Hacker News Reader

Comment by masswerk | Hacker News Reader

However, we could also call this a dedicated bookmarking app with discussion threads appended to it. This is certainly a special case (and also somewhat of an endangered species.) For "normal" websites, there are only few left that consider themselves as part of a bigger web, in which they are constituting yet another node (trying to make this web as a whole worthwhile).

View on HN

Sure. And you could find a name like that for pretty much every website in existence in the 90's.

I strongly disagree that it's a special case, and I strongly disagree that there are only few websites left that feel like part of a bigger something. I think you are romanticizing the past (as most people do with most things they remember from their youth - remember when kids' TV shows were actually good?).

There's definitely a difference. In what may appear here as "the good old days", authors usually showed their authority on a subject by frequently linking to other sources they would consider interesting in context, thus contributing to knitting the web. (Edit: It was this very phenomenon, which provided the base for the Page rank.) Personally, I see this rarely nowadays. Also, the entire idea of adding "something amazing" to the web, another sight to see and visit, has become a rare affair. Surfing is somewhat a thing of the past.

Out of curiosity, what period are you referring to as the "good old days"? Must be prior to, say, 1993-1994?

I also remember these days as the days where we had to be very, very nice to other people and play by their rules (universities, free hosters, ...) in order to get something published online. Domain names were expensive. $5 cloud hosting? I don't think so.

I mean, I get what you mean - but I simply cannot agree.

I'd say, "surfing" became a popular buzz-word around 1997/98?

Edit: Regarding availability of webspace, back then some for personal use usually came with an e-mail account for free (but you usually had to pay for this e-mail account, as free e-mail wasn't yet normal.) And, you could find full-fledged dedicated web-space for about $5/month. (Personally, I have been working for/with ISPs since 1996 and am hosting a personal website since 1999, before this using free webspace, which was provided either by the university or the employer.)

Edit #2: Who remembers tilde-addresses (www.domain.com/~<account>/)? – These were usually free webspace.

>This is certainly a special case (and also somewhat of an endangered species.)

I'm not so sure about that. This site isn't that different from stuff like reddit or tumblr at it's heart, even if the level of discussion/quality of posts is higher. If you distilled these types of sites even further, it's really not all that different from social media like facebook or instagram. The only difference is the type of content shared and the fact that facebook and instagram are usually used with you being "yourself" rather than just a username. Then again, enough people on hackernews link their profiles to their own personal websites/linkedins/etc. that even that distinction isn't so sharp.

There's an entire category of web-applications derived from the original forum idea. However, I'd say, while fora were once a frequent thing (and, considering Steward Brand's the WELL or FirstClass, maybe the original internet application), they've become rather rare and there are only just a few "community watering holes" left.

P.S.: Here's an exemplary link to what was once the major FirstClass node in my country, which first migrated to the web and then became obsolescenced [is this a word?] by Facebook (the tagline reads "forum for politics and society", operational 11.11.1992 - 1.12.2012): http://blackbox.at

Reply on news.ycombinator.com