I couldn't agree more, I waste countless potential working hours 'learning' on HN that if this site closed down, I would probably cure cancer, invent "the new X" and single handedly save the world in the first week with the spare time I would have.
I couldn't agree more, I know that once I've read all of HN (which is really to say the first 5 or 6 pages of top stories and new) I tend to head over to Reddit or chat to someone on Skype or Facebook.
My day seems to be divided between minor distractions to keep me working, it's no wonder I'm behind on my work!
No. It's not. Within the last two days, a comment was upvoted which implied that a VM like the JVM was the same as a virtualization platform such as Xen or KVM.
Also, there is a lot more of the "you're a fucking idiot" attitude on display on Reddit. Mistakes like the one you cited do get downvoted and called out here, but generally, you don't hear the "comic book guy" voice when reading them out loud.
Upvoting on Reddit may not necessarily reflect the popularity or acceptance of a particular view. There are various ways to game the Reddit voting system. This is not to suggest that a given Reddit forum has a quality level above what its voting patterns suggest.
I fall back to reddit/programming when I don't find anything interesting here. I'd go there waiting for HN to come back, as I find r/p to be of lesser quality than HN.
I'm more interested in seeing if there is something else out there. I haven't figured out why I haven't really found anything else I like so I'm asking what you like.
The truth is there are few options that have HN's quality level, for various reasons, one being its relatively small following.
At risk of igniting controversy (or generating more heat than light), I might rank social media sites this way, from worst to best:
4Chan | Digg | Reddit | Slashdot | HN
Reasonable people may differ, of course. But I think there's little controversy over the idea that, when a site becomes popular, its quality necessarily declines -- unless there are barriers to membership.
I often wondered if there was an alternative to HN, for when it goes down unexpectedly or I want a change of scenery, but I haven't as yet found a suitable site.
Isn't it ironic that we have come to only 2 alternatives to Hacker News when there are zillions of websites?
Can this be a possibility of another website?
Given all of the recent discussions about problems with HN I wonder whether there would be any positive effects of actually choosing to shut it down for a month?
I would certainly come back if it did shut down for a bit.
"To shut down", "To log in" are verbs. "I will shut down my computer in 10 minutes", "Click on the key to log in".
"Shutdown" and "login" are action nouns. "The shutdown happened at midnight, two hours after the planned deadline", "A problem occurred during the login phase".
If that is the case, grand-parent would be right: the correct phrase should be "if HN shut down for one month" (cfr. "after HN shutdown").
Usage of "shut down" is more prevalent and has a longer history in English, although "shutdown" is also correct and has entered wide usage at the beginning of 20th century.
