Hacker News Reader

Comment by pilif | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

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.

r/coding is not bad

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

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.

"...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

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.

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!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com