Hacker News Reader

Comment by htsh | Hacker News Reader

I am not sure but I think what has gone unspoken here is the recent decline in quality of content on this site. Perhaps this is why he's concerned?

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I think the quality of Hacker News is sort of like Escher's "Ascending and Descending" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascending_and_Descending).

People perpetually talk about how the quality is going down, when in reality it's not changing much at all.

I attribute it to the "honeymoon effect". New users are excited when they first find HN, but eventually the amazement wears off, even though the site hasn't changed.

HN is good, but not perfect. It's disillusioning for a new user to go through a bad day or a bad few days on HN, and people react to disillusionment. That might be another factor.

I like the comparison though I also like the wave pattern. For example, weekends are definitely worse than weekdays.

Possibly - but don't deny that this stuff doesn't happen. You may have been around for Reddit, and that's most definitely changed for the worse since when I started there (I've since quit). Turning into Digg and all that.

Reddit is still a fantastic place for discussion. Also it arguably has a better interface i.e. orange mailbox, saved links, etc. Perhaps not for startup stuff, but for politics & pop culture I think Reddit continues to do as good a job as anyone. Also, its tough to criticize Reddit with a blanket statement considering there are many independently moderated subreddits (arguably including this very site).

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