In an insane world, Hacker News is one corner of the internet that I find to be "normal" and "sane". God Bless you Dang!
Thanks dang for helping us keep the signal-to-noise ratio high throughout the years!
Not really, there are decent programming communities, but the ones I know aren't using english.
I have certainly noticed "ebbs" of an Eternal September vibe here too, but they quickly dispel and the types of comments that come from it get downvoted anyway, so it's not as noticeable.
Regardless, I am so grateful to have a place of meaningful discussion, and of so many different topics.
Edit: Maybe being high quality and diverse is its niche!
This was actually my only quibble with HN. I love the simplicity and the fact that HN doesn't suffer from the "obesity" that plagues modern websites, but I felt it could use some features.
For instance, the ability to filter it by time (it does have that filter already for days, months and so on, but not hours), or have an official app for the site could be awesome. Or a notification system. I already solved the first two of these issues by using 3rd party solutions (hckrnews.com and Materialistic) but supporting them officially would be great. I didn't find a solution for the 3rd issue, though; at least not one that I felt was useful.
But others don't feel the same way. When I googled around to see why these issues weren't addressed, the consensus seemed to be that there's no need for it for one reason or another. Oh, well. Other benefits of HN outweigh these minor issues, though. So overall, not that big of a deal for me.
[HnRSS](https://hnrss.github.io/)
(though if it's too niche it might just be not that lively)
I think it's quite funny that the UI we prefer is so different from the ones we create in our daytime jobs. And it's also very different from the UIs in most "Show HN" posts.
Probably because we are not the ones who make the requirements
> And it's also very different from the UIs in most "Show HN" posts
... or maybe we are after all
I'd also put money on the average age of HN commenter being higher than that of other internet communities.
I know of other rich and healthy online communities, but they are fairly niche.
It is quite interesting what people are willing to believe when individuals in power state these things with great certainty. But personally I prefer to have my fiction and real-world views separated by a healthy dose of skepticism.
I could post a pro-socialism argument and get upvoted, I could post a pro-capitalism argument and get upvoted. I could criticize GMOs, or praise them. I could probably defend Trump if I'm thoughtful about it, or decry him.
Can I say "Capitalism/Socialism/GMOs/Trump is dumb" and get upvoted? No. Can I point out problems (or benefits) of them? Yes--so long as I'm not inflammatory about it.
It's the good old "Culture eats strategy for breakfast."
I love HN culture.
That might be true. However, from my experience maturity is way more important than actual age. Some maturity comes with age, but a lot of it is also individual behaviour in my opinion.
By and large, it wasn't terrible. Most people are nice and some have bad days.
What it did convince me of was the immense value of (a) down-featuring new users & (b) temp-banning.
Most of the trouble stemmed from either new users (by definition, uncultured) or a small subset of toxic users.
Because ultimately, communities are like biological systems, with far too many processes and independent entities going on to be controlled. In environments like that, toxic behavior can be cancerous by convincing others it's acceptable. And by the time you've found the source, multiple people are already acting like that too. Hate breeds hate.
Burn out is real though, mostly because it's a never ending job, and you tend to see a stream of people at their worst.
So thanks, dang et al. I appreciate you on the job, and I appreciate you more staying on the job.
What is this?
Come on, the Internet is vast, of course there are many communities like this one. But most people in those communities, like myself, do not advertise them. We do not want them ruined. You find them either by chance, or by invitation.
Almost all other internet communities have mods that just do it on a volunteer basis. If those communities are big enough to be vibrant, that also means that a couple volunteer mods can't cut it. Luckily YC has the budget for keeping dang around. I would bet this place would be like most other poorly moderated communities without him.