Strangeness of HN members.

Sorry amichail, but I can't help but find it really amusing that it should be you of all people here to post this.

Please don't take this in bad humor, but I have many times thought to myself 'strange guy, that amichail, but very interesting' :)

You consistently come up with the weirdest angles on things, always thought provoking and always interesting (like this post!), so please continue to be strange, take it as a compliment. HN would not be the same without you.

But what you find 'strange' I find great.

edit: this posting reminds me of a joke:

A police announcement interrupts the music playing on the car radio:

"Please pay attention on the E31, someone is driving on the wrong side of the highway."

The driver remarks to the passenger:

"Someone? There's hundreds of them!"

:-|

[Explanation: Emoticon above added to give my question a little gravitas :-)]

On the other hand, there was that day when every thread on the front page was about Erlang. The funniest for me was a link to the Wikipedia page about Erlang Shen, a Chinese God.

The whole purpose of this site is to bring people together for discussions about relevant topics. You shouldn't be surprised that this isn't Digg.

I'd re-name it "Awesomeness of HN members."

The ultracapitalists/objectivists/randians: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1795577

People obsessed with programming languages: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1800002

As for the things you find strange,

seriousness = people are driven, and want to get things done, thus they tend to take a no BS attitude about things.

evidence-based = a "show-me" attitude... again, no BS.

implemenations = having a functional, working model shows that it can/has been done, and isn't BS.

(note, don't take this as implying that what you're saying is BS - it probably isn't, but there's a significant jump between talk and a working example)

Edit: I wonder why this is getting down voted. It is rather standard behavior on the web to up vote trolls[1], which isn't usually the case on HN.

[1] See YouTube.com, Reddit.com, etc.

Strange indeed!

I would change that to "people here behave seriously about everything". It's not that HN members themselves are serious prudes. I was a member of Digg in its heyday laughing right along with everyone else about the quirky stories. However, I don't go there anymore, and HN is where I sink a lot of leisure time. The non-serious stuff gets old after a while, but PG somehow knew that intellectually stimulating the mind was the optimum way to go.

This is a good thing. Why waste everyone's time with something you haven't even worked on?

My job after that was an a heavy engineering company - basically 100 engineers and maybe 10 non-technical staff. There I had to defend everything rigorously. I didn't like that much but frankly it made me a much better and thoughtful engineer I no longer could float on feel and had to be able to defend my positions.

HN is much more like that second job, with the karma attached you can't just throw out a random "I think..." and expect it not to be challenged. I'm not saying it necessarily better, there's frequently times when I'd just like to make a joke and not have to worry about my karma score getting battered. But thats the way it tends to be in highly technical and intelligent communities.

I think this is the crux. So often, the stuff that's snidely said, as if it's so true it's a joke, is just false. "That's so true" should be added to "what you can't say" and "what you have to say" as places to look for common misconceptions.

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

(In particular, I'm thinking of Smalltalk/Lisp = slow. In terms of HLL, there were often implementations what were impressively fast for the time. This had absolutely no effect on the frequency of these jokes.)

This may also explain some of the seriousness you sense.

they are unwilling to discuss startup ideas unless an implementation has been made

Sounds evidence based to me.

I don't think that's strange, and I think it's actually slightly less evident on HN that on many other sites.

I think that in internet discussions, a lot of assertions tend to be challenged due to the relative anonymity and high occurrence of counter-factual statements. This makes it hard to have opinion based or exploratory discussions, as any random thought you put forwards, however useful, can easily generate a "please show references" thread.

However, in a place where people can demonstrate domain knowledge, expertise, and also trustworthiness, people can take your word and only ask for follow-up out of interests sake. For example, if grellas commented on a law topic or tptacek commented on security then most would not challenge them.

In relation to the seriousness, I think that people here are quite respectful (relative to the rest of the internet) of other's time. So, they don't joke around so much, I guess. I think maybe that is unusual, another word for that is strange.

* we obsessively follow a guy who makes bingo cards

* we downvote comments like "I agree" or "good job"

* we don't necessarily demand that discussion be "evidence-based", but we do demand that it be interesting and thought provoking, and tend to avoid "tired" topics (like politics)

* in a world of multimedia webpages, we hang out on an extremely minimalist site. The YC logo and voting arrows are often the only images on the screen. There are no avatars, banner ads, facebook/twitter sharing icons, videos, or funny cat pictures to be found here.

* on other sites, when someone wants a feature, they pester the admin about it. Here, they just use the API to build their own site (searchyc, ihackernews, hackerfollow, etc.)

Plus, interesting things hit HN before all the other sites. I'm actually glad I found this site, its not well known in the larger sense of well known; as in, its not Slashdot.

* They are more likely to be liberal/Democratic in views if from the USA and, if from Europe, they are almost certainly so

* Someone with a highly successful lifestyle business that affords him/her millions is not viewed with the same awe about business skills as a teenager who just raised $50k for his first business

* They share an incredible amount of proprietary information that could be used against them by competitors (whether in strategy meetings or as evidence/validity during fundraising)

* Tend to be very smart and very civil on average

Keep a central focus in each post. Extraneous lines (especially ones that don't affect the core argument) tend to spawn major disagreements. Delete!

Don't be funny. HN has a great sense of humor, but good luck pinning it down.

State "I disagree" quickly and simply. Hedging will either muddy your point or sound rude.

Listen to the crowd. HN users are intelligent and thought-provoking. If they downvote or overwhelmingly disagree, you might be the problem. The good news is that since you were downvoted quickly, nobody saw your post or recognizes your username. Keep trying!

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Nothing is easier than defeating an Internet opponent by demanding evidence for a broad claim. If your post can only be proven by actually conducting a study yourself, modify your argument and find actual evidence. Interestingly, phrasing your claim as an anecdotal story seems to be more acceptable than stating, "In my opinion..."