Comment by solipsist | Hacker News Reader

Comment by solipsist | Hacker News Reader

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I will be probably downvoted for saying this (as I see other people who tried to convey a similar message on this thread were), but I think that posts like these are of little interest to many of us. I don't mean to offend anyone, especially not RiderOfGiraffes who I greatly admire, but I think it's worth pointing out what other HN users have been trying to say.

Posts like these are bad for HN for a few reasons:

  - they appear often and usually repeat the same message
  - they support the minority of elitists who already dominate HN
  - their content is only news-worthy to users who've been on HN
    for a while and not the new ones

Basically, any content that is submitted to HN and refers to a user or a user's experience of HN is simply a popularity contest. Whether it becomes popular on HN depends on the popularity of the user. The active and prominent users then feel the need to upvote and comment as they can relate to the poster. However, any budding new user that is trying to 'break in' to the community is confronted with what appears to be a form of exclusivity.

What results is a thread in which the OP, upvoters, and commenters that are supporting news that only apply to them.

HN shouldn't have threads like these - threads should apply to as many people as they can. I'm not saying that life has to be fair, but I think the end of these posts would help make HN feel like a more inclusive place.

The alternative is to have high profile members like nickb disappearing and then to have 10 threads (or even more, instead of just one) that wonder whatever happened to 'x'.

Also, after contributing 100's of hours (or even 1000's...) I think a goodbye note is good form rather than bad form, these threads apply to all the friends and contacts that someone has made through HN and in the case of RiderOfGiraffes my guess would be that would be a very large number of people indeed.

I agree with your general sentiment, but if patio11 or tptacek were to slink off like a thief in the night then they'd be overwhelmed with email from concerned people.

Also, when I was growing up I was taught to say hello on entering a venue and goodbye on leaving, maybe that's old fashioned but it's perfectly ok with me.

As for the criticism, check the last couple of entries in this thread and say he doesn't have a point.

Anyway, since I'm not here, I'll leave it at that ;)

You make a good point that it benefits a lot of people to know where the high profile members went, but maybe there's a better way to do it.

If there is some unique perspective on HN that can apply to everybody then, sure, go ahead and post it to HN as a blog post. However, any generic I'm-leaving-HN messages could maybe go into a category of "Leaving HN: ..." posts (instead of a link). These could still hit the front page, but there would be a clear distinction between this community news and other news.

Maybe a 'farewell' note in the profile? Or a way to modify your profile that puts a '(gone)' marker behind your name in old threads?

Grellas started this (and he's back), I thought it was pretty classy and considerate of him, which is why I did it myself.

Anyway, your comment seems to have incited a large number of people to flag the post so it's no longer on the homepage. It's a pity that a long contributor of HN would get sent off like that while 'TopGear responding to Tesla' has been on the homepage for many hours now.

The majority of other posts doing so were downvoted not for their message but due to the fact they were expressing it in the form of a personal attack against the OP.

The value posts like this provide to the community is to allow us to have a period of introspection, evaluating where we were as a community and how we've changed, and if that change has been for the better or for the worse.

I agree that if they occur frequently without adding new information into the discussion they have less value, but I don't feel we've got to that point. If people don't step up and make posts like this then we're run the very real risk of not noticing a deterioration in our community until it becomes too late to fix that problem.

A high-quality HN is to the benefit of all HN users, not just those most active in the community.

I understand why they were downvoted, but people responded to their message and my comment has a similar message. It looked as if people would be reluctant to consider to my arguments, but I'm pleasantly surprised that they did.

This just goes to show the value of putting in time and quality into a comment (unlike the ones at the bottom of this main thread).

When our community loses a person like RiderOfGirraffes, we should take notice.

I 100% agree. I think threads announcing you are leaving something are bad form.

years later, some internet sociologist will come out with a study saying that every community of size>N will have "I'm leaving" drama posts like this.

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