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Ask HN: Alternatives to HN?

11 points by kingkongjaffa ↗ HN
I've noticed an influx of new users in the last year, and an influx of a different type of user on this site.

The quality of posts, questions, and comments is at an all time low in my opinion.

Has anyone found similar online communities that are of consistently high quality?

13 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 41.9 ms ] thread
Tomte
But then you're the newbie and destroy the quality of those sites!
eternalsculptor
Could you elaborate on what you mean by "different type of user"? Just curious.
kleer001
> I've noticed an influx of new users in the last year

How did you measure that?

> all time low in my opinion

Everyone's got an opinion, why should we care about yours? You don't seem to be a major contributor here.

> consistently high quality?

Measured how? Subjective? Nobody can determine that but you.

kingkongjaffa
Typically I used to see tech and business related posts from reputable sources and constructive comments from people with deep insights.

More recently the content is much broader, more frequently asked by a laymen and/or with a poor quality source.

I have no data to back it up but I sense the site is victim to overspill from places like Reddit and the whole site seems more “casual”.

The signal-noise ratio feels much worse.

I look for thought provoking questions to see good answers in the comments by mainly browsing “ask”. Go and look at “ask” now, it’s mostly people discussing the recent stock market activity in a superficial way driven by scepticism or FOMO.

kleer001
Are you surprised at this?

You are familiar with entropy, right?

kingkongjaffa
Surprised? No. Disappointed? Yes.
kleer001
I get that, I really do.

I made a similar comment on a different forum about a similar thing.

Still, we should all keep the creeping Sturgeons Law in mind when evaluating our disappointment about things we have no control over.

brudgers
1. As gateway to YC, Hacker News is somewhat driven by new users. However, new users are a reason HN is not as repetitive and narrow as it might be. New users are not mired in "insider" culture. Sure there are lots of low quality content generated by new users. But the good ones tend to stick around.

2. In my experience quality takes a hit around US presidential election seasons. I think this cycle was better than 2016 in terms of discourse.

The solution to a perceived lack of quality is to submit the class of articles you want to see and to write comments of the type you want to read and to avoid participating in threads that you consider low quality. Good luck.