Ask HN: Do you tell other people about HN? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you tell other people about HN?

11 pointsviggity37 comments

I've been very hesitant to tell any of my friends about HN. I've seen the kind of content that gets generated when the community population explodes, and I'd really hate to see that happen here. It's not that I don't trust my friend's content, I don't trust their friend's content.

I know the HN has generally rebuffed off-topic material, but at the same time it still shows up. Should the broken window theory or a video of a meteor really be on the front page today? Its not that I don't enjoy that content, but allowing some of it is a slippery slope and before you know it we could be seeing posts that stipulate that Karl Rove eats deep fried baby flesh.

So HN, what do you think?

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Yes, I tell smart people. If their friends' friends submit stuff that's offtopic, the editors just kill it. Though in fact I think our strongest defense against idiots is to look boring to them.

Incidentally, the broken windows story isn't offtopic. News.YC isn't just about hacking, because good hackers aren't only interested in hacking.

likewise, i tell people i think will contribute and/ or involve themselves with the community, not just use selfishly... after-all i think what we're all doing here is valuable. otherwise, just keep you're mouth shut. my dad always said, "loose lips sink ships". it's trite, but still true.

The first stage of a community falling apart is when it starts getting meta. When your prayer group start discussing about how right their prayer group is, and how wrong other groups are; when K5 started getting lots of articles about K5; when the IQ club starts talking about how IQ makes them different.

That's always the step that precedes some type of change. Because when people start looking within, they never seem to be satisfied with what's there.

That's what it was like with Reddit. Their new subreddits saved themselves from that: AskReddit is an excellent part of the site, now.

Metafiler has AskMeFi. Maybe Hacker News could get something like that? Or perhaps we could choose to filter out self-referential posts?

I think an option to filter out (or just see) self-referential posts would be great. I actually like AskHN posts a lot, and an option to just see those posts would probably encourage people to post more.

As far as telling other people goes, I find that HN comes up most often when I tell my friends about the interesting stories I find here. The reaction from non-technical people is usually something to the effect of: "Where the hell do you find this stuff??" The reaction from technical people is usually something like: "Yeah, I already read that on HN." With regards to the first group, it seems that they always find the stories interesting, but never show any signs that they'll make HN one of their news sources, and I'm fine with that.

For me, things such as the meteor video or an article about the Broken Windows Theory are fine, and I don't foresee any "Karl Rove eats deep fried baby flesh" articles soon, but I'd like to keep it that way. The community at HN is the root of the reason I keep coming back.

Conversation with a friend:

friend: "You don't look good, whats wrong"-

I: "I haven't slept that well, i was up all night"

friend: "WTF were you doing all night"

I: "Lurking on HN of course, and reading the old Dilbert strips"

Maybe i should try this "noprocrast" feature, but i don't know what to do about Dilbert though. :D

You people are great, i read reddit to find cool articles, but i don't bother to read the comments, but here, i read mostly the comments, they are more valuable than the original articles sometimes.

Indeed, I often find myself reading the comments before the article here.

It's probably a bad habit though, I suppose I should form my own opinion about the article first.

I did this all the times, so I don't waste my time to read awful articles.

My least favorite HN content, by far: Bitching about HN and its content.

Srsly, folks, just don't vote it up if you don't like it. It really is that easy.

This isn't "startup news" or "programmer news", it's "hacker news". It's news that is interesting to hackers. And it delivers quite well.

As it happens, some hackers are into politics or business or meteors or robots or science or economics. Some are not.

You should expect that about 10-20% of the articles will not be interesting to you. Consider that a success.

I tell people about it but most people aren't interested. I think they're happy to let me be their geek news filter, or perhaps they're just humoring me. Either way I think the aesthetics of the site go a long way to keep out wrong people.

First rule of hn. Don't tell others about hn.

None of my friends would like it. As unscientific as the Meyers-Briggs test is, I really do think this site appeals mostly to a small subset of XNTPs. And there aren't that many of those around.

We INTPs also enjoy it :<)

Well, seeing has there is no such thing as an XNTP, I'm pretty sure the X in the OP was a variable. ;)

It actually means someone who is both introverted and extroverted, but I meant it as a variable as well.

Ah, then I'm gonna blame my rather unnecessary correction on being an INTP:

"Precise about their descriptions, INTPs will often correct others (or be sorely tempted to) if the shade of meaning is a bit off."

Edit: Actually just retested and I guess I am an INTJ, but just barely (52% J and 48% P), so I guess I'll have to blame it on my INTP side, whatever that means.

Are there tests that take X variables into account? I just took INTP, and it describes a part of me well - but just a part. For instance, I rarely feel sympathetic for people, but I empathize with people often and try to help them out, and that's marked down as Introverted. I don't think that's quite accurate.

Or did you just make that up on the fly?

If you find the original thread discussing Meyers-Briggs on HN, someone used it there.

I just tried one of those tests. It said I was an INTJ. Are the letters in order of significance? I.e. is INTJ the next door neighbor of INTP?

http://www.typelogic.com/intj.html

As far as I know the letters are always in the same order. To put it in regex form: (E|I)(S|N)(F|T)(J|P)

INTJ is the next closest to (E/I)NTP. The reason there are less INTJs on the site is probably because they are more rare, rather than because the temperament is different.

Jessica just tried the same test and was classified as an ISTJ, which judging from the description is hilariously accurate.

"Under stress, ISTJs may fall into "catastrophe mode", where they see nothing but all of the possibilities of what could go wrong. They will berate themselves for things which they should have done differently, or duties which they failed to perform. They will lose their ability to see things calmly and reasonably, and will depress themselves with their visions of doom."

(Within YC Jessica's nickname is Panic.)

