Hacker News Reader

I'm very thankful the user culture and the moderation policy here is geared towards productive discussion on focused topics. It's not a one size fits all social media site, its meant for tech and startup discussion. Plus, people don't seem to reward stupid puns, pithy comments, twitter style "hot takes", begging for upvotes, etc.. I would hope this keeps HN somewhat inoculated from becoming another Reddit.

View on HN

You're giving HN too much credit. Reddit may be scraping the bottom of the barrel intellectually but humans pretty much all have decent skills at fitting in. Reddit users are perfectly capable of coming here and not cracking puns if that's what it takes to make the virtue points counter in the top right get bigger.

There's obscene amounts of in-group signaling here too. It just takes different forms. Forms other users can adapt to if they have motivation.

e.g. the whole "Paul Graham" thing. Wonderful guy, but I've inadvertently stumbled onto what appeared to be the HN equivalent of dog-whistling when it comes to him and Lisp. It was unexpected at first.

Show me a better platform then

Reply on news.ycombinator.com