I've found that http://hckrnews.com/ is a better "front page" for HN; it bills itself as "a chronologic list of items that have made it onto the Hacker News homepage".
The only ability users have to kill posts comes from flagging, which is something everyone over a low (> 30) karma threshold can do. It also requires quite a few flags to kill a post.
In my experience, when certain users with sufficiently high karma flag a post or comment thread it is tantamount to "killing" it. Perhaps I'm mistaken in my perception of how flags work here. This is one of the more opaque aspects of how the site works.
I’ve been here for awhile (just about eight years), and the single biggest change I’ve noticed is the increasing presence of what I’ll call a “bourgeois tech monoculture.”
This place used to be weirder, with more obscure links and discussions filled with academics and hackers. If you search the older archives, there are some really incredible conversations. Now it mostly seems to be nytimes articles commented on by upper-middle class engineers.
Unfortunately no, I think this sort of trend has essentially eaten most major communication channels. Even reddit is 10x more tame, “middle class average” and predictably corporate than the forum culture the internet had ~1995-2010, before winner-take-all social media sites ate everything.
I consider HN being too corporate already. But I think there is an easy solution, where voting power just needs to be adjusted for at least those corporate domains and maybe in general to give more weight to diverse domains.
Agreed. I definitely felt like it was far more obscure and hacker-y five years ago. I remember things like Beej's guide to Network Programming were (https://beej.us/guide/bgnet/) formed the crux of the content - now there's far more "thought-pieces".
Agreed, I wished more individual content made it through. I'm trying to keep an eye on the /new queue and upvote it early, but it's tricky. And my pet peeve, people submitting dupes over and over instead of checking before posting doesn't help, since it's mostly mainstream stuff that gets repeated, drowning the niche out even further.
There's a lot of casual elitism in many threads. However, I've not found anywhere else on the internet with such a high quality level of discourse so it doesn't bother me too much.
My pet peeve is “us vs. them” mentality. The persistent need for an “enemy” that we good guys are opposed to. the flavor-of-the-month/year/decade tech company tribalism.
That is, people who speak positively of <for-profit corporation we currently like> are wholesome and motivated only by spreading truth. People who speak positively of <for-profit corporation we don’t currently like> are astroturfers and shills.
It definitely still works at least some of the time, but there's also delays in some (I haven't received a notification about your reply yet, and it's been several minutes)
a) the voter isn't required to identify their reason for down voting
b) it's not just allowed but encouraged to downvote things that you simply disagree with
Those two things wouldn't mean much if it was just a number. But it isn't. The site actively hides comments as they get down-voted, and people down vote things they simply disagree with.
In case you hadn't realised, that's basically a recipe for an echo chamber. I've lost track of how many times I've written/seen others comments that are either factually true, or at least informative while subjective, down voted into oblivion because they don't follow the standing ideals of a large percentage of those who vote.
I disagree. I can't find any encouragement for downvoting things you simply disagree with (I just reread the guidelines to make sure). It's also not my perception this is happening: I do read downvoted comments (or parts of those), and almost always there is a good reason other than disagreement. I frequently see grayed articles coming up again after a while due to something you might call "corrective upvotes" when the only reason for a downvote seems to be a different opinion.
> I've lost track of how many times I've written/seen others comments ...
Interesting to see how far two subjective perceptions of the same thing - yours and mine in this case - can be away from each other ...
> I can't find any encouragement for downvoting things you simply disagree with
Paul Graham declared it "OK" 10 years ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171) and despite realising that it caused problems 2 years later, the problem's never really been fixed.
> Interesting to see how far two subjective perceptions of the same thing
I think this is directly related to the problem.
Bob posts a comment that is not offensive, but 'goes against the grain' for a large part of HN readers, so his comment is downvoted quickly to the point that it doesn't even appear for most people (either literally because they have `showdead` turned off or figuratively because it's greyed out to be almost unreadable, and at the bottom of sometimes long comment threads).
John reads the comment thread and never sees Bob's comment.
John doesn't see the problem because the problem is things not being seen.
Because I disagree with how HN's downvotes work, I have `showdead` enabled, so I can see the comments/articles that have been downvoted simply because of disagreement.
But that also shows all the articles that are clearly just spam - so I can have the spam removed, or I can see the things the HN hive mind disagrees with, but not both.
Do you have a sample link to such a downvoted comment? I generally find that downvotes make sense. When they don’t, the comment often bounces back via upvotes.
