Poll: How Would You Feel if Hacker News was Shut Down?
I'm currently working on an HN-like site for another demographic and wanted to see the level of HN user satisfaction given its relatively light feature-set.
Of those who would be somewhat disappointed to very disappointed, what changes would you want to see made to HN. Are there any features you've been dying to have?
Thanks!
EDIT: I agree with you all regarding the need for a great community -- that is the first on the list. But a great feature-set to help increase the signal and promote more insightful and intimate discussion among members wouldn't hurt, I think.
30 comments
[ 5.9 ms ] story [ 77.1 ms ] threadI'll probably leave eventually because of low quality stories - I really don't care to read that Gruber wrote a sentence telling us someone else wrote something, or fluff pieces from AOL blogs that we pretend aren't content farms.
When/as they gain critical mass I move along, just like the endless tables vs css crap bored me out of the webdev forums all those years ago, or blogs scraping pics and the powerful little cliques pushing the same content every day made digg boring for me, etc.
I like and prefer HN, but what happens happens, if it ever happens. There are alternatives, though HN is #1 in my mind.
Hacker News has a high minimum quality to its comments and an O.K. maximum quality.
It annoys me that no distinction is made between users. I'd like to have something to let me know who I am talking to: a "friend and foe" list, and something to set users in comments apart such as coloured names, non-hideous gravatars, etc.
I'd also like special people's names to be highlighted such as the OP's and admin's. And a better voting system. And a pony.
Could you link to a Twitter account, e-mail subscription of some sort? There's a 95% chance that I forget everything you just wrote after I close this tab, unless Techcrunch, Daring Fireball, and HN shower you with attention.
EDIT: If you want a good case study to learn from, see how Quora has failed to shape and teach its users how to use the service and post relevant, good content
EDIT2: A "report" button for individual comments would also be great. Moderators can't be everywhere; instead, they should just teach users to (properly) report comments and sift through these. It would also be beneficial to require a description of the infraction.
I like this. I sometimes find myself searching a page with the OP's name to check for responses. As for the rest though... I kind of like the "anonymity" of posting without a sig/avatar/anything because I don't do any pre-filtering of comments by user.
I think the "threads" link works pretty well for this.
>A "report" button for individual comments would also be great.
Isn't this what flagging is for?
The minute that HN loses its insightful nature or somehow gets its value diluted will be the time I look for something else.
When you say "another demographic" what do you mean? Age? Language? Geographic location? or outside of the tech community? Since the community and content matters, changing the demographics might impact significantly whether something HN-like would succeed.
What I've found in my discussions with researchers is the ability for the discussion to get very deep, but a sense of politics pervades the conversation.
Will it be focused around something like YC? How would you envision some of the "Show HN" type posts?
But I think if HN was shut down a new HN-like community would be immediately created.