Why Y Combinator’s Hacker News Is Flawed

That's not to say HN doesn't have flaws. But these aren't the droids you're looking for.

The droids you're looking for have to do with solving the problem of growing a community and keeping it intelligent. Inevitably, the tyranny of the majority will prevail, people will leave HN and go to some place smaller and newer, as did those who came here from reddit who came here from digg who came here from slashdot who came here from John Carmack's .plan file.

1. Comment formatting is too limited. I want multi-level quoting and lists.

2. Unknown or expired link.

Inevitable for a news site.

2. The Point system sets the wrong incentives Most people seem to be in it for the points.

This could happen, but I haven't seen many signs of it. Personally, I try to avoid making comments that might get a negative karma score, but I don't much care how high a positive score I get. IMO The points system works well; I especially like the way that negative karma posts are 'named and shamed'.

3. There is no way to search

This is a reasonable point.

4. Using HN as a discussion forum doesn’t work.

Ask and Tell HN threads appear frequently, so this doesn't seem to be a problem. And I find the discussions on HN to be excellent.

5. There is no way to revive old discussions

IMO, this is a good thing for HN. It prevents it turning into a traditional web forum - not that web forums are a bad thing, they just tend to be more insular, and there's more of a split between regulars and newcomers.

For searching HN, http://searchyc.com is a fantastic service, much better than the HN Search linked at the very bottom of HN.

If you're interested in more discussion with startup folks / if you find that Ask HN posts are usually your favorite, you may also enjoy: http://answers.onstartups.com

If you want to continue a discussion that has gone stale, you write a new blog post about it and post it. Discussion continues.