Hacker News User Base Changed? | Hacker News Reader

Hacker News User Base Changed?

r-bloggers.com

63 pointsTalGalili59 comments

There are lots of references on Hacker news to the fact that the "good old days" are gone and that the character of the site has changed since it started. The visualization above was based on a sample of users that posted on the site in recent times. The data was gathered by iterating over the first 1000 pages and gleaning a list of user names. The users ages were then checked and are plotted above.

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Boy you guys are going to kick me in the ass for this one, but here goes:

Hacker News is chit-chat. You know, like a few geeks standing around the window and watching the construction workers instead of working.

At first (3+ years ago) I thought this was awesome! I live in a rural area and HN was like being part of a super-secret club on the net.

Later on -- much, much later -- I realized that people who stand around the window watching the construction workers are not actually doing anything useful. Although they feel like they are having a blast.

But the difference is -- and this is why it took me so long to figure it out -- if you are standing around at a window jaw-boning it's pretty freaking obvious to you and everyone around you that you're goofing off. Whereas if you're on the computer? Talking about Erlang innards? Making sure that no humor slips in? Talking about the benefits and drawbacks of some new startup model? It all gives the illusion that something terribly important is going on.

My new rule is: click all interesting-looking articles at wake-up. Click a few comment threads. Commenting is failure, as it always just sucks you into more commenting. Then? Try to close the site and stay away from it and do something useful with my life.

If I'm on the computer, my time on HN is the leading reverse indicator of how productive my work is that day.

Later gators

I realized that people who stand around the window watching the construction workers are not actually doing anything useful. Although they feel like they are having a blast.

Whoah. Feeling like you are having a blast is useful. This isn't a sweatshop.

There are a lot of solitary software engineers out there - either freelancers or people embedded in a "regular" office setting or people surrounded by programmers who really don't like coding (hard to believe, I know!). "Virtual" watercoolers like HN do serve a social function and there's nothing shameful about it.

The only downside is that there is an implicit timer for watercooler chats, whereas it is possible to dip in and out of HN all day. Well, if that is a problem for somebody, they know where to find the procrastination setting.

Obviously with any community, after you have been around it long enough you can get the "ok I've heard everything" feeling. In which case it is quite natural to move on, but that doesn't mean the community is worthless, just that you have extracted all the value you could out of it.

I spend a lot of time on HN and enjoy commenting quite a bit. I'm honestly curious as to whether it makes a difference to productivity or not, so I'm currently imposing on searchyc's cache for a few minutes to gather some data, and then I'll chart it against evidence of stuff actually getting accomplished and see what pops out.

I don't expect it will really matter either way.

[Edit: Story of my "quick, knock a script to do that" life: I spidered 3,380 comments and then attempted to write them to a file... only to find that fopen was undefined. File.open(). blargh.]

If I'm on the computer, my time on HN is the leading reverse indicator of how productive my work is that day.

This be true for me too. I find myself saying things like "Wooh! You missed a whole day of HN today!" at the end of productive work days, and after awhile the glow of doing so much work sorta gets linked to the act of not going on HN as much.

It seems like HN's anti procrastination feature isn't well known. I now am only entitled 2 twenty minute sessions a day. The first one starts when I first get to work, the second one at about lunch time. It works great, highly recommended for those who are lacking a bit in the will power.

It also makes getting sucked into debates impossible.

No I do have noprocrast turned on. But even with checking HN just four times a day, the blow to my productivity is many times that, considering how many articles I open every time I visit.

Then again - I suppose I should start using noprocrast like you do.

Agree that it's not something one should spend a lot of time on, but often times, you make serendipitous discoveries through "chit chat" with others in your field. A chance meeting, an interesting new project, a company that's hiring - there are some good things here.

Great recommendations on books, meditiation/concentration/flow techniques, useful technologies...

I realized that people who stand around the window watching the construction workers are not actually doing anything useful

That's an interesting point of view. Certainly in office situations some of the most useful and enlightening conversations I have happen in a "water cooler" type setting. Cigarette break perhaps. Indeed, when I gave up smoking, I changed to chewing gum in the smoking area. The people who meet in random places spark new ideas, bring parts of a business (or community) together who ordinarily would have no reason to meet.

I certainly hear your point about addictiveness of comment ratings, but I think the value of randomly mediated conversation is huge. (As an aside, I started putting together a business presentation on how watching who talks to each other on a smoke break, water cooler run, etc. has valuable lessons for where communication lines may be missing in your organisation. Not always, sure, but there's hints there)

Living in Europe, it's exciting to think, that I'm part of a conversation with people from the valley.

But maybe you're right; maybe working together with others (on an open source project for example), or helping someone on stack overflow for example is a better way to develop more meaningful relationships.

I don't agree that commenting is always useless because on occasion I've actually learned something new and even changed my mind about something as a result of a reply to a comment I've made.

