Hacker News is Dead | Hacker News Reader

Hacker News is Dead

8 pointsmkrecny10 comments

I started using HN about 9 months ago. At that time a good majority of the articles on the front page at any given moment were about actual hacking. Now it's simply not the case. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy (and will continue to enjoy) the melange of general news, lean-startup advice, 'x acquires y' and hacker news. In fact, I am a regular contributor to the not-strictly-hacker-news component (having posted two techcrunch articles this morning). But where can I go to get the experience that was Hacker News 9 months ago. Please, tell me.

EDIT: If you're going to tell me I'm a newbie for having been on HN for only 9 months* 0_0, save your precious keystrokes. It's been done for you.

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Hacker News wasn't about just hacking 9 months ago, or even 2 years ago. It's always had a strong startup focus (in fact, it started out as "Startup News").

If you want just programming stuff, http://reddit.com/r/programming is probably going to be what you're looking for.

Fair enough. But I don't think you can ignore the fact that the ratio of article types has changed a lot. Also, a 'strong startup focus' and true hacker news are not mutually exclusive. I love me a good blog post from an engineer at startup x talking about how they're solving a certain problem.

No offence mkrency, but I am so tired of these "HN is going to the dogs" posts, so finally I created a table of them, here it is:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Ao73DTH98IRgdEY2LXN...

Feel free to add any that I have missed.

Cool. You're a veteran. None of the posts in your table are the same as mine. It would be nice if someone actually answered my question rather than criticizing me for pointing out a phenomena that I think, is evidently true.

Sorry, my purpose was not to criticize you in particular but to show that such sentiments are (i) common and (ii) occur quite regularly.

I think one cause of this is that people mistake transient fluctations in HN post/comment quality (I don't know if one can even measure this in a relatively objective manner) for real trends.

Now, your indicated observational interval was 9 months, so you can argue that thesze effects don't matter. This leads to the other cause, which may be more important: people place more emphasis on evidence that agrees with their opinions, creating a self serving loop. You see 2-3 bad posts and think that HN is deteriorating. Then, good posts won't be counted against this hypothesis but bad posts will be, so it'll get stronger. There's nothing wrong with you, this is how our brains work.

The antidote would be rigourous analysis. Come up with a quality measure, scrape HN data, analyze and post your analysis. I, for one, would be very interested in seeing them.

EDIT: Also, agressive "so what" replies generally get downvoted, as I now see with yours. I find too much downvoting, especially with newcomers, to be discouraging, so you're getting my upvote.

There, one explaination cfrom a "cool veteran".

Fix it.

A few years ago somebody decided they wanted more startup news. Train a classifier to decide what you like and run with that.

source: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=689204

Hi, newbie :)

9 Months ago? That explains why you may have missed the other 6 times this was posted over the last 3 years...

The reports of Hacker News' death have been greatly exaggerated.

Good for you, brk. Had I been around for the last 3 years as, presumably you have, I may have missed HNs 6 other deaths by having other things to do than read HN. Sadly that is no longer the case.

HN is a community, and like any community it will change over time.

I think the bigger thing you're seeing though is that the drug doesn't have the same effect as it used to. The drug is the same, but your resistance has built up.

In the beginning, many people come to HN and are overwheled to find a community of people JUST LIKE THEM. They thought this never could exist so elegantly, and the initial reaction is euphoria. Then over time you realize that cycles start to repeat, there can only be so much "new" news, and so on. The drug has stayed the same, but you have a resistance to it now. A startup that someone launched over the weekend that is featured on TC Monday afternoon isn't as significant to you as it was the first 3 times you watched it happen. An essay from PG? Still inspiring, but after you've read 20 of them the additive effects of each additional essay are a little less than the one before it.

HN is the same as it ever was. There exists an opportunity still to build something even better though. Doing is more rewarded than observing here, especially when the observation is not new or insightful. This is why some of the reactions to your post may seem a little bit harsh.

If you want HN to go back to the way it was, build that. If you just want someone to sell you a new drug, it's unlikely you'll get what you're looking for.

Fix it.

A lot of people are thinking it, so even if the only responses you get here are "shut up newb" and "welcome to the party" there's an audience for more focused stuff.

People talk about it all the time, so they're just tired of what sounds like people whining and not taking action. I remember a few years ago somebody decided they wanted more startup news. They wrote a short "hacker hacker news" script. source: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=689204

Someone posted something last week about how the wanted it fixed as well. Less talking more doing.

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