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Comment by llm_nerd | Hacker News Reader

100% anecdotal. Zero credible sources.

On the anecdote side I do know that within the past couple of years I saw a discussion on here about how many visitors someone gets from a top of the front page on HN. The numbers were absolutely miserly compared to what I experienced getting the same repeatedly years earlier. Like, 1/20th or less.

Maybe it's just HN that declined, but if so where did the tech news community go? Digg? /. Reddit /r/programming (to some degree yes for the last one, though still it is nothing compared to what once was).

Everything is much quieter and more restrained than it was.

And sure, there are time zones circling the globe. But generally on the English tech sites, the US/Canada are going to dominate the demographics and have an outsized effect on spikes.

View on HN

Right, but you could find and link to that thread instead of “citing it” from memory.

As it is it remains conjecture.

(Aside, this thread now has 300 comments after just 2 hours. HN’s purported slowdown in the WFH era feels grossly exaggerated.)

Yes, it's conjecture. I explicitly, outright said it was an unproven anecdote. Demanding citations when I'm explicitly giving a "feel" narrative is misplaced and not charitable.

As to how many uniques you can expect from a front-page on HN, go ahead and search. Pre-2020 you can find countless people detailing 30,000+ uniques in the first few hours (my own, personal, direct experience was 50,000+). Now, if you average out more recent reports, you can expect about 11,000 over the first 24 hours.

And sure, the most inclusive possible discussion gets a few hundred comments. Everyone wants to put some paint on the shed. There is a 4 hour old submission on the front page with 2 comments. Eh, guess it doesn't represent much.

Ah, see I think denigrating the conversation by moving to personal attacks - painting me as a child who “stomps my feet” - is far less charitable. I legitimately wanted to see the data / could be persuaded.

Aside, my personal anecdote is that this lack of decorum is why I rarely comment on HN anymore. So perhaps you are right.

Given that I explicitly stated that it was 100% unproven conjecture and anecdotes, replying with scare-quotes and demands for citation is not a good example of decorum. It's argumentative and hostile, and with little intention of good faith.

Anyways, hope you have a good day.

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