Maybe we should try something new for a couple hours. | Hacker News Reader

Maybe we should try something new for a couple hours.

3 pointsapotheon7 comments

Let's try something new:

For a couple of hours, I'd like to see everyone post articles they find interesting and questions they want answered here at Hacker News -- so many articles that they drown out this juvenile attempt to drown out someone else with pointless Erlang reposts.

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There are a number of worthwhile things on the "new" page, but it looks like the people who aren't participating in the Erlang flood have given up and taken a break. If you want to push Erlang back off the front page, go vote for some real stories:

http://news.ycombinator.com/newest

(I've been trying to post more things that I think are genuinely interesting and not Erlang- or _why-related.)

I've actually been doing so, but it doesn't seem to be making much difference. I only get one vote per item.

I appreciate your efforts to keep this "Hacker News" instead of letting it turn into "Erlang News", in any case.

I did post articles that I found interesting...it's just that they happened to be articles about Erlang. ;-)

Curiously, the one that was just a mailing list post made it to the front page, while the two PDFs (both of which are much meatier and more educational) got buried in the flood. People have short attention spans.

. . . or maybe the short one got upvoted faster because it's easy to form an opinion of it (and thus upvote it with some understanding of it) quickly than the longer pieces, and since Erlang stuff is already flooding the front page, longer and meatier entries are having a harder time getting any attention, especially when they're about Erlang.

I thing that, if you have something actually interesting about Erlang to offer, you're better off sitting on it until after this ridiculous Erlang flurry dies down (if ever).

I'm disappointed that a long-time user such as yourself has participated in such an immature and shameful display.

Yeah, there was at least one link that I found really interesting [1], but it never made it to the front page. Meanwhile, random links to things like the Mnesia reference manual are in the top 10.

1. Kamaelia.org: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=776372

The things RE _why were getting too "feely," and the Erlang thing worked because it's about as far as we can go in the other direction. Just a temporary blip riding the wave of an inside joke; things will subside after awhile.

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