bad or toxic comments.

The opposite is also true, I often find comments with a positive amount of
votes that are in the "internet jokester" style and don't really contribute
anything meaningful to the topic at hand.

~~~
pseut
Often if you go back later, you'll see that the downvote has been "corrected"
by another reader. I'll sometimes upvote a reasonable comment only because it
has negative karma. And I've... uh... in the name of science, made some
relatively useless disagreeable comments that had downvotes, then upvotes,
then downvotes,... before reaching equilibrium at +1, so other people do too.

------
benologist
The article (perhaps ironically) neglected to mention an enormous volume of
submissions exist just to harvest pageviews from this community.

There is a constant flow advertisements posing as articles where startups
write random fluff to get their otherwise unrelated and uninteresting startups
on the front page.

There is a constant flow of mainstream blogs and people meticulously tailoring
content for this site.

There have been numerous large companies that have blatantly spammed the site
for years undetected, and probably plenty more that still haven't been
detected judging by all the 'submissions-only' accounts churning out generic
links to mainstream sites.

I don't think routine exploitation fosters a healthy, happy community.

~~~
MrMan
your points illustrate some reasons why I do not consider this a community,in
a positive sense. there is a lot of interesting discussion, which is good, but
it exists to serve and is largely constrained by the need to create a social
engine for private investment in tech companies, and the ecosystem that
entails.

------
ryanholiday
HN is a testament to what happens when you make a thing for a very specific
group of people and only them.

It sort of reminds me those companies you hear about every once in a while
that say "No" to being sold in Wal-Mart. It seems crazy but there is value in
passing on certain kinds of growth.

The only hiccup to this plan in HN's case is that the very specific community
it is targeted to is itself growing and growing. So staying "small" might be
impossible.

~~~
davidw
> It sort of reminds me those companies you hear about every once in a while
> that say "No" to being sold in Wal-Mart.

Speaking of which, I wonder what became of this one?

<http://www.fastcompany.com/54763/man-who-said-no-wal-mart>

Apologies for deviating from the thread's topic, but I re-read that the other
day and got to wondering.

~~~
miles
Snapper/Simplicity ended up being bought by Briggs & Stratton, which
apparently decided to back peddle a bit:

Walmart to sell Briggs & Stratton Snapper mowers
[http://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/news/2013/01/17/walmart...](http://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/news/2013/01/17/walmart-
to-sell-briggs-stratton.html)

Here is a forum comment apparently from Jim Wier ("The Man Who Said No to
Walmart") regarding the Sears deal after his departure:
[http://ppecongress.com/showpost.php?s=b79ee2a3f907acf9594e26...](http://ppecongress.com/showpost.php?s=b79ee2a3f907acf9594e2667735c8d06&p=7174&postcount=1)

------
tokenadult
"Around six months ago, Graham brought on someone else, who he chose not to
name, to moderate the site. He says the individual is affiliated with Y
Combinator and is a 'prudent and thoughtful guy,' and has been doing a great
job ever since."

I didn't know this. I think the prudent and thoughtful guy is doing a
generally good job. I don't think anyone can read every thread here
exhaustively, but there is some good signal:noise ratio here even after all
the years of growth.

"I wish I could get people to stop posting comments that are stupid or mean"
is pg's summary of what still needs to be fixed. I'm on board with that too.

~~~
krapp
I assumed that once you got enough karma here you started to get mod rights...
maybe not though.

~~~
yareally
Mod rights as in flagging articles/users or downvoting? Those are all based on
a certain amount of karma (with downvoting having the highest threshold since
it can cause the most damage).

------
mwfunk
I think what I love most about HN is that PG (and others?) take an active role
in trying to steer the tone of the comments in specific directions, and don't
try to make it a super democratic site like Reddit where everything about the
community is allowed to just grow organically in a hands-off manner.

I see lots of complaints about supposed censorship or excessive moderation or
hellbans, and I understand why those things might frustrate people. Really, I
do. But it's not like this is the only place on the Internet where people can
go to post comments about tech news. The fact that HN isn't trying to be all
things to all people, and isn't trying to be as fair as possible to everyone
at all times, is actually what I love about it.

I'm glad that there's places like Reddit where everything is community-driven
and the maintainers are totally hands-off as to the content of the site, and I
frequently enjoy Reddit as well. But I'm also glad that there are places like
HN which are actively molded into being a specific kind of site with specific
standards of discourse, even if I don't always agree with it. I wish more news
sites had such specific visions for content and comments. Not necessarily the
same vision, just _some_ vision other than avoiding even the perception of
censorship at all costs.

~~~
suppressingfire
I don't quite know why, but your post made me open up 4chan for the first time
in years.

~~~
mwfunk
Maybe because it's cool to enjoy 4chan even though it is fundamentally effed
up in so many ways. :) Just like it's cool to enjoy HN even though it's
fundamentally effed up in a completely inverse way. I figure all of these
places are great sources of information seen through different prisms, you
just have to understand the prism to get the most out of it. I try to make up
for it by hitting up a bunch of different places with different approaches to
moderation and different kinds of communities.

