Hacker News Reader

Comment by wjsetzer | Hacker News Reader

I unironically miss forums. It was a completely different experience from post/comment based sites because everything was one thread, but the biggest thing I miss is that forums were usually pretty well moderated, smaller, and devoted to one topic.

Reddit is the de facto site for making a community on, but there's something to be said for the focused insular forums of just a few years ago.

View on HN

I hate time-ordered subs. They are so inefficient. You end up being forced to read hundreds of "me too" comments with zero substance.

Voting, for all its problems of bias and agenda driven voting, eliminates 99% of the chaff that makes chrono-forums unreadable.

The issue with voting based forums is they tend to cater to low quality mass appeal comments.

More often than not an informative comment, while maybe not being downvoted, won't be the top comment. Instead, you'll see really low effort "zingers" which make it to the top. Those are further piled on with a flood of comments trying to one up each other.

So, you end up often needing really strict moderation to curtail this problem.

Chrono ordering suffers the same issue, somewhat, though it doesn't have the pile on problem (not to the same extent).

pun chain!

Take my upvote!

Here's gold for you good sir, hearty lols!

To be fair, I do get a good chuckle out of some of the pun chains...

You can hide the whole subtree with one click though.

It's a trade-off.

The Reddit/HN format makes everything time sensitive. If the post falls off the front-page, nobody will even see your comment, the discussion immediately dies. It's completely unfit for longer form discussion over time.

Sometimes you want a forum for discussion, not just a comments section of highlight reel one-liners.

Is there an algorithm that would facilitate discussion though? Regardless of time sensitivity?

Disagree entirely. Trading chronological sort for whatever drives the most ad impressions and engagements is responsible for the destruction of otherwise decent services.

This boils down to the community you are a part of.

One of the games I like to play has its own forums and they are still the best source of info compared to reddit. Discussions are surprisingly readable, though that may have something to do with the older target audience.

I agree, I can't stand them. That's why I won't use arstechnica comment section. I might look at the first few. I much prefer reddit and hackernews style

But that allows for discussion bubbles to form in this case. Contrarian views are downvoted to oblivion. Not much of an issue in HN, as it is in reddit.

You can add like buttons to posts with out it effecting the time ordering and absorb a bunch of me too comments that way.

Another solution to this is discussion wikis.

Originally I was more in favor of phpbb style forums and anti likes/favorites/upvotes but I've abandoned that attitude.

I really think it's the same as it ever was. If you want to find quality you need to start with your interests and then find a community from there. Discovering a huge community and being frustrated or upset that it's not catered to your preferences is a mistake. The lower the barrier to entry, the lower the quality of the forum will be.

And it's important to remember barrier to entry isn't just technical knowledge. Barrier to entry could be something as obvious but unspoken as writing style. Even as I'm typing this comment I'm aware that using my "hacker news voice" with all of the attendant style rules that make it fit with the community.

*edit: also I'm sorry to see that you are being downvoted because I get your sentiment

Reply on news.ycombinator.com