Also if you care about something enough to comment on it, the act of articulating a comment can make you think deeper about it and even uncover flaws before you've even submitted your comment.

Commenting is failure, as it always just sucks you into more commenting.

What a strange remark from one of hn's best commenters.

It's not necessarily the choice of posts that distinguish hn, but the discussions hanging from them. Those discussions need worthwhile comments. Like the ones you consistently make, Daniel. Please keep making them.

Commenting can be failure, but only if you let it. Personally, I rarely respond to challenges to my comments. Engagement in debate can easily lead to lost time. (And others usually respond before I return, anyway).

Not every minute of your day has to be invested in today's programming goal. Think of your comments as deposits into some kind of "knowledge bank". There may be dividends later, maybe tomorrow, maybe 6 months from now. Maybe for you, maybe for someone else. Either way, "failure" is the last word I would use to describe anyone's investment into this community.

Ed, you are correct. Yet we disagree.

I'm not saying that comments don't provide useful pieces of information to the world at large, searchable and present for future generations to read. Of course they do. I'm not saying (as other commenters have sad) that comments have no value. Every now and then I get some really good pieces of information from comments. But total value and net present value are different concepts.

Case in point: I made the parent comment, then logged off. Today I'm pretty sleepy, so I am having a hard time focusing. 15 minutes later I'm thinking "wonder if they downvoted me over on HN?" so I pop back over. What?!? A score of 15? Perhaps it was because I prefaced my remark with "you guys are going to kick me in the ass"

Take note of the comments. Most, as usual, miss my point or are trying to argue some other point. I have found that when I post a comment read by 10K people, 40 or 50 will take it the wrong way. These are folks that if you try to engage will just argue with you. Close the window.

Ten minutes later pop back. Score up again, eh? There might be a good discussion that hangs off this. Bears paying attention to. But must get to work. Close window.

Five minutes later, back over here again. See your comment. Well heck, I'm not saying it's all bad. I should type a pithy response. Ed has a good point.

Yes, to future generations who are googling for specific data these conversations are going to be a goldmine, hopefully. For us, every now and then, you get something awesome -- just enough to keep you participating.

But overall does the participating directly relate to the work you have planned for yourself today -- programming, hiking, reading, whatever. Or when you find a "goodie" do you use it to justify all the time spent? It's the Facebook question -- people you like, giving you pieces of information that from time-to-time are valuable, letting you feel part of a group -- something good for you or something sucking you in?

Future generations, sure. Getting things you can find nowhere else? Absolutely. But in the present sense, in the next hour, for the next minute -- best use of time? Am I selecting to use it, or is it (and the great people who participate!) sucking me in and then I'm rationalizing?

I can't answer the question for others. Took me a long time to figure this out for myself, and as I am now showing, I am not very good at listening to my own advice :)

Most, as usual, miss my point or are trying to argue some other point.

Many people get your point but don't comment to say so. Making (pithy sarcastic lol agree simple rude first ...) comments is generally unacceptable on HN unless you are one of those few people who has name recognition.

I agree with you that commenting can generally be distracting and conversations and responses can linger as a distraction. Sometimes that is what I'm looking for and I comment and sometimes I want to comment but just know it could suck up the rest of my day. Obviously some people are not affected by this. But I can relate to what you are saying. The best advice - do what is best for you. You shouldn't feel obligated to participate.

>> But overall does the participating directly relate to the work you have planned for yourself today

If you consider breaks important (e.g. for organizing thoughts, etc), I'd say yes, this beats water cooler chit-chat about Starcraft 2, for the reasons ed mentioned.

I completely agree on the point about HN being a time/mindshare drain though.

I used to do such reading and commenting in the evenings. Never really had much problem with wondering if they've answered to me now, since I had a list of things to read and then I'd get sleepy and not comment on anything more. Sometimes I'd get an urge to check in the morning or midday, but that wasn't the time.

The obvious downside was that I often stayed up too late, and ended up amassing bookmarks. I'd say it was still better than my current schedule, where I read some comments whenever I'm not doing anything else, like in the mornings, and then intermittently throughout the day.

In light of that, I'd suggest you try reading HN only in the evenings, unless you already have something else to fill that time (like, say, The Simpsons). Topic churn will be a problem, but perhaps there the cure will be in not seeing the problem.

>>>Most, as usual, miss my point or are trying to argue some other point.<<<

You know this happens a lot in real life too. It's as if people don't listen to listen. They listen to dash off their own insightful reply. Maybe it isn't this forum or any other thing, but simply a cultural bias that exists in most of us and is magnified on the internet.

On the other hand, you're absolutely right and it's time for me to shut down this machine.

Why not just cut back on the time you spend here? I bet you could get 80% of the value in 20% of the time. A simple thing like only coming here two or three times a day would probably help a lot.

