Ask HN: Should we adopt an Offtopic: naming convention? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Should we adopt an Offtopic: naming convention?

2 pointsphyscab4 comments

There has been some comments recently about banning offtopic posts because they don't relate to Hacker News. Before such action is taken, should the community adopt an Offtopic: naming convention?

eg. "Offtopic: 15 Things Worth Knowing About Coffee"

The benefits of such would be several-fold as far as I can see:

1) Easily identify and skip offtopic posts if you have no interest in reading them.

2) Use the convention as an opportunity to teach new users what qualifies as ontopic or offtopic.

3) Help us better quantify the ratio of ontopic to offtopic posts, and can be later used as evidence for banning offtopic posts altogether.

4) Help the moderators do their moderating :)

What do you all think?

There are enough on-topic things to talk about here; off-topic things should be taken to a different site.

Please define on-topic?

Also, if anyone disagrees with your definition, your point is invalid :)

If you know well enough to think "Hey, I should title this as Offtopic: whatever", then it probably doesn't belong here.

HN has been around long enough that people should be able to have a decent feel for what's on-topic and what's not; and if they're mistaken the flag button is there.

What I think is on-topic may not be what the next guy thinks is on-topic. The definition of what is on-topic is defined by the community (by way of voting and flagging).

My personal litmus test is whether I think a link is relevant to a hacker / entrepreneur. To be fair, not all of my submissions meet my own criteria, so clearly there's gray area there. I just don't want to encourage people to increase the noise when it's already tough enough to deal with it and maintain the health of the community.

Well, let's be clear, hacker news is a website for hackers/entrepreneurs to waste time, blow off steam, maybe learn something but more likely find interesting commentary.

I liked the coffee beans article, I drink a lot of coffee and it was an interesting quick read to kill 5 minutes before a meeting.

The community here happens to consist of people who find entertainment in learning about things, but let's be clear, this site is entertainment.

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