

What happened to Hacker News - ig1
http://blog.imranghory.org/what-happened-to-hacker-news

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ColinWright
It switched from "Startup News" to "Hacker News" and the guideline is stated
as "Anything good hackers will find interesting, which isn't limited to just
hacking."

Then the site became popular, and so everyone thinks "I'm on Hacker News, and
I can contribute anything I think is interesting." With the enormously wide
range of interests covered by the entire population now on HN, there is no
focus. Everyone clamours to be the first to submit the latest piece of gossip
about any company or person remotely connected with technology. Or companies.
Or anything, really.

In particular, though, the "welcome" message asks for things that are "deeply
interesting". One thing is for sure - we don't get that.

My interests are in math, science, education in math and science, theoretical
computing, elegant hacks, and running a business. To find anything about those
I have to hunt deep in the stack, because they rarely make the front page. HN
is no longer a sensible filter for stuff I want.

In fact, I don't think it really serves anyone well any more.

I'll bet this item now gets flagged into oblivion. Any discussion of the
current state of HN is regarded as "meta" by the majority and seen as
criticism of them. The democratic nature of HN's voting system implies that
the majority rules, pretty much everyone can flag, and as I know to my cost,
flags will effectively kill an item.

 _Added in edit: this is now less than two hours old and has 26 points - it
should be on the top page, and it's actually down at 156. Flagged to death,
despite the fact that it should be interesting to everyone here._

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davidw
My wish is that the moderators would more ruthlessly prune the
politics/economics stories. They draw in anyone and everyone (who doesn't have
opinions on those things?), rather than people interested in startups and
tech. And the debates are old, old, old. I'm reading an interesting book now,
Grand Pursuit (
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0043RSK4Y/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=de...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0043RSK4Y/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=dedasys-20&camp=213381&creative=390973&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=B0043RSK4Y&adid=0NXZ0XFJESBKJ4F40PDA&);
) about the history of economics and some famous economists. And a lot of the
very same more state, less state, right vs left stuff was being argued about
100 years ago... it just goes around and around and around, it seems.

~~~
Semiapies
And hacker-psuedo-elitism aside, most of the people commenting on politics and
economics aren't any more informed on the subjects than people right off the
street.

------
Peroni
The content is dictated by the community. There is still a significant amount
of start-up info and stories but you are right on one point, the site has
evolved from being almost exclusively start-up orientated to one that contains
content of interest to Developers, Hackers and entrepreneurs.

Essentially, popularity happened and the site evolved to reflect the increased
deomgraphic now reading HN.

~~~
ashishgandhi
Exactly. I wouldn't say it's a bad thing. In fact, the quality of discussions
hasn't boiled down to BS in spite of the popularity.

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larrik
PG explicitly switched the site from just Startup News to Hacker News.

Sorry you missed it.

~~~
_delirium
Yeah, I have sort of the opposite complaint: too much startup-scene drama news
(e.g. anything having to do with Techcrunch), not enough _hacker_ news (in
which I'm willing to include "anything remotely technical").

~~~
onedognight
Start up drama doesn't not really help "founders meet and talk", so I would
say it is just as off topic.

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disgruntledphd2
for me (as a new member) I really like HN for one reason, and one reason alone
- the quality of the discussions. The people here seem smart, civil and
informed about their posts (and the one's who aren't get voted down). That, to
me, is far more useful than startup news, all the time (not that I have any
problems with startup news I actually like it).

~~~
ddw
I agree. Although you can find these discussion elsewhere on the 'net, I
appreciate the level of discourse here and like to read the tech take on
politics or economics of whatever. That kind of stuff is meaningful in a lot
of people's lives and can even affect their businesses. I just gray out the
rest of the noise in my head.

------
atacrawl
Personally, I don't know the first thing about hacking, and I don't have any
particular affinity toward startups. The reason I visit HN on a daily basis is
because it's a great cross-section of news that delves into design,
development, tech law, tech businesses large and small, and yes, even a little
bit of politics and economics. And often, the comments can be incredibly
insightful. I find articles, software and businesses here that I otherwise
wouldn't find.

------
0x12
Ok, so here is my 5 minute solution: I just flagged every piece of content
that I think does not belong on the homepage, now I'll scan the first 3 pages
of the 'new' section and upvote all those articles that I think should be
there.

If everybody else does the same thing then this should correct itself.

I'm betting that it won't make a bit of a difference. Want to try?

~~~
peteretep
What exactly is this meant to be the solution to? That some random blogger
missed the transition from Startup News to Hacker News?

What do you think flagging does?

Why are you so special that the current voting system should be changed to fit
your preferences?

~~~
0x12
Flags will push content down on the homepage, early flags on the new page stop
content from getting on the homepage at all.

In other words, flags are a crude mechanism that you can use to modify the
rankings, effectively they are downvotes.

It won't take many flags to clear the homepage of the political and mainstream
content. My guess is that it won't matter because that same strategy can be
used against content that is on topic. And I've seen that happen, plenty of
times.

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mhd
There are only so many "Five reasons why we do a lean startup" self-promoting
blog posts to go around, and _even_ those get tiring after a while…

I'd say that there's still a lot of startup content, probably not less than at
the beginning. The percentage might be a bit down, because nowadays a lot of
people use this as their primary news site and don't want to switch between HN
for startup content, and e.g. reddit/r/programming for tech stuff. News for
startup guys doesn't have to center around startups all the time.

And as some others have said: _Hacker_ News.

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wccrawford
I always wondered why it was 'hacker news' but clearly run by a company that
promotes startups, and not hackers in general.

As happy as I am that it turned into 'hacker news', I see it turning into
'general news' and it makes me sad. This is the best hacker news site out
there right now, and finding a replacement will be tough.

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darklajid
One tiny (?) change would make my day: Purge (dead) links from the 'new'
section as soon as it's flagged to death.

Quite often I follow that section and see most interesting subjects to 'make
it' in minutes or to drop off the page due to (dead) spam links.

~~~
_delirium
Isn't it that way by default? In any case it's a preference; make sure
"showdead" is set to no in your prefs.

~~~
darklajid
You're right, of course, and I'm an idiot. I somehow expected showdead to
affect nothing but comments.

------
briandear
What I'm interested in is why there isn't the 50 bitcoin stories a day
submitted anymore. Actually, I'm glad the bitcoin stuff stopped getting
submitted so frequently. Might as well submitted links about Amway or
Metabolife.

------
rorrr
What happened to Hacker News? It evolved.

It's not like some evil troll is upvoting Google and MS stories.

