

Does HN have conflicting interests? - yters

A) HN users want in depth, rational discussion.<p>B) HN users want a pro startup environment.<p>B means users will favor optimism and discourage anything cynical.  A sometimes requires what may look like cynicism.<p>These two interests are therefore in conflict and will cause irrational behavior:<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=148830<p>xLnt has raised a valid issue, but most went with a knee jerk response.  I am surprised that this happened, especially since pg's article is on the front page.<p>So the question: what is HN essentially about, startups or discourse?<p>This is an important issue.  If it is not dealt with, the community will default with B and discourage the users who come here for A.  However, HN's lasting value lies in a community that can converse well with each other.  Otherwise, I fear HN will become a guru culture and lose the ability to buck the system.<p>In short, it will no longer be worthy of the name Hacker News.
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brk
For starters the comment you cite does not look like "raised a valid issue",
it _looks_ like "silly 13 year old comment", and I think it was modded
appropriately. Had he provided some other thoughts or datapoints to back up
his position, or even just stated his case in a more normal manner ("No, I
think romance is dumb. It takes valuable time and money cycles away from my
building my company"). I did note that he provided a little more data further
down in the comment stream.

But, to answer your question, I don't think there are conflicting interests
here. People who favor "B" will (hopefully) learn over time that their
interests are better served by considering all arguments. Provided of course
that those arguments are actually well-reasoned and presented, and not just
"No, u r dumb".

"Pro Startup" does not have to equal "sugar coated happy you-can-do-it"
comments. In fact I would think most true hacker types would have gotten
enough of that bullshit in school and would crave honest feedback.

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dcurtis
When the front page of hacker news is filled entirely with questions about
hacker news and its community, will it still be worth coming here?

This is obviously an exaggeration, but the number of reflective question-based
Ask News.YC posts has become somewhat discouraging.

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rms
Discouraging of what? The idea of this community is to make a community that
doesn't suck, which is probably going to require continuous meta-discussion.
One day we'll take the meta discussion to a sub tag.

~~~
joshwa
That's one thing (of many) that metafilter got right.

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rms
I think it would be good to have a sub.news setup here, where submitted
stories were classified and users could choose how much of each type was on
their home page. If users liked lots of general discourse, they would only see
the highest rated Startup/Hacker stories. If users only liked hacker/startup
stuff, they would never see the general discussion, except when the other ones
went off topic. I think the core hacker/startup culture would still survive in
such a setup.

This drastically improved reddit, but it was already too late to save reddit.
I think implementing sub.news.arc roughly as implemented on reddit would only
improve news.ycombinator.com.

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icky
I think you're grasping at straws, here.

Got a better, more relevant example?

~~~
yters
Yeah, that one example isn't enough, though it is interesting. It's a trend
I've noticed and the point is valid, but I don't have a lot of good evidence I
can pull.

~~~
davidw
I've often made contrarian arguments, and at times pessimistic ones. Not about
people's individual undertakings, as that would be against what I consider the
spirit of things here, but in a 'general case', I think it's perfectly
healthy.

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wheels
All news sites are biased, moreso if they are community maintained. It's not
devious; it's just sociology. Communities tend to reinforce values that they
agree with or validate what they are doing, especially if it's risky. I think
the sollution is to just factor that into your reading.

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xlnt
I don't think my comments were cynical. I'm optimistic that not being romantic
can work even better than a status quo life.

~~~
yters
"look like cynicism"

Significant discussion happens around the "nerve points" and questioning their
legitimacy can look like cynicism.

~~~
xlnt
To me, the other side looks very pessimistic. They say: so what if it hurts
people? Life would be even worse without it. No optimism that life doesn't
have to hurt.