In hyperbolic terms i'd say that HN will become a consumer electronics & politics platform read by "metoo" developers who call them selves founders in exchange for giving up their pension and their rights as a employee. More will be driven to do the same because they read a story on HN covertly plugged by the only client of the previously mentioned metoo guy.
Tongue in cheek, this is a exaggerated version of the trend i see and that's what i hate most about HN.
Honestly nothing at all. It's a decent site that does what it says on the tin. In my ideal world we'd have more hacker and less news but I can always visit /show if I'm in a particularly tech mood.
I guess I would like to be able to add a reason to a flag. Always feel a bit weird just hitting flag and hoping there's someone on the other end that can interpret what I'm flagging
The fact that a more recent link with more upvotes can already be on the second page, while a link with a few upvotes and few comments is on the main page for more than a day. Apparently some links are artificially "buffed".
In terms of the community, I would like to see more people recognize fake leading questions that are answered by alt accounts promoting some product. Those don't get flagged fast enough.
I am also not a fan of news site reporters challenging anything that doesn't have several references to back it up. It takes away from discussions and becomes an academic research article. In my experience, links do not equate to facts. They are just more opinions on some other site.
Leading questions and/or alt accounts are my biggest gripes right now. I called out an account for being a Facebook employee or something the other day. They were literally copy pasting the same response over and over. It was a paragraph from some Facebook documentation.
Another alt account suggested I should be banned for calling out the other user.
Probably best to just flag it or send an email to HN. It's easy to spot people doing it, but we should have proof if we are calling someone out by name.
Do you mean unpopular opinions or thoughtcrime? I post unpopular opinions all the time. Sometimes I get a few downvotes, then in other timezones it swings back the other way, usually. I am not even sure why.
This has been my experience. I very politely and respectfully commented on why I wouldn't support a certain web browser that's gaining attention. The comment swung to the minimum (-4) quickly, but settled on 0 over the next few days.
I suggest using an RSS reader that supports advanced filters. There are many other benefits to RSS even without that, for example not having to rescan over links you've already read or, worse, never going to click.
As far as I know, there isn't a great solution for filtering out links on all pages. You could add sites to uBlock Origin, but you still have to click the link before you figure out it's a blacklisted site. I made a FF plugin for myself that hides links to sites I don't care to ever visit. Technically, it applies css to elements matching regular expressions. So far I've only used it to apply "visibility: hidden" to elements containing a small, but growing, list of domains. It's not perfect, it's not even really good, but I've been happy with it for a few years. If you're interested in trying it, I had to publish it to Add-on page to make it usable (I hate that Mozilla doesn't let us conveniently run any add-on from a local code base), it's called "ssure". It recently started working on FF mobile too, but it's a bit of a pain to configure there.
Me, and people like me who bring flamebait to HN and risk turning it into /.,reddit or worse, 4ch. Sometimes I just forget and get all troll-y and flame-y, and I hate that shit.
Long text quotes in fixed width format (indented by 2 spaces).
When viewing on mobile this forces to scroll that text horizontally, for every line in the paragraph. If people would just stick to using this for code only and use ""'s or > for quoting text that would be great.
HN for me is still (touch wood) a relatively high quality discussion forum. That said, I could certainly do without:
- Persistence of myopic and uninformed views about MBAs in tech and finance. No, MBAs do not get cushy jobs in top-tier firms because they know how to build a pricing model in Excel and look nice in a suit. Tons of MBAs have relevant industry experience, and they're there to work, not stifle innovation by implementing stack ranking or whatever in a frenzied rush to cut costs.
- Comments on stories where a company commits wrongdoing: "I don't know why people are surprised, X has always behaved in this way. If you don't want [bad thing], then do [thing that inconveniences you but does nothing to hold the wrongdoer accountable]"
- Elon Musk worship. I used to think it was just aspirational wealth worship, but now I'm starting to think people see him as a sort of Tony Stark figure, a misunderstood genius trying to save the world against all odds.
Not that I hate something, but it would be interesting to know why this "Ask HN" is now listed # 27 in the "ask" list, with 22 points, 41 comments and 1 hour of age, right after # 26 with 15 points, 12 comments and 1 day of age ...
Not that I always agreed with him, but he was really interesting, and his comments consistently made me think about my own biases and opinions in ways few others ever have.
All the news that isn't hacker news. News about startups, venture capitalists, and other silicon valley douchebaggery isn't hacker news. That's business news. Get it out of my face.
