The only thing that ever worked in my mind: "Become the change you want to see". The rules are already out there and are pretty good, IMO. Beyond that, the entire experience is a result of audience participation.
Not at this time. I'm still working out whether the trend is actually occurring as perceived, or if something else is happening, such as a steadily-increasing personal standard on my end.
> "Become the change you want to see".
This has actually been my personal motto for quite some time. While I don't always succeed, I make a conscious effort to practice what I would otherwise only preach.
This is what I observed it as. My own standards increased substantially because of the quality of HN. It's like augmented reality where I can see rule violation tags over human interactions in real-time now.
Becoming aware of this is really important. It will allow you to back-off in the moment and let the journeyman pass without a full audit. For me, I was the person writing many of those comments in the past. Unless the comment is a bald-faced rule violation, I really do try to take it in good faith and guide towards the light.
The glory days of HN were really in the 2000s and 20-teens. It’s been very slowly going downhill for a while. It’s still better than almost all other open sites in its subject area though. All open forums and open social media has been going downhill.
Are there _closed_ alternatives that you can recommend?
Things that could make it better, maybe:
-more aggressively axing topics that are outright divisive.
-maybe sticky-ing major topics together more often. Maybe by day?
I remember people wondering the same as you not long after I started going to HN.
It started to go downhill after that.
It’s kind of like how SNL was at its peak when I was 17 years old and hasn’t been the same since.
1.) There are more low-value comments like flip two-word answers or blindly pushing wackadoodle conspiracy theories. They are pervasive in social media, but the moderation on HN keeps them largely in check. That fact is encouraging. HN is an existence proof that you can still have productive discussion and curious inquiry in spite of a flood of misinformation running through Western societies.
2.) On the other hand, HN has a libertarian hive mind that tends to drown out nuance in many of the conversations. There's a constant thread that vested interests are behind corporate decisions such as work from home or media coverage of practically any topic. (Example from today's home page: [0]). Simpler explanations like managers struggling with incomplete information or balancing competing interests tend to get drowned out. This perspective has always been present on HN, but I notice it more and now skip discussions where it seems to be getting out of hand.
These are blips, especially compared to the alternatives. Hacker News has a wonderful diversity of topics and is a great place to learn about new things, aided by insightful commentary from people who actually know what they are talking about.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37023400
Edit: clarity