Speaking of which, let's keep HN a liberal and welcoming place also for corps/startups (but not astroturfers) where key developers, experts from non-IT, CEOs/CTOs can have a voice as that's what makes HN unique IMO.
I like HN, but it could do with people being maybe a bit less uptight and a bit lighter sometimes. The comment section seems to have quite a few pedantic know it-alls taking themselves way to seriously; just like slashdot used to. Welcoming is maybe not a term I'd necessarily use for this.
Anyway, happy birthday HN!
I'd actually use the term "welcoming" in this context.
Do you mind sharing more information about this, please?
That's a fair point, but at least the one thing we don't have here (for the most part) in comparison to /. is the steady stream of comments of the
- GNAA
- In Soviet Korea Only Old People Spy You With Email
- Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those
- X is dying, Netcraft confirms it.
- etc.
sort. Not that some of that stuff wasn't funny for a moment, but it definitely grew stale after a while.
HN was immediately the opposite: a place you could read the comments before the article.
I was in high school in the early 2000s and Slashdot was like a haven for me.
I grew up in a town where I didn't know anyone in technology, let alone professional programmers.
But thanks to the internet I could get onto Slashdot and talk to other nerds and interact with real live professional programmers.
I haven't logged into my account in years but in hindsight that site meant a huge amount to me.
HN came around at the right time, and really had a better community with a good signal:noise ratio. The moderating system (flagging, up/down votes, and of course @dang and his predecessors) really helped.
One thing that's really impressed me as time has gone on is how far the expertise has expanded. I have bookmarked a bunch of users who consistently add solid insights, often with deep domain expertise sometimes from very unexpected quarters (diesel technicians, biologists, farmers, artists, musicians ...). They include @Animats @jdietrich @bkohlmann @nonbel @tptacek @zackmorris @jurassic @tamilama @patio11 @ries @nimbius @breakingcups @noduerme @300bps and many more.
I agree and I would also like to see more encouragement for solopreneurs. As financial independence through solopreneurship has a better probability of being achieved than creating an unicorn startup; especially when not having a safety-net.
So maybe less of 'Why are you making money' when an indie showcases their product, While defending bad practices of Trillion dollar mEga corps. as 'They have to make money'!
P.S. Happy birthday HN, Congratulations & thanks to P.G, Initial set of users, Current users and of course Dan.
news.yc, like all other mimetic communities on the web, has its flaws. For ex, it reserves plenty wrath and fury for a certain type of corps and upstarts. Not sure if that's a good or a bad thing; but, It is a thing.