
Goodbye, Hacker News. I'm going back to Reddit. - jmpeters
It was worth putting up with the sycophancy of many of the commenters here who seem to participate only to impress PG, their would-be benefactor...for a while. It was worth it while the stories focused on the niche we are all interested in, startups. The change to more general-purpose news, the attempt to re-create the Reddit of old, seemed to be made without first asking the overall community for input (unlike the way that Craig Newmark makes all changes to Craig's List, for example). Although it has apparently been going on all along, this title-censoring thing is, for me, the final straw. Yes, Reddit has been overrun by the unwashed masses. It has become messy in the way that democracy itself is messy. But this site is getting the feeling of an artificially sterile place for tech elites as defined by PG and his minions. So I'm going back to the unwashed masses, even if it means having to read a few more titles about cat pictures. Best of luck, though, PG, and thanks for the great information this site has given me thus far. I will continue to follow your impressive career and your essays with great interest. <p>PS, Editors, feel free to change my title to "Hacker News Rocks!"
======
nostrademons
Thing is, Reddit really sucks now. I was just visiting it today and was amazed
by the number of ignoranuses (ignoranus = someone who is both stupid and an
asshole) on it.

I wonder if this is the eventual fate of all online communities. I've been
through at least half a dozen now, and I've yet to see one survive as
something other than trite, meaningless bullshit.

The curious thing is - in at least one case (HP fandom, and possibly the C2
wiki), I kept the friendships that I formed in it. Maybe that's the real point
of online communities - form offline friendships, and keep those.

Looking forward to the Boston meetup on Sunday...

~~~
jmzachary
"I wonder if this is the eventual fate of all online communities. I've been
through at least half a dozen now, and I've yet to see one survive as
something other than trite, meaningless bullshit."

This is best described as "reversion to the mean". A democratic, non-moderated
site like Reddit and News.YC will start off attracting folks on the right end
of the bell curve, and over time, gain traction to attract the unwashed
masses. Then, someone will get fed up and go start another site, and the cycle
begins anew. I'm not being elitist or snobbish; this is what I have observed
since the USENET of the 1990s. It always happens.

~~~
Goladus
On the other hand, I've been a member of a loosely-moderated community for
close to 7 years and it's still going strong (I think the forum first opened
in 1999). There is a lot of what might be considered "trite" to a casual
observer, but for those of us who have been reading and posting there for a
long time we simply ignore the content we're not interested in. There's always
enough good stuff to keep me going back.

It definitely was never overrun with ignoranuses, at least not for any
extended period of time.

------
pg
It's the final straw that we fix typos and abusive punctuation in submission
titles? That seems a bit melodramatic.

I'm surprised to think anyone didn't already realize we did this. Did you
really think people on news.yc had that much better spelling than reddit
users?

~~~
trekker7
As opposed to caring about the specifics like fixing punctuation, I think that
critics don't like the authority (and potential for abuse) implied by
administrators messing with user submitted text, no matter in how trivial a
way.

At some point users have to decide if they're willing to sacrifice a purely
democratic community if it means an increase in quality. Is the point of a
social news site to make a political statement, or is it find cool stuff to
read?

Edit: Maybe the admins should just be 100% transparent about everything they
do; document their actions in a FAQ.

~~~
rms
Transparency makes this a non-issue. Admin actions like editing titles should
automatically show up on a log page.

~~~
pg
You're probably right. No one complains when whole submissions are deleted as
spams, presumably because you can see them if you want by turning on showdead
in your profile. So maybe I'll add something to preserve original submission
titles.

------
mynameishere
The number of typical comments for a post determine what kind of people want
to/are willing to comment:

0-10 comments: People who want to talk about the post _per se_

11-50 comments: People who want to have a conversation.

51- comments: People who want to join a mob.

Obviously, ynews is moving from the first to the second, and that changes the
types of comments/people commenting/overall community.

------
dawie
I really liked the fact that YCombinator news was a niche site and I often
wonder if the future of these sosial news sites is not having every category
on a different site to deal with the signal vs noise factor...

~~~
mhb
usenet?

------
palish
Wait, what? Dude, a story that's submitted should be titled the same
regardless of who submits the story. The only variance in titles should be
mere semantics. Any extra information in the title only adds bias or
spelling/grammar mistakes. Therefore, editing a title to its correct form is
just fine. Relax.

But if you can't relax, goodbye. If this thread title is any indication, you
produce great Reddit/Digg titles.

I hope Paul changes "title: " to "suggest a title: " on the submission page so
people realize it's not _their_ title. They didn't produce the content, and if
they did then the editors aren't retitle it.

~~~
aston
I actually think this is sort of a dumb argument to get into in the first
place, but you have to admit that not letting the original submitters to own
their titles (when you allow them to own the resulting karma) is kind of
inconsistent.

Ultimately, though, this sort of user revolt is bound to happen whenever you
make major changes to how a community works. I think news.yc'll make it with
or without the people who are pissed.

~~~
palish
_".. not letting the original submitters to own their titles (when you allow
them to own their resulting karma) is kind of inconsistent."_

I don't see how a user owns a title to content they didn't produce. If they
produced it, the editors won't change it.