87 comments
[ 93.5 ms ] story [ 2437 ms ] threadIt might be interesting to provide a view showing top stories since a user's last visit, whether it was 4 hours ago or 4 months ago.
https://news.ycombinator.com/lists
For example it’s possible to go back in time, e.g. here is the front page from yesterday:
https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2018-10-09
https://news.ycombinator.com/newest
How it does work isn't much more complicated than what I just said.
This place used to be weirder, with more obscure links and discussions filled with academics and hackers. If you search the older archives, there are some really incredible conversations. Now it mostly seems to be nytimes articles commented on by upper-middle class engineers.
Social media exists to 1) push ads, or 2) shape consensus.
The end state of both is $$$.
That is, people who speak positively of <for-profit corporation we currently like> are wholesome and motivated only by spreading truth. People who speak positively of <for-profit corporation we don’t currently like> are astroturfers and shills.
Definitely not unique to HN.
- downvotes without discourse
- no differentiation between a vote for agree/disagree vs bump/vote-down
a) the voter isn't required to identify their reason for down voting b) it's not just allowed but encouraged to downvote things that you simply disagree with
Those two things wouldn't mean much if it was just a number. But it isn't. The site actively hides comments as they get down-voted, and people down vote things they simply disagree with.
In case you hadn't realised, that's basically a recipe for an echo chamber. I've lost track of how many times I've written/seen others comments that are either factually true, or at least informative while subjective, down voted into oblivion because they don't follow the standing ideals of a large percentage of those who vote.
> I've lost track of how many times I've written/seen others comments ...
Interesting to see how far two subjective perceptions of the same thing - yours and mine in this case - can be away from each other ...
Paul Graham declared it "OK" 10 years ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171) and despite realising that it caused problems 2 years later, the problem's never really been fixed.
> Interesting to see how far two subjective perceptions of the same thing
I think this is directly related to the problem.
Bob posts a comment that is not offensive, but 'goes against the grain' for a large part of HN readers, so his comment is downvoted quickly to the point that it doesn't even appear for most people (either literally because they have `showdead` turned off or figuratively because it's greyed out to be almost unreadable, and at the bottom of sometimes long comment threads).
John reads the comment thread and never sees Bob's comment.
John doesn't see the problem because the problem is things not being seen.
Because I disagree with how HN's downvotes work, I have `showdead` enabled, so I can see the comments/articles that have been downvoted simply because of disagreement.
But that also shows all the articles that are clearly just spam - so I can have the spam removed, or I can see the things the HN hive mind disagrees with, but not both.
I guess I would like to be able to add a reason to a flag. Always feel a bit weird just hitting flag and hoping there's someone on the other end that can interpret what I'm flagging
In terms of the community, I would like to see more people recognize fake leading questions that are answered by alt accounts promoting some product. Those don't get flagged fast enough.
I am also not a fan of news site reporters challenging anything that doesn't have several references to back it up. It takes away from discussions and becomes an academic research article. In my experience, links do not equate to facts. They are just more opinions on some other site.
Another alt account suggested I should be banned for calling out the other user.
As far as I know, there isn't a great solution for filtering out links on all pages. You could add sites to uBlock Origin, but you still have to click the link before you figure out it's a blacklisted site. I made a FF plugin for myself that hides links to sites I don't care to ever visit. Technically, it applies css to elements matching regular expressions. So far I've only used it to apply "visibility: hidden" to elements containing a small, but growing, list of domains. It's not perfect, it's not even really good, but I've been happy with it for a few years. If you're interested in trying it, I had to publish it to Add-on page to make it usable (I hate that Mozilla doesn't let us conveniently run any add-on from a local code base), it's called "ssure". It recently started working on FF mobile too, but it's a bit of a pain to configure there.
- Persistence of myopic and uninformed views about MBAs in tech and finance. No, MBAs do not get cushy jobs in top-tier firms because they know how to build a pricing model in Excel and look nice in a suit. Tons of MBAs have relevant industry experience, and they're there to work, not stifle innovation by implementing stack ranking or whatever in a frenzied rush to cut costs.
- Comments on stories where a company commits wrongdoing: "I don't know why people are surprised, X has always behaved in this way. If you don't want [bad thing], then do [thing that inconveniences you but does nothing to hold the wrongdoer accountable]"
- Elon Musk worship. I used to think it was just aspirational wealth worship, but now I'm starting to think people see him as a sort of Tony Stark figure, a misunderstood genius trying to save the world against all odds.
Not that I always agreed with him, but he was really interesting, and his comments consistently made me think about my own biases and opinions in ways few others ever have.
Link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dark-reader/eimadp...