Hacker News Reader

Comment by koko775 | Hacker News Reader

I know it's tacky to meta-complain, but public interest articles are one of the reasons I stopped reading Reddit.

I am looking for one particular kind of "signal" in that signal-to-noise ratio, and while this might be of interest to a population including hackers, a population of hackers would likely not identify this article as relevant, outrageous though the article may be.

I've noticed HN's articles growing steadily less and less interesting. Perhaps it's time to move again. Any suggestions? MeFi? Other sites? Does a new one need to be created?

View on HN

this is why there's a flag link for each submission

Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I can do that (I think I can flag, but this was not always the case), and silently grow to hate the content on HN as flagging fails to catch the borderline cases (and possibly devalue each individual flag).

Or I can break that rule to voice displeasure and hope that someone shared that opinion enough to point me somewhere better, create somewhere better, or effect change.

> If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)

My account is over a year old (and I've lurked for longer). Therefore, I'm good!

But in all seriousness, while it probably is not turning into Reddit, I'm certainly planning to relegate HN, for the purposes of my news browsing / time management, to a category shared with other spammy news sites, for somewhat similar reasons.

I've been here over 4.5 years, and I can say that HN is not turning into Reddit. The quality of the front page has not declined.

The volume of stories submitted has grown dramatically, making it harder for the good content to get on the front page.

But this article definitely has no place on the front page. I flagged it, hopefully it will be gone soon.

Also, having an account that is less than a year old doesn't mean very much. I've been using Hacker News since early 2008, but Oinksoft is only about a year old, hence the age of this account.

Well, I used my [flag] button about 4-5 times in a single day (I didn't do that everyday - it just happened that I saw 5 stupid stories on a single day) and now I've lost my shiny weapon :-). I think one of my flags (which I've forgotten what it was) was incorrect and I shouldn't have done it so I don't blame it entirely on mods.

And I'm also guilty of sometimes submitting un-techy (but vaguely related to computers) stories on HN - a practice I decided a few days ago is best to abandon.

And I up-voted this submission too. I'm sorry, I usually don't vote before reading the linked article. I thought it was about a case where they wanted to execute Mr. X, but accidentally executed his jail mate, Mr. Y.

Flagging is different in that you can un-flag.

> (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.)

The OP is below this threshold.

I was thinking "well, perhaps this article explains how forensics (and hence science, or statistics, etc.) was botched, and the discussion could be about how technology can be used to avoid such tragedies in the future..." but then I skimmed the article and realized that there was no mention of such scientific procedures within the text.

I wonder how the article made it to the front page in the first place though. Must it not mean that HN's audience (according to the algorithm) finds the article (or at least the title) to be intriguing and interesting?

This is seems to be a one off occurence. The articles and comments on this site are the best I know of. It hasn't degenerated like slashdot did while I was an active participant there.

That said, feel free to make a new one that's pure technology. If the stream of articles there is interesting, I promise to sign up!

Reddit still has some life in it if you remove all of the original subreddits and add things like http://www.reddit.com/r/depthhub and http://www.reddit.com/r/truereddit

Funny. The ability to have segmented areas for different topics is one of the reasons I read reddit.

Also, if "general interest" stuff turns you off, why on earth would you go to Metafilter?

Because I know what to expect and will adjust my attention accordingly. It won't be what I'm looking for, but I know what to expect from it.

The administration of subreddits has problems, in which some mods (i.e. of SRS) got death threats. Subreddit splits are typically unsuccessful. Exposition and discovery of subreddits is hard. Insightful, rational, two-way discussions are now exceedingly rare, and offensive/tasteless comments are nothing unusual. Popular subreddits tend towards "pop" topics rather than depth.

I am subscribed to DepthHub and TrueReddit but still, neither fully scratch my itch. I think that drawing a firm, clear line and being dedicated to squelching those who step over it will help build and preserve a community. See SomethingAwful, where there's an incentive to stay on-topic and a penalty for being creepy or overly offensive (beyond being just provocative) outside of the forums in which that is allowed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com