> Um, this isn't reddit.
It's way more reddit than it used to be. It happened to Reddit, it's already almost completely happened here. This place is basically a decent subreddit in culture now. Kind of sad.
It's way more reddit than it used to be. It happened to Reddit, it's already almost completely happened here. This place is basically a decent subreddit in culture now. Kind of sad.
Because based on my impressions as someone commenting or lurking here 5+ years, HN has experienced a significant uptick in quality over the past year or so. I see many older commenters making the same type of observations.
And Reddit-like comments are consistently downvoted here.
EDIT: Removed "Of that there's no question." from my statement about comments being consistently downvoted, since clearly that's not true.
In the end I think the HN and Reddit audiences are different. Yeah there is overlap but I don't think there is a ton of overlap.
Much like my Reddit experience - was a long-time lurker, but have a more recent account.
Both sites have gone downhill in terms of community quality.
> HN has experienced a significant uptick in quality over the past year or so
In the news articles I'd agree. In the comments? Drastically the opposite as far as I've read.
> Reddit-like comments are consistently downvoted here.
I wish. The worst meme-crap sure, I agree with that, and it's a good thing. However it's not that that's the problem: it's the community attitude and outlook; just seems to have got a lot worse - especially in the last year or two.
Case in point: down-votes for disagreement rather than lack of content. See my comment above for a great example of that.
The debate about downvotes for disagreement rather than lack of content has been going on here for years. For me, it's as clear as day that this is getting much, much better. From about 2012 to early 2014, there was some type of either bot or some very, very eager HNers who would rapidly downvote topics they didn't like, 3-4 downvotes within the first 5 minutes, even if it was a quality comment. I would regularly upvote comments even though I vehemently disagreed with the commenter just to offset those downvotes. I find myself having to do that much, much less now.
It is clear that HN is getting more "traditionally" polite as well as what many would consider politically correct, so if that pisses you off then I can definitely see how the site would seem to be worse.
But I strongly, strongly disagree with the Reddit thing. By the way, take a look at the HN guidelines:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It says:
"If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a common semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills."
If I'm not mistaken, that guideline has been in place since I got here back in 2010-2011 or so, so that should tell you something. People have been complaining about Reddit-like comments on HN since at least back then.
(As as you will have noted, people are quick to downvote comments saying HN is becoming Reddit for this very reason)
I mean... seriously. It's been a problem SINCE 2010-2011 so I'm not surprised. You're right tho - it DID get better. So did the quality of Reddit for a white - then it got a lot... LOT worse.
> people are quick to downvote comments saying HN is becoming Reddit for this very reason
Well no, mostly it's just the false sense of superiorly that this place has actively cultivated over Reddit for many years. Got to maintain that.
Awareness of a problem is the first step in combatting it after all.
> If you don't like the increasing Reddit-ness of HN, then pointing out that HN isn't Reddit is the right thing to do to stop the trend.
That "isn't" might have been a bit confusing, but, with parentheses, I meant:
> If you don't like the increasing Reddit-ness of HN, then (pointing out that HN isn't Reddit) is the right thing to do to stop the trend.
My point was that, when BinaryIdiot said "Um, this isn't Reddit", you said (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10433352):
> It's way more reddit than it used to be. It happened to Reddit, it's already almost completely happened here. This place is basically a decent subreddit in culture now. Kind of sad.
I took this to mean that you thought that BinaryIdiot's chiding was inappropriate, or useless.