Cutting back is way better than burning out.

This should be mentioned in every discussion about HN's negative aspects: click your login at the top of the screen and change noprocast to yes. Next time you'll visit HN, you'll see a "Get back to work!" message and hopefully you'll go do something more productive.

Speaking purely for myself, I only signed up a month or two ago.

I came from Reddit (surprise, surprise) and despite not being an entrepreneur or a hacker/developer/programmer I absolutely love the site as I am an aspiring entrepreneur/developer witha vested interest in new technology.

I made a point of reading the rules relating to submissions and comments and I actively abide by them simply because I respect the fact that HN wants to maintain intellectual & relevant discussions and not become a haven for trolls and lolcat fans.

I recently went back to reddit to see if I was missing anything and it was honestly like going from having an informed discussion with a mature professional, well established in his field to having a conversation with my thirteen year old cousin who's two key interests in life are practical jokes and boobies.

Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of love for Reddit but at this point it is more of a guilty pleasure than anything else.

HN got quite a bit of exposure on Reddit recently due to some of the older users complaining about the Eternal September that they are experiencing and it was there that I discovered this wonderful part of the web.

I may be new and I may not be as well informed as a lot of people on this site but be nice to me please as one day I plan to take over the world.

> but be nice to me please as one day I plan to take over the world.

That's a fairly common goal around here, so please be nice in return ;)

As for the changes, yes, they're there. I spent a lot of time half a year ago to try to get my finger behind whether or not HN is changing and the answer is a definite 'yes', but it's definitely not all bad. New people bring new perspectives on subjects, the 'tone' of HN is guarded quite zealously and even if there are (a few) more trolls on the whole it is surprising how well the atmosphere holds up.

At the beginning of the year I predicted that HN would split, this has now happened in the form of the 'Ask' section being given its own spot. Probably in the future there will be more such splits if and when they make sense.

Personally I wouldn't mind seeing all the 'tech rumours' separate from the subjects related to coding.

Even the most rudimentary newspapers know to split their content up in to a sports section and the rest so I can skip that bit without having to bother reading all the headlines.

Have you found http://news.ycombinator.com/classic already ?

Have you found http://news.ycombinator.com/classic already?

What's the difference? Hadn't come across it before and to be honest it doesn't appear massively different?

It excludes the votes of new users from the page sorting algorithm.

Excellent. This place keeps getting better & better!

Because the classic view excludes the input of people like yourself? :-D

I'm in very much the same boat, though I am a hacker/developer/programmer.

I'm still using reddit more than HN, but I can see myself slowly gravitating towards HN. One thing that really does make reddit more bearable though is to unsubscribe from most subreddits. Once you drop askreddit, iama, pics, wtf, reddit.com, funny, etc, etc, and you're left with a nice core of coding, programming, (language-of-choice-subreddit), machinelearning, compsci and webdesign, you actually start seeing the more intelligent side.

ever since moving here from reddit (nearly 2 years ago), I loved (and still love) this place. Lately, this goes so far as to me usually reading the comments before even looking at a linked story.

The quality of the comments here is absolutely fantastic - like the Usenet back in its glory days.

I really, really hope this keeps up for a very long time.

Is it a common thing to come from reddit to here?

I actually found out about HN and then went to reddit, which I had always assumed was a mere digg-clone.

When you get sick of searching through the endless memes, pun threads, predictable jokes, and poorly worded yet highly upvoted emotional appeals to find the few good posts among a sea of mediocrity, Hacker News is wonderful. There's just a lot better concentration of quality, interesting posts here. I really think the lack of humor here helps keep the discussions on topic and interesting.

I agree with you in general, but I still feel that HN has gone overboard in its hostility to humour. Notwithstanding that a witty, timely, humorous, in-context comment stands a good chance of being upvoted here, a little more levity would help HN not to take itself quite so seriously all the time.

I strongly disagree. Not because humor is inherently bad, but because it's too dangerous, too likely to overwhelm the parts of HN that I appreciate. It's like suggesting that a little heroin on the weekend would really brighten up the week. Maybe true, but unlikely remain 'just a little'.

Let's concentrate on content and insight here, and let the other sites be the catch-all communities for those who want more 'balance'. If you enjoy Reddit or Digg as they currently are, or prefer other sites that balance humor and content, please use them rather than trying to remake HN in their image.

>It's like suggesting that a little heroin on the weekend would really brighten up the week.

I hope you won't need me to point out the various ways in which your analogy between humour and, er, heroin breaks down.

Please do. I briefly debated choosing 'meth' or 'coke' in my analogy, and went with heroin because the it's one of the few drugs that is frequently fully demonized, and because I worried the others were American slang. I think heroin better creates the impression I want, although meth might be more technically accurate.

