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Comment by octref | Hacker News Reader

I'm baffled. A random list that links to a few most-starred node app got 50+ upvotes in 2 hours on HN and is currently No.1. First commit 3 days ago. I fail to see how it's awesome.

Anyone enlighten me?

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It feels like this and the numerous other "awesome" lists which claim to be curated, are curated in only the most trivial sense: perhaps someone looked to see if each new entry in some plausible way is in the right general category of thing, i.e. is not a random unrelated link. For example, this one looks like a list of open source applications that could be found or were submitted so far for inclusion.

I don't see any evidence on this one or any other of any genuine curation, which would be characterized by saying "no" to some of the possible candidates.

Unfortunately the words awesome and curation have so little meaning among lists of programming-related things, that it would probably be a waste of time for someone to actually do that, and would possibly generate hard feelings from whatever projects end up in the "no" pile.

"No" is hard.

I always wonder what gives authors of these curated lists the authority to be curators? Are they like, experts in the specific domain? What is the curation process? It's difficult to take them seriously unless these questions are answered.

Actually we needed such a list and we asked people about it, with close to zero answers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12786982

After looking arround for a while, we decided to make what we found public.

so "curated" in this instance is short for "Here's what I found"?

I spent a bit more time on the content of this list. But if that's what you like to believe, I'd rather not take it away.

Why does their need to be an authority? If somebody posts a bad list or curates against your interests, you could leave a comment or suggest a better list.

"curated list" is a major meme. I think the word curated makes people feel fancy.

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=curated%20list&sort=byPopulari...

I think it's just people who use the upvote button as a "save for later" functionality. Also, if it's on the front page it might get the boost to make it really useful.

I was wondering that too. Either someone figured out how to game the HN algorithm, or the term "curated list" really does have some magic clickbait properties…

66 days old account, only submission. And only comments are links back to github.

That's basically how the whole javascript community works. There are tons of lists with random links (usually most-starred, yeah), which doesn't make a lot of sense, but they have tons of stars and attention.

Do they help people? Yeah, some of them definitely. Are they awesome and must have to get familiar with? Barely.

From my short experience working with other communities is very different, they are much more pragmatic and sceptical (worked with Go and Elixir a little bit).

There are many lists like that for everything I can think of, not just for Javascript.

https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome

Here is a more comprehensive list: https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome-nodejs

I assume it's <sarcasm></sarcasm> due to lack of projects, sarcasm either by the creator or the non Node.js community.

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