Hacker News Reader

Comment by dawsdesign | Hacker News Reader

Leave it the way it is! If hackers find it interesting it'll get upvoted. For example, I upvoted the bee story the other day. It was a really interesting article and I don't think my wife, for example, would give any shits about it.

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I suspect that the bigger issue is that the wider range of topics, the fewer hackers will be as a percentage of all users, and that will precipitate a further slide into general news.

Is there a reason you don't use Reddit for these stories? They have heaps of articles about bees, the TSA, and wikileaks.

What's the HN reader's perception of the Reddit vs HN community when it comes to articles about bees / TSA / wikileaks?

Do we think we have more interesting commentary? (e.g. is that why we post those articles here?)

The commentary here has always been a lot better than reddit for the large majority of stories. Reedit has its place because you can custom tailor it to what you want to see and the best comments sorting helps with seeing a few good comments. That community is a lot more hostile and likely to digress into a pun comment chain though.

To me, reddit is like a really cool charter school with lots of AP and college level classes with a few brilliant geniuses, but at the end of the day it is still a high school. HN is more like a fine graduate program at a respected university. That's my take.

You know, I actually don't visit Reddit too often since I prefer Hacker News because of the entrepreneur/hacker content I can rely on. But at the same time the best entrepreneurs are well rounded and cultured, so articles about other topics isn't tainting Hacker News. I just wouldn't want every article on the front page to be about bees, TSA and Wikileaks.

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