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Ask HN: What's the Purpose of Hacker News to You?
29 points by DanielBMarkham on July 6, 2009 | hide | past | favorite | 44 comments
I was fascinated by the recent "Hacker Hacker News" post. Looks like a really cool idea. But the poster said that the "real" hacker news was about science, math, and languages.

Really? I thought the "real" Hacker News was about startups and things related to the startup culture.

Without posting the link, or quoting it (you all know the one), what is Hacker News to you? I know the PG quote, and I'm not interested in repeating it. Obviously HN means a lot of different things to different folks. What with all of the newcomers, I was wondering: why does everybody hang out here?




Believe it or not, I'm more interested in the people here than the content.

Sure, content is important, should be high quality, and needs to be somewhat restricted to what interests us. But AFAIC, the purpose of the content is to build the community. Almost any article I find here I can find somewhere else. But I can't find the same quality of discussion as here.

I do use data from hn as a resource in my work, but only minimially. Most of what I do requires long hours and hard work, not outside input.

I have had the great opportunity to form many friendships here, most on-line, but quite a few in person too, through meet-ups, etc. I don't make many friends who are in the same line of work as me, so I really value relationships here.

Like many hackers, I spend long periods of time alone. Hacker News does a great job serving as my virtual water cooler/break room. Having cool things to talk about is a nice bonus.


Believe it or not, I'm more interested in the people here than the content.

I wholeheartedly agree. As a matter of fact, I was reading the RSS feeds exclusively until very recently (2 weeks ago). A friend of mine then told me I should check out the discussions that take place on the site. I'm so happy I followed his advice. Generally, the discussions are at least an order of magnitude more interesting than the articles themselves. That's the reason HN is my browser's homepage now.


Generally, the discussions are at least an order of magnitude more interesting than the articles themselves

dito!

I must admit that I've never used the RSS feed (that's partly because I'm not the big RSS reader type). I always get my daily portion of Hacker News directly from the homepage :)


I used to just read the articles rather than the comments as well. When I first read the "Ask HN" stories and the corresponding comments, that's when I realized that the smart and respectful people here are what make HN.


Same here.

I came into HN as a place where other people in the startup/hacker culture hang out. I figured if nothing else some of that goodness might rub off on me. It's been a great virtual water cooler so far.


Likewise - I enjoy reading the comments/threads before the actual link - The comments determine whether I will read the link or not...oftentimes


I know that whenever I see a crypto post hit the front page, no matter where it came from, I can expect tptacek to debunk its myths.


I like to learn from other people here as well as help with their projects (feedback, testing, etc).

I like HN people.


There's very little crap here, both in the comments and the links.

Crap is my personal distaste in news, namely celebrity obsession, fluff, non-informative articles, time-wasters, fashion trends and the like.

I love the occasional article on 14'th. century Venice and biology as much as the ones related to hacking and startups because they aren't crap if they rise to the frontpage.


While I mostly agree with what you say, I have to admit I find hacker news a tad heavy when it comes to overhyping whatever language fashionable this month. Also I have about zero interest in startups and venture capitol etc etc, unless someone has any cool tech to demo.

Not a deal-breaker by any means, but it get tiring every now and then :)

I'm mostly here for the tech news and civilized discussion really. Call me a proggit-refugee if you like.


Proggit has gotten terrible of late.


Generally speaking, there's a level of respect here that you just don't find on the internet. Cooler heads tend to prevail, people value replies that explain rather than criticize even if the original poster was simply wrong, and with rare exception we don't tend to re-post the same thing over and over every couple of weeks.

It's really shocking that the environment hasn't changed as the site has gotten larger. I used to be a tad afraid that as more people joined we'd start getting more of the noise and flame-wars that one sees on other sites.

Sure, it's great that HN has interesting content and often times lets me see new and interesting technologies that I can apply, but really it's the respect that we seem to afford each other that keeps me as an engaged member of the community rather than someone that just lurks. I love discussion, but I have better things to do than fight with people.

I always try to remember what Prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan said at a commencement at my university, "it is important to express your views, and sometimes even your anger, but at the same time remember that the noble art of conversation is not a martial art."

Thank you to everyone here who proves daily that we can respect one another on the internet.


My route to Hacker News was:

Slashdot -> Digg -> Hacker News

Basically each of those stopped serving my purpose as they got cluttered with what I'd basically describe as irrelevant nonsense. Hacker News has managed to present content that is unique, fresh, interesting, mature, and useful to anybody that's more interested in learning something new than watching some video with cats. To me, Hacker News is a blend of content about technology, science, business, and startups. It's kinda the website version of the magazine 'FastCompany', and it's where my interests are right now ...


Interesting route. I made essentially the same trip but stopped off at reddit for a month or so between Digg and HN.


I've been thinking a lot about this over the weekend. Any bets on what's next?


I think HN will last more. There is a reason, HN is not a business like is Digg or Reddit, so I bet Paul Graham will try do to his best in order to take the site useful and don't attract noise here. The other sites can't do too much if the metric is "more garbage but much more pageviews", here instead there are no deals to do, nor ADS to serve, so the site can be adjusted just in order to maximize the quality over the time.


