Did anyone else notice that Hacker News has changed? | Hacker News Reader

Did anyone else notice that Hacker News has changed?

22 pointsn00shie17 comments

The front page is flooded with start-up drama instead of more technical articles. I am not sure, but I am feeling less and less satisfied with the content here. Thoughts?

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I notice that your account is less than a year old, so I'll point you to the HN Guidelines:

  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.

  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.)

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Nice...

I fail to see how the age of an account makes a point any less valid. Baseless elitism should be discouraged, not someone who could viably have been a lurker for years posting an honest opinion about how things have trended. Of course now this comment will likely be downvoted. You've changed, man.

I've always had a special admiration for Hackers News participants but I'm afraid to say there's a definite decline in technical rigor of articles. Obviously I still visit, but yesterday I wandered into reddit for the first time and subscribed to many of the technical subreddits to find them very lively and at least as interesting as hacker news.

It's actually kind of interesting you bring this up! I used to use Digg like crazy back in the day, and then about 2 or 3 months before Digg 4 (it was 4, not 3, right?) I jumped ship to reddit. Reddit seemed to have much better content, much better conversations, and was more relevant to my technical interests. Digg had started that way, but soon became hype stories / drama / memes / cat pictures. After having used reddit for about 1.5 years, I discovered hacker news. After reading hn for a bit, it started to become obvious that reddit was starting to feel like Digg did before I left. Nothing but memes / complaining / cat pictures / look at what my (girlfriend / kid / cat did) / lol science is cool kind of stuff. I image that over time the same thing will happen here, and is probably happening right now. Enjoy it while it lasts I suppose!

>User for 244 days

I think PG has specifically addressed this in the guidelines.

edit: here it is:

>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.)

I agree with him. I feel like adding tags that we can filter might solve most of it.

You've literally never submitted a single link to this website, you don't get to complain.

I say it's a pretty good idea. What reason are you going to give me for not getting to complain? What the heck does #submissions have to do with judging the frontpage?

A lot of startups are based on technical ideas. I for one, love those articles where someone describes their startup experience, the more drama the better. As a programmer getting into a new startup, Hacker News is the best outlet to stay up to date on new technologies, opinions, real world tech news, and sharing personal experiences.

I've also noticed a strange "anti-college" sentiment being expressed recently. Or, it could just be my own personal bias after having decided to go back to school after being in industry for several years.

HN has been slightly to moderately anti-establishment since day one. The government crackdown on Wikileaks brought this out in certain areas a bit more, but the overall sentiment fluctuates sinusoidally across a fixed range over time.

HN has always been anti college. It's just resurfaced recently because of the new online courseware options.

No. It hasn't. Not really.

-- user for 1920 days

Business as usual. There's a lull in technical stuff, so the more broadly interesting links rise to the top.

I wonder if historically, tech luls could at all be tracked to the season (at least US based tech news). It is spring/almost-summer (warming up, sun is out) as well as around the time many master/doctorate students head out for the summer/vacations.

I suppose it has changed. But it's always been somewhat focused on startups and the startup lifestyle.

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