It's a weird theory, but it is somewhat coherent. INTJ is very close to INTP, just not really for that reason. ENTP is the classic entrepreneur. INTP/INTJ is the classic hacker; there was a poll on here and nearly 60% of the people 662 people who voted were INTP/INTJ, whereas they're each around 2-3% in the ordinary population. 10% of the rest were ENTP. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=204240)

Basically, the Myers-Briggs type determines your preferences for particular cognitive functions. The four letter indicator is like an extreme Huffman coding of those preferences:

Your information-gathering, perceiving function (that is, input.) This can be either i(N)tuitive or (S)ensing. Roughly, a sensing person trusts their senses, directly what they see and hear from the world. And an intuitive person trusts, or looks for knowledge, in their subconscious and conscious cognitive models.

Your decision-making, judging function (that is, output.) This can be either (T)hinking or (F)eeling. Roughly, the thinking person is at ease when they can make a decision supported by a logical process, and the feeling person prefers to make the decision according to their gut.

(E)xtroverted and (I)ntroverted describes the social attitudes of each of the 'functions,' in other words, whether you, when information-gathering, or decision making, prefer to focus on behavior, action, people and things or the internal world of ideas and reflection. There is only one letter for this, even though each function is supposed to have its own attitude. This is because Isabel Myers believed that there was always a balance; if you are introverted in information-gathering, you're extroverted in decision making.

Finally, the last letter, (P)erciving or (J)udging, specifies which side of yourself; perception (information-gathering) or judgment (decision-making), you tend to show to the world. Perceiving types prefer to "keep decisions open." Judging types prefer to "have matters settled." The YCombinator practice of deciding quickly, while it may be a definite plus for both sides, is a judging characteristic, for example.

"Basically, the Myers-Briggs type determines your preferences for particular cognitive functions."

This is backwards; your Myers-Briggs type is determined by your preferences, and is ultimately little more than a form of horoscope targeted at those who realize that birth month has no significant correlation with personality.

I meant determine as in "to find out or come to a decision about by investigation, reasoning, or calculation." I didn't say that it was necessarily 100% accurate.

But the MBTI is not a horoscope. The INTP/INTJ slant here is way statistically significant. Obviously there's something there.

The same thing that is there if you ask a bunch of computer science students whether or not they like computers. Sure, the result is statistically significant; it just doesn't tell you anything you didn't already know. The categories of the MBTI are sufficiently broad and vague that having an atypical distribution of results on HN doesn't actually tell us anything about ourselves that wasn't inherently obvious.

It's not as if we're just asking people if they like computers, and parroting it back. The MBTI was published in 1962. Barely anyone had access to computers then.

I don't know how you'd measure this, but the profiles, to me, certainly aren't broad and vague. They make very specific and very falsifiable claims about personality, and all out of a mere 4 bits of information. The first time I read my profile (ENFP) it was like a bolt of lightning shot through me. It had me to a 'T.' My parents couldn't describe me so well. And my experience is far from atypical.

There are a bunch of other major statistical discoveries about the different groups. For example, INTP's have the lowest level of emotional coping resources, while their cousins, the ENTP's, have the highest! INTJ's have the highest college GPA's, while the adjacent INTP's have much lower, scoring far below what their aptitude tests would indicate. There is a lot of real information in those few bits!

Sources: J. Shelton, in MBTI Applications by A.L. Hammer, 1996. More at: http://www.ransdellassociates.com/INTJ.htm

The claims made aren't all that falsifiable (like anything else in psychology, it isn't ever possible to know to what extent a person is lying to themselves), and the specificity of the claims is something of a red herring; when 90% of a list of specific claims appear to describe a subject to at least some extent, if they want to believe that the system works, they're going to ignore the other 10%. The medium-sized fraction of the audience who fit at least that closely into the categorization system trumpet it around as a success, making those who fit somewhat less well more inclined to accept the errors and inaccuracies of their classification. These effects, plus the handful of results related in a very obvious way to the original categorization (emotional coping resources are often defined in such a way that the INTP/ENTP result you mention is entirely obvious, for example), make it appear that the MBTI means much more than it actually does.

Much like an IQ test, used professionally, as part of a deeper analysis of a subject, the MBTI can help a psychologist or psychiatrist better understand a subject/patient. Used recreationally, such things lead to faulty generalizations unless treated as they are--glorified horoscopes geared toward looking at particular aspects of ourselves.

Have a look at the comments on the broken window theory post, a lot of them are about the applicability of the theory to online social sites, something which is very on-topic on HN. Just because an article isn't inherently startupish, it doesn't mean that it's not relevent to HN.

My approach is to tell only startup founders about HN. You will be surprised that many founders do not know about HN at all. But, it becomes less and less now.

And, my approach to meet smart people is to check out how many karma points those people have in HN.

I'm also cautious about writing about HN on various communities I visit simply because I fear it would attract the wrong crowds, e.g. spammers, trolls and your average eternal septemberists.

Right now HN is a great community for startups, Internet businesses, developers, designers, and entrepreneurs. The signal to noise ratio is very high and discussions are relevant, mostly civil and very interesting. Heck, I can't name another site with so much relevant content for Internet businesses.

Furthermore, I think it's perfectly fine that HN remains a relatively small and focus community, not every site must be like Digg or Slashdot in size.

Regards, WarTheatre

I'm more disappointed to see "10 Totally Stupid Online Business Ideas That Made Someone Rich" on the front page than broken windows or a meteor. Being on-topic doesn't make up for bad content.

The broken window theory article wasn't off-topic, the discussion immediately evolved into how it related to online forums and was very interesting.

I am bored of all these posts that talk about HN. I am not on HN to talk about HN itself dammit.

I heard about it from my friend at work.

Yes, I tell others about HN, but only those that I know will be valuable and interested users.

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