I'm the person who made and posted "Hacker Hacker News." I didn't intend to say that science, math, and programming are really what this site's about, or even that they are better than anything else. I wasn't trying to make a statement, just a Web site. I can see how the name would imply that, though, but you all know how hard it is to find good domains these days. :)


I thought it was a good idea. No one would have to say something like "not programming" anymore.


I think something that's more important to me than HN being an intelligent community, is that it's a respectful community. People have polite (and intelligent) discussions (about topics that interest me) - that's become rare on the Internet.


I came here from the link on pg's site, repeatedly. For a long time I just lurked. I started posting comments (for which I had to register) after I started noticing comment threads on which I had something to say. I like the start-up culture here, the most. What I also like is the general intellectual curiosity.


HN is a highly focused & highly intelligent community that shares links and information on topics which interest me. Usually surrounding technology, science, entrepreneurship and the Internet.


My thoughts as well though I'll add that I feel there's been an increase in content that doesn't deal with subjects down to their minutia over the past few months.


HN has a good combination of content selection and comments. I've honestly never seen such high quality commenting on articles. I generally find about half of the links on the front-page interesting, and the comments are always lucid. If the link is garbage, somebody always points out the errors in the link in an intelligent way, not an annoying way (like /.).


It's not what it is, it is what it isn't:

- political news - sports news - 'entertainment' news - and so on...

There are plenty of places that have all that HN has and more, it's the lack of the 'more' that makes HN a good place to hang out.

edit:

And of course the people here... there seems to be on the whole less immature behaviour here than elsewhere (though it does happen).


I'm a compulsive arguer. I love to pit my ideas against reality. HN gives me the opportunity to argue with intelligent, thoughtful, articulate people on a large scale.

To an extent, this is what I do on my blog too. But it's a lot cheaper to write a comment like this one than to write a whole blog post.

As a start-up CTO, I also use HN as a "pulse feel" for the start-up/tech community. It's important to be in touch with the communities that you operate in or near, and HN largely fulfills that purpose for me.


I wouldn't expect hacker news articles to be restriced to technology or startups or even news. I would expect them to be aimed at a deeper understanding of a topic.


News filtered by people with similar interests to myself. I have never been a full-time coder and no longer wish to be; I'm a bricoleur-type hacker, interested in solutions that solve present problems more than in engineering for the ages (although I greatly respect the latter), even if it does not always involve computers.

I also like the business/money content, since that's an area where I'm weak and welcome input that's good for geeks; the business content on HN reminds me of a pulse wave and generally tends to be either essential or trite.


Odds are, I will never do a software-only startup. I'm an embedded systems guy and at the least I'll have to release electronic hardware as well. But for me HN is business from a different perspective. I get to see things from a primarily web-app, data-driven perspective. And while a lot of the business models I see here are doomed to failure, I can still learn from them by seeing what people are attempting to do.

Science, math, languages? Not so much. Tech business is a lot more interesting and fun.


Among the reasons others have already mentioned, I also regularly google through old HN articles for advice on which tools are the best.

Searches like "hosting provider" or "server monitoring" will bring up lots of useful comments from the folks in the trenches.

Edit: Another reason: positivy toward success. In my daily life, I'm surrounded by people who denigrate those who are more succesful than them. HN is a place where that rarely happens, even if the subject is as unusual as jocks or jewel thieves.


To a certain degree, HN is a source of procrastination to me - which it is really bad for because almost every link requires a substantial amount of time to consume. I still go to Reddit to click on a few [pic] links every now and then, but HN is much more inspirering. I agree with you though - I generally consider the interesting topics to be the less technical and more startup-related ones.


At its best, it's a window into how the world works. Most of the Internet tells you what is happening - HN is one of the few places online which dives into the why. This is mostly restricted to the intersection of tech and business, but that's fine.


The closest match of people with the same interests as me - spanning both tech stuff, brainiac stuff, and business stuff - that I've yet to find on the Internets.


Above all, Hacker News provides a free education.

My path:

Google Search for CS schools -> Joel on Software -> other bloggers -> Paul Graham -> Hacker News

They don't cover this stuff in Academia


Because people here generally seem interested in the same things as me.

Or more importantly: everyone here seems to go "oooh shiny" at the same things as me :)


I see technical news here frequently before I see it elsewhere, and the comment discussions make the links much more valuable. Many are the times I find myself following suggested links from the comments long after I've digested the original article.

I start my day with bbc worldservice, then npr, then hn. Last I add a dash of dvorak so I am up on my conspiracy theories :)


Enthusiasm. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubWq-27184U


I use HN to find the two things that most aggregate sites don't provide. Thought provoking articles. Thought provoking comments.

Whether it is before I read the article, after, or both; I read the comments on HN. I rarely do that on <Insert Sitename>.


I come here to learn what interesting people think and how. The links are also very entertaining (too much) but I like most to read the comments.


I'm new to HN and coming to it straight through YC, it is what I expected - all about startups. Please keep it that way.


To me, Hacker News is a more relevant and civilized place than Slashdot. People are nicer here.


I use it to read stories and also to discuss with mind-like people and share ideas.


To gain karma.


HN is my newspaper, I read it everyday to be up-to-date in the tech world.

I like interesting news, but I don't care if:

- gmail is down

- somebody got shot at the apple store

- the iphone burns my cheeks

- yahoo will never recover

- payperpost

- propaganda

- PR submarines

but above all, I hate FUD


No Junk (in bold). Useful/Interesting articles.




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