Note that the analogy is not that each individual user will suffer as due to drug addiction, but that the community as a whole will be ravaged by the cumulative effects of the drug. Compare the comment quality on Digg, Reddit, and HN as viewed through the light of http://www.montanameth.org/View_Ads/index.php.

"...little more levity would help HN not to take itself quite so seriously all the time."

I agree completely. It makes me a little sad to see a witty (usually brief) remark at -4. Everything doesn't have to be so serious all the time.

I didn't even know that HN was hostile to humor. One of my most up-voted comments was an attempt at being humorous while correcting someone's grammar:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=743473

programming reddit once had the discussion quality of hacker news. Heck, even the front page was readable. Like digg, but high-quality.

By now it has kind of gone down the drain. A victim of its success.

I was one of the original users of Digg (closed beta tester). It was pretty good in its day, too -- a lot of programmers and technical articles. I think Digg and Reddit are pretty much identical in that sense.

I did the Digg > Reddit > Hacker News migration path. I'm glad to see HN seems to have the general community stability of a Slashdot or Metafilter. Reddit was a disappointment, although certain subreddits are very useful.

This comment made me think that there might be a /r/startups and actually there is one and its summary point you to HN

r/coding is not bad

I am still an active user on reddit. Active in commenting, really. I don't post articles so much. I got tired of the slipping quality of posts and comments on reddit. I wouldn't have I've "migrated" here, but I just come here to indulge in posting of higher quality, in addition to some specific subreddits.

I've been here for a couple of years (I think), and this is without doubt the best site for this kind of chatter. Better than OpenCoffee email lists.

I have to say, I rarely read the articles, just the comments!

You have to know the distribution of user join dates for this to be meaningful at all.

If there are 10x as many users who joined in 2010 as there are those that joined in 2007, then this graph implies that more veteran users are more likely to post.

It looks as if lots of users sign up in January. I never knew that. Why?

The January effect takes place in a lot of disparate areas.

Gym memberships spike in January. No surprise there.

But what's more interesting is that most self-development books are published in January. Publishers know this is a key time to reach people in the general areas of health & fitness, money, relationships, and work.

I've also had massive traffic spikes on my blog in January when I run a bootcamp/New Year guide.

I wouldn't be surprised if the HN growth happens with people saying, "I really want to learn about tech/entrepreneurship and build something this year."

I don't know how it is for other people, but the tech sector appears to get really slow in the December-January and early July periods every year. So, more free time.

New year's resolutions perhaps?

Culture in any group is a malleable beast. The strictures required to keep it from changing are far too oppressive to support the type of innovative and creative thinking that the site wants to inspire.

Watercooler talk is fine by me. I don't have a social network of people I can discuss HN-related news with, and I make a habit out of browsing for HN's discussion of a news piece I'm interested in to pick the users' brain about it - to see whether to make a big fuss out a Facebook story for instance.

The time spent on HN will always feed my guilty conscious, however, regardless of which direction it was and is heading.

I'm surprised at how many people say they came from Reddit - perhaps I stayed on Slashdot for too long.

What's with the periodicity of the graph? It looks like users who have signed at the beginning of the year -- any year -- are more likely to comment? Or more likely, much more people sign at the beginning of the year. Strange, in any case.

I assume interpreting this chart is where all the magic lies but it doesn't tell me that much.

It tells that newer users seem to be more engaged, but it doesn't tell if we are seeing a trend or not.

Maybe as users get older and get over the reddit factor or get busier they post less often ?

I had the same questions...

This chart is just a snapshot in time. It's hard to infer any sort of 'change' from it. Perhaps the newer members of HN have always been more active contributors (I can think of several reasonable ideas as to why that might be).

Indeed. I also thought: "wasn't it always like this?". I understand newcomers tend to be naturally more active. But I also agree that the more subscribers HN has, more is the probability of its quality going low... Maybe a graph with the average of downvotes per articles over time could help.

Anyone know what's going to be next after Hacker News?

I'm really liking http://forrst.com/

Its more designer focused and as a programmer its nice to venture out beyond my little niche.

Yes. Almost everyone here knows.

Sigh, it's like being at reddit and seeing people bash Digg. It's not hard to avoid the puns and boobs on reddit. As a gay geek who really doesn't care for bacon, narwhals, boobs or circle jerk puns, I still find plenty of good content on reddit, and honestly it lacks the strange feeling of supremacy that I often get from comments here. Rrddit's subreddit style allows you very easily to exclude the (reddit.com), etc subreddits and filter down to the good ones.

I personally haven't been on HN for a terribly long time, and I'm mostly here to observe other startups and see the tech news that is mixed in with the startup news... I just find all the calls of gloom and doom unnecessary. HN still has plenty of quality content.

That having been said, I'd be happy if every single post mentioning iOS or Android were auto killed for the next 4 months.

I like the idea that I can post a comment with insight that doesn't need to be a pun or meme. I've also become frustrated with the moderation that happens on reddit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com