HN Explorer

Ask HN: Has HN traffic / engagement declined over the past year?

3 points by rexreed ↗ HN
Over the past year I've anecdotally noticed a decrease in posting volume, comment volume, and even comment and post quality. HN doesn't publicly post their statistics (to my knowledge), but does anyone at HN have (and can share) visibility into any stats or trends over the past few years and can share how any of that has changed? Mostly curious but also I think there's some macro changes going on in tech and entrepreneurship.

3 comments

[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 22.1 ms ] thread
marban
Not sure about traffic but from my perspective, discussion culture has turned very elitist with zero tolerance for outsiders, let alone humour.
rexreed
I agree - something has substantially changed about the tone and nature of comments in the past year(s). Humor is underappreciated. Self-deprecating humor in particular is useful for humility and being open to new ideas as well as being open to being proven wrong.

Overall posting and comment volume has decreased from my observation as well, so a smaller number of comments tend to dominate, which contributes to the overall perception that you've noted above.

legrande
I noticed a large uptick in comments from the 'working from home' cohort during the Pandemic. Whether that has helped HN is anyone's guess, but there is (was?) more noise.