You get karma for bringing quality content to other people's attention, not
for calling the content something it isn't.

~~~
aston
Well, I've personally had titles edited, all for stylistic issues (none for
bias, innaccuracy, or anything I'd deem worth editing). I don't really care,
but I would prefer that unless my submissions were clearly in need of
correction that they were not changed. They do show up under "submissions"
clicking from my profile, so I think they ought to reflect what I submitted
unless it harms the site.

------
vikram
Why not create www.startupnews.com? If you want the code, google 'reddit
clone'. I think the lisp community wrote atleast a dozen reddit clones after
reddit switched from lisp to python.

I say this because a lot of people have a problem with the change from a
startup focused to a hacker focused site.

Since you already have a community which is united around a common vision,
it's probably worth acting now and create another site.

The lisp hackers did a similar thing when reddit moved from lisp to python.
For some reason they thought that reddit was only for lisp hackers. BTW, I
don't think that worked as most lisp hackers were already active on cll or
#lisp

------
jsnx
I don't see any reason to choose between ynews and reddit. The level of
technical dialogue here is better, no question -- and for awesome lolcats and
social interest anecdotes, like <http://politics.reddit.com/goto?id=2g6mu>,
there's reddit.

~~~
Keios
Ah! technical dialogue! Now where did you see that here? ;P

------
toemaz
A good alternative: <http://www.dailyhub.com/> from the owner of
<http://www.onstartups.com/>

------
motoko
Wow, and suddenly I realized how much it must suck to be an editor...

~~~
motoko
What's the expression? The politics are so bad because the stakes are so low?

~~~
jsnx
A bikeshed (from a discussion on the FreeBSD mailing list -- see
<http://www.bikeshed.com/>).

~~~
sbraford
YES - this is my favorite new dev meme. So incredibly true it's painful.

------
Goladus
I have two recommendations:

1\. Have patience.

2\. Be a part of the solution.

~~~
bigtoga
Are you suggesting that, if I'm patient enough, they'll change the focus of
this back to startup news? 'Cuz I can get "hacker newz" at
reddit/digg/slashdot/a-dozen-other-places...

And what "solution" should I be part of? The one that makes YC more money? Or
the "sense of community"? I care squat about the YC community; I used to come
here to read the startup articles. I can get arstechnica/lifehacker/etc links
elsewhere.

~~~
Goladus
1\. "Have patience" means that you should avoid jumping to conclusions about
what sort of content you were looking for out of this site, and to let "the
dust settle" before leaping to conclusions about whether the new site suits
you. If it's really that bad, you'll get bored and won't come anymore.

2\. "Be a part of the solution" was really only half of what I intended to
say, the other half being "stop being part of the problem." Being a part of
the solution means voting up the articles you like, contributing knowledgeable
and insightful commentary, and submitting the sort of stories you want to see.
Being a part of the problem means throwing a temper tantrum without including
any interesting or startup-related material.

------
twism
It somehow felt a lot better IMO when it was "Startup News"

~~~
Laurentvw
True. I'm going to miss all those startup submissions. I think he might have
ruined the site this time, but we'll see.

~~~
mangodrunk
What are you guys talking about? Can you list more than 10 sites in the past
few months that were that informative. Yes, startup news is important, but we
can't have submissions like "how to start your company" every day, because
they tend to be the same thing. I enjoy this new take on things, starting the
company is the easy part. Having the knowledge at the right time is the hard
part. This is also a good way for people to get connected. I possibly need a
partner for my startup (based on PG's advice) so maybe I'll find my partner
here.

------
danw
Any idea on how traffic trends for news.yc are since the relaunch? Was traffic
dropping before the change? Has it gone up after?

~~~
pg
Traffic was climbing slowly before the change, at about the rate it always
has. Then there was a huge spike when we changed the focus. It's impossible to
predict yet what the real trend looks like.

~~~
danw
Thanks for letting us know. Any chance of posting a traffic graph in a few
weeks time to see?

~~~
pg
Sure.

------
zach
Also, Reddit doesn't have as much meaningless drama. As of right now, anyway.

~~~
dfranke
Just wait until the next impeachment petition.

------
axod
I know this isn't the right place to ask this, but why is there no down arrow
for submissions/comments? And why when you upmod something does the arrow
disappear! Where's the undo?

~~~
jsg
undo: none available--this is a design choice

downmod: a user must develop a certain amount of karma before the down arrows
appear. additionally, you may not downmod direct replies to your own comments
or stories.

------
Hexayurt
I think the art would be to stop people joining the site when it reaches an
acceptable level of coolness.

Isn't this how Metafilter survives and maintains its excellent quality?

------
alex_c
I'm starting to feel like we need a meta.news.ycombinator.com, for all this
meta-discussion... I'm sure the politics are fascinating, but they feel the
same as those of every online community since the dawn of the Internet... :p

Ah well, I guess I could just not click on them in my RSS.

------
nirs
I think it is a great idea that a human editor is involved, and site content
being edited. A similar process happen on a good wiki, and I always enjoy when
my prose is translated to English behind my back :-)

------
surya
Democracy has a weird tendency of favoring idiocy.

Just take a look at this discussion: <http://reddit.com/info/2ga89/comments>

------
vlad
To be fair to Paul and the moderators, the title of this submission used to
be:

Goodbye, HACKER NEWS!!!! I'm going back to Reddit.

I don't think this site was meant for everybody to post whatever they want.
There should be respect for other people's resources; while Reddit and Digg
want as many users as possible, there is no such leverage here.

I think the mistake is that users start thinking they can do whatever they
want just because a social site is free.

~~~
sabhishek
BTW nobody is posting porn here .. "whatever" is posted, is somehow related to
startups/pragramming most of the times.

------
budu3
Is PG butt kissing the "elephant in the room"?

------
Caligula
I am very disappointed at the editing. I understand if the user includes
profanity or hate speech but nitpicking? It just seems like censorship when it
doesn't need to be.

------
dpapathanasiou
_Although it has apparently been going on all along, this title-censoring
thing is, for me, the final straw._

Wow, I was just complaining about something I found annoying; I didn't mean to
start a revolt.

------
steve
eh, I'll always use both. Maybe I'm just that big of a slacker.

------
fleaflicker
talk about sycophancy

