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Ask HN: Why are off-topic articles upvoted on Hacker News?

18 points by kurtvarner ↗ HN
I'm confused as to why the Hacker News community supports the submission of blatantly off-topic articles. For example, currently the number 5 submission is "I Think You're Fat", which is an article about lying. It has 102 upvotes in 3 hours. Why are articles like this upvoted?

I understand that not all submissions should be about the tech world, but they should be intellectual at a minimum. Although there is some definite gray area, here are the Hacker News Guidlines:

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

10 comments

[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 32.7 ms ] thread
billpatrianakos
Maybe we're witnessing the diluting of the community? My first instinct would be to say "yeah! Seriously! What's up with that?" but then if you think about it for even a second you see that the reason is because these are the kind of stories hackers are either finding interesting or are intellectually stimulating to them.

The problem with vague guidelines like the ones here are that what qualifies as meeting those guidelines changes with the community. This could be a good thing in cases where the community is made up of all high caliber individuals that are simply maturing or changing as a group but if those changes are a result of the community simply being diluted with riff raff then it turns against us.

Anyway, I know what you mean. I don't think anyone can definitively say you're right or wrong or if this is a good or bad thing. It's just a pattern to be interpreted.

Zev
'cause enough people who are on the site like it.

I personally think that most of that off-topic content that you mentioned sucks to have here (even if I do enjoy it elsewhere), but despite my flagging, they still get up there. So, I visit HN less.

The majority has spoken, what else is there for me to say, really?

kurtvarner
I personally think that most of that off-topic content that you mentioned sucks to have here (even if I do enjoy it elsewhere)

Exactly. It's not about if it's interesting to you... It is if it's interesting AND fits the purpose of HN.

Zev
The equation is: I liked this story + I like to think of myself as a hacker + Hacker Hews is for hackers[1] = I'm going to post this on Hacker News

Or, in the reduced form[2]: I found this interesting + I think this article would make other people think about this topic after reading it = I'm going to post this on Hacker News

Hacker News was previously called Startup News -- if you were around before July '07-ish. That was changed when the site was only a few months old. And you're kidding yourself if you don't think that HN changed since then. Maybe the next step is Amalgamated News? Who knows. To be honest? I doubt even pg knows for sure.

1. For whichever of the multitude of definitions of the word you prefer to use

2. From the guidelines: "If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." - http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Emphasis mine.

makecheck
I also wish that the site would be more "on topic".

I imagine what's happening is that people submit and up-vote anything that's remotely interesting or important regardless of whether or not it is really "hacker news". But this site isn't supposed to be the only news source in the world. Even an important story can be an irrelevant one as far as HN's boundaries are concerned, if it would already be reported in the news somewhere.

swiecki
In my opinion, the quality of content on HN has plummeted since SOPA became an internet issue.

It is reminiscent of how the Digg community stopped caring about interesting stories and instead became wrapped up in its own cycles of bullshit, RIAA, Blu-Ray, iPhone, etc.

kurtvarner
Although the SOPA submissions may be a little excessive, they directly relate to the hacker community. SOPA is an important issue that deserves attention. Plus