I was waiting for this post. Or rather, I was hoping that the first "Open Issues" post would mention the number of closed issues or the total of all issues. Giving one random number of X is not very useful without some context. And if the context is in my mind, great. If it's not, I appreciate it when a poster gives that to me.
Do you mean Hacker News vs. Reddit in terms of popularity? HN deliberately tries not to be as popular as Reddit.
A few years ago HN was featured in a relatively popular publication, (TechCrunch maybe? I forget) and we flooded the front page with stories about Haskell (I'm pretty sure, or some other esoteric topic) to drive away any would be newcomers from that piece.
HN is trying to appeal to a particular type of demographic - people interested in computer science / programming and start ups.[1] The more you try to be all things to all people, the more you end up with the blandest content with the broadest appeal, like many of the more popular subreddits.
[1] Contrary to some people's beliefs, I don't think this means there should be stories only about computer science, programming, and startups, just that the stories should be interesting to people who find those things interesting. Of course, even among a similar group of people not everyone is going to agree what other things are interesting, but that's what we have the voting for.
>HN deliberately tries not to be as popular as Reddit.
No they/we don't. They might like to pretend that, because, after all, it's cool to be an "exclusive club". But this is just another internet forum that happens to have content you/I like.
See above about flooding the front page with Haskell stories. That was a real thing that happened. And yes there was a post from pg at the time actually asking people to make the site seem unappealing to newcomers until the traffic surge from TC died down. It is a very deliberate attempt to limit the growth rate to a manageable amount and maintain a certain type of culture.
It's not because we're an "exclusive" or "elite" club, it's just that with a broader community there would be a need to appeal to broader, more general interests that would eventually drive away the people who originally came here for the tech-business related content.
Now that I think about it, even if something is 'derailed' (and you're not into it, being all serious and stuff), that branch is simply hidden. Something you can't do here.
That you realise that that's a necessary qualifier implies the solution. Yes, you're not going to have good quality discussion on a major/default subreddit. Unsubscribe from them and ignore them. There are a lot (iirc ~10^6) of subreddits, including many perfectly civil communities in there for various niches.
Reddit caters to, essentially, everyone, by allowing users to create separate topic groups, while HN is a single collective forum for tech-y/science-y/thing-of-general-interest-y type news.
I think it's rare to see "Reddit" used to refer specifically to a subreddit. The two words are distinct for a reason, after all.
And I have noticed that there is a 1-3 day lag from the front page of HN to the front page of /r/programming+/r/technology. My guess is most of the frequent contributors there see the content here on HN then repost it.
30 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 66.1 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11578191
Looks like someone went wild with the api
"If we spam ourselves we'll know which bugs are most serious and are sure to fix those" perhaps?
#2 post, my ass...
Face it, reddit won because it's objectively better with its lax moderation against this restricted garden.
A few years ago HN was featured in a relatively popular publication, (TechCrunch maybe? I forget) and we flooded the front page with stories about Haskell (I'm pretty sure, or some other esoteric topic) to drive away any would be newcomers from that piece.
HN is trying to appeal to a particular type of demographic - people interested in computer science / programming and start ups.[1] The more you try to be all things to all people, the more you end up with the blandest content with the broadest appeal, like many of the more popular subreddits.
[1] Contrary to some people's beliefs, I don't think this means there should be stories only about computer science, programming, and startups, just that the stories should be interesting to people who find those things interesting. Of course, even among a similar group of people not everyone is going to agree what other things are interesting, but that's what we have the voting for.
https://www.reddit.com/r/hackernews
No they/we don't. They might like to pretend that, because, after all, it's cool to be an "exclusive club". But this is just another internet forum that happens to have content you/I like.
It's not because we're an "exclusive" or "elite" club, it's just that with a broader community there would be a need to appeal to broader, more general interests that would eventually drive away the people who originally came here for the tech-business related content.
Now that I think about it, even if something is 'derailed' (and you're not into it, being all serious and stuff), that branch is simply hidden. Something you can't do here.
That you realise that that's a necessary qualifier implies the solution. Yes, you're not going to have good quality discussion on a major/default subreddit. Unsubscribe from them and ignore them. There are a lot (iirc ~10^6) of subreddits, including many perfectly civil communities in there for various niches.
Reddit caters to, essentially, everyone, by allowing users to create separate topic groups, while HN is a single collective forum for tech-y/science-y/thing-of-general-interest-y type news.
This place really doesn't look so different to r/programming+r/technology.
And I have noticed that there is a 1-3 day lag from the front page of HN to the front page of /r/programming+/r/technology. My guess is most of the frequent contributors there see the content here on HN then repost it.
GitHub has 880,159 open PRs (https://github.com/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr)
GitHub has 12,558,530 closed PRs (https://github.com/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed)
(sarcasm)
It is absolutely boring for a normal person though.