------
mkoble11
_He worries that Hacker News will become what he calls “an old crumbling
building.”_

I hope not. This is one of the best & brightest online communities I've ever
seen.

I learn so much every single day from the content & insights posted on this
site, I'm not sure where I'd be without it :)

------
1wheel
> With 1.6 million page views a day (...) Hacker News

> Reddit has seen as much as 4.4 million page views in a given day

These numbers didn't seem right to me; reddit gets way more than 3 times hn's
traffic.

Last December, reddit had 2 billion page views
[<http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/2-billion-beyond.html>] which works out to
over 60 million a page views a day and over 30 times hn's count.

~~~
B-Con
I don't get it either. 4.4 is way too low to be Reddit's current page view
average. (Now, 44 would be closer.)

------
Vivtek
I for one am glad the community has been diluted to the point that I can
participate.

------
quackerhacker
I genuinely appreciate HN. I'm a convicted hacker and am nowhere as bright as
some of you guys on here (I have my moments).

Being accepted by you guys really does help me get back into tech and do what
I know best. THANK YOU!

~~~
jacquesm
hey Michael,

I've read your story the other day and I thought it was both amusing and
clever, even if it was also clearly unethical. 5 years seems disproportional
but great to see you on the outside.

If there is any way in which I can help you to jumpstart your career should
you need it or throw work your way let me know and I'll see what I can do for
you, email in my profile.

~~~
quackerhacker
Thank you! I got 15months, the OP on that thread got 5yrs. Definitely, I
appreciate the contact, I'll email you soon (programming right now).

------
venomsnake
HN is becoming my main tech related hub recently. Almost any article worth
reading from the big tech sites will find its place here and comments are
noting short of amazing sometimes. The depth on some technical topics
surpasses even stackexchange.

Also if there is downwards slope in the quality it is very mild - for the two
years I have been here it is quite consistent.

~~~
mindcrime
My main problem with HN recently is that we're getting _way_ too much
political crap on the front page. And, along with that, we seem to be getting
more a skew to the "left" (in the modern, American sense of the term) which
I'm not crazy about (being neither exactly "right" nor exactly "left" I don't
want to see HN moving in either of those directions).

I also get the feeling that "groupthink" is a growing problem and that people
are getting downvoted for simply having the audacity to go against the local
"received wisdom", but that's pretty subjective and I may be wrong.

------
Chirono

      On the backend, Hacker News runs on one core, and Graham calls this a “remarkable feat of scaling.”
    

Wow, Really? I'd say that is pretty remarkable, yes. Is there anywhere that
goes into more detail about this?

~~~
mcfunley
That's actually a remarkable feat of _not_ scaling.

~~~
to3m
Scaling is surely about handling demand, which HN seems to do a decent enough
job of.

------
DanielRibeiro
_If you are a YC founder, your username will show up in orange to other YC
founders to enable these entrepreneurs to recognize and meet each other._

I've been aware of this for a while (a few YC founders I got to meet confided
this to me), but it is the first time I've seen it being publicly admitted.

Along with the DMCA[1] link below, I'm happy to see this ever increasing level
of transparency on Hacker News. I believe it is a great way to foster trust
among the community.

[1] <https://news.ycombinator.com/dmca.html>

------
brownbat
To those who have been here from the early days, thanks for letting us newer
folks crash the party.

I don't have a lot of +50 comments, but I try to self-censor if I'm not
getting more +2s than not.

No idea if or when eternal September kicks in here, but... I guess the upside
is what pg has proved: anyone dissatisfied with online communities can just
build a new one, use a singular purpose and a stripped-down ad-free interface,
and people will come (for better or worse).

------
MarkMc
4 hours per day! Thanks, pg

------
DanBC
It's interesting to hear that all moderation is done by just a few people.
It's easy to knock mods, but I think the moderation is pretty good here.

I like the choice that people make here. People decide to be constructive and
useful. It'd be interesting to see how that can be replicated in other places.
Reddit has some good subs. Ask science and ask history are great. They have
big moderation teams who frequently delete comments. (That's a good thing!).
SE is good for their very narrow tasks - they really need to open an ad-
supported open discussion version of the sites. At the moment there is a site,
its meta site, and its chat site. Having a noodling discussion site would
allow people to have that interesting chat stuff.

It's interesting that wikipedia, while being brilliant, is also really toxic
and unpleasant for some people.

------
chrisvineup
"The idea of a VC having its own news aggregator was a bit outlandish in
2007."

This coming from Tech... crunch/fund?

------
hayksaakian
Interesting, the only thing I really learned though was the orange names
between YC founders.

