Hacker News Reader

Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

HN has always had a wider range of content than people tend to assume it has, and that's by design—when pg renamed it from "Startup News" to "Hacker News", that was the reason: https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html.

For example, we had this thread 3 weeks after your account was created: RIP Michael Jackson - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=674438 - June 2009 (158 comments)

And of course the "How is this even remotely hacker news?" question was already in full swing back then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=674461

In other words, twere ever thus!

This approach only works as long as no one class of story is over-represented to the point of being predictable, but that's ok because evading predictability is one of the core values of the site:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

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This is my 3rd account, my 1st was made like a month after yours.

Ahh yes, Donald Sutherland, never did a Startup but of course he was a notable Hacker. And of course his impact on world culture was right up there with Michael Jackson.

I find your attempt to defend the trajectory of the site very convincing and I withdrawal my criticism. Lets get more celebrity news up on the front page, like it used to be... The fact that there was one article about Michael Jackson within a few months of when I created my 3rd account is absolutely evidence of whatever point you are making.

I mean just look at all the articles about celebrities and politics and social policy: https://web.archive.org/web/20091207051053/http://news.ycomb...

VS the frontpage RIGHT NOW, which does not have even one single article about programming, and very few about technology even in the broadest sense.

I haven’t been around long, I am not someone you would look up to either but… I guess some “hackers” like movies and I’ve enjoyed picking up some recommendations here. I have no idea who David was, for example.

Also, no doubt you know this but this is my landing page: https://news.ycombinator.com/best

I guess if this site truly devolves into Silicon Valley-TMZ+ I’ll eat these words but there’s still science and computers here.

Best to appreciate it as people who are interesting enough to be icons for tech professionals.

It's interesting you picked 2009-12-07 for that archive link. When I click the right arrow on that page to go to the next snapshot, I get 2009-12-09: https://web.archive.org/web/20091209034602/http://news.ycomb... and the #1 story is "China's Family Planning Goes Awry" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=984930). If that's not social policy I don't know what is!

The point is that HN has always had a mix of things, and it's also always had these "how is this even on hacker news" and "I guess HN has turned into $Badness News now" comments. Most often the complaint is about too many political stories, but a certain number of those have also always been here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869.

The reason for this dynamic (the mixture of topics, and also complaints about the mixture of topics) is not hard to find: it was pg's vision for the site. If you want to argue about pre-2008 HN we could probably find more common ground, but that's getting pretty obscure. I think 16 years is enough to set a precedent.

Picked that date 100% at random, literally the only one I even clicked.

What is your point exactly? I think you would have trouble saying more words without saying anything falsifiable. I am not just being a jerk, I have no idea what your point is other than to try to put up a wall of text. If I was going to sum it up, "HN was always bad so it's still just as good as it was". This kind of defense works for 4chan because it openly brags about being bad, but I don't think this is what HN aspired to.

My point was that HN hasn't changed in the way you said it has.

On another note: your comments frequently do come across as being a jerk, and quite an unpleasant one. I don't usually address that so directly, and especially not after a personal interaction, but I think in this case it might be helpful (at least I hope so).

This has been a problem on HN for a long time:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39610617 (March 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20067503 (June 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19237577 (Feb 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13003328 (Nov 2016)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10933740 (Jan 2016)

-- and I'm afraid it's still a problem (quite apart from this thread). I assume you don't mean to come across this way, because you frequently say things like "I am not just being a jerk", "I don't want to sound too critical" and so on, but that's not enough when you go on to say aggressive, insulting, and/or snarky things to the other person.

I'm not sure what to add beyond the same "would you please review the site guidelines and use HN in the intended spirit" that we've already been asking you for years. If you do intend to be a good contributor, I think the only way to do it is to double-check what you're posting and meticulously edit out the swipes. My guess is that your posts are coming across as nastier than you believe they are, so it's necessary to adjust in the opposite direction, and not by a small amount.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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