------
mcgwiz
I might be mistaken but I get the sense that, especially to older members,
it's not just "declining quality of discussion" (uninformed/irrelevant,
discompassionate, outright rude, inflammatory comments) that is threatening
the value of the site. There may actually be a less tangible/measurable
quality, that of the early "feel" of the community, that was of great value to
those members. It might have come from the particular set of voices that made
up the bulk of comments in the early days, or the relative obscurity of the
site. While discussion quality can be improved, I doubt some members can ever
feel fully satisfied, without the old feel.

Also, there are many innovations in comment systems. Gawker's Kinja system is
quite good at surfacing or organizing interesting comments, among other
things. Post segmentation and comment filtering are techniques used by
Slashdot and Reddit, which dampen the impact of growth on community "feel".
But, despite the massive growth, there is strong aversion to incorporating any
deep changes here.

I perceive two specific challenges: prominent voices might actually want a
feeling that is (or appears to be) impossible to restore, and there's general
apprehension about messing too much with the magic formula that brought HN to
the point it's at today. With the influx of users, this appears to create an
identity crisis for the site.

I wish I could suggest solutions along with these observations.

Edit: I do think it would be useful to understand what members of varying
karma levels subjectively/qualitatively perceive to be the values and valuable
traits of the site.

------
tptacek
Man I miss Flashdot.

~~~
hko
Perhaps she meant ſlashdot.

------
grandalf
It's not a decline in overall quality, just a decrease in signal to noise
ratio. Which is a consequence not of user growth but of the startup culture
becoming more mainstream and less nerdy.

Still my favorite site and primary source (directly or indirectly) of new
knowledge.

------
bmoresbest55
I am brand new to HN (and reddit (I'm a noob)). I am a hacker though, I think,
and love reading the articles that I would have no other way to read. I am
trying to be a more involved member to the hacker/developer community. I think
that more people is a good thing overall, it brings more view points and
opinion to the site. I do see the downsides to the growth too, though I think
that the good far outweighs the bad. I ma not a new member that is a troll or
a bad commenter and I think most new users to HN are the same way. Just my
$0.02.

------
Luyt
If you want to see on which date you joined Hacker News, click your login name
in the right top of the page (<https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Username>)
and note the 'created: 1397 days ago'. Then plug in this number into a date
calculation:

    
    
      $ python
      >>> import datetime
      >>> print datetime.date.today() - datetime.timedelta(1397)
      2009-07-22
    

Interesting. I joined in the summer of 2009 ;-)

~~~
rbanffy
Wow...

    
    
      >>> datetime.datetime.now() - datetime.timedelta(days=1894)
      datetime.datetime(2008, 3, 12, 16, 24, 16, 996897)
    

Time really flies.

------
sriramk
If memory serves me right, there was a lot of discussion in the early days of
HN about _not_ being Reddit (when Reddit was much more low quality and getting
beaten by Digg).

~~~
davidw
Reddit got a bunch of its initial users via a link or two from PG essays.
Indeed, there are some of the early users there who I recognize as early users
here, too. It was pretty good at that stage. And then reddit started growing,
and linking to all kinds of stuff like Ron Paul, and lots of "outrage"
stories, and other flamewar topics, and promptly went to hell in a handbasket.

------
austenallred
I would like to see an article on The Evolution of TechCrunch.

------
hkmurakami
_> Could This Be A Business?_

Without a doubt. In fact, if a prominent hacker in a non-english speaking
country set up something similar, it will definitely become influential.

Hatena Bookmark of Japan used to be like the old reddit with predominantly
hacker subject articles, but it grew and became mainstream, kind of like new
reddit. Now the hacker community there is yearning for something like hacker
news; something that is _for them_.

~~~
MrMan
It's officially a business! It's called YC.

~~~
hkmurakami
well I mean HN standalone.

------
elteto
You can tell that the quality of the comments (and hence of the community) is
going down when you can just by looking at the title of a post, predict the
type of negative comments that you will see inside.

However the question (which might not have a satisfactory answer) is whether
you can keep the same quality standards _while_ still growing. I think that
forcibly keeping the community small can be worse than dilution itself.

------
matb33
Maybe a de-amalgamation is in order. I'm thinking a sort of inner ring system,
where higher karma users contribute but lower karma have read-only. I'm sure
this has big issues, just throwing it out there

~~~
krapp
What incentive is there for new users to stick around if they can't contribute
to threads though? How do they reach the karma threshold where they can
participate? You can't necessarily correlate age and karma with quality.

 _that said_ I did once have a fiendish (and probably terrible) idea for a
similar system where you could only post if you had a certain amount of karma,
but also, where you could buy karma points outright.

~~~
jbicha
Without karma it's very difficult to submit links that anyone will see.

------
sutro
Thanks a lot for HN, PG.

------
d0m
I'd really like to see the YC alumns. in orange. It would make reading the
comments so much more interesting : )

------
waltz
I think I might be hellbanned :/

~~~
krapp
Not yet.

------
420365247
part of me wants HN to remain somewhat of a "secret" so it doesnt become
reddit.

------
Cakez0r
Well, there goes the neighbourhood.

------
ben0x539
Is this a press release?

~~~
Achshar
How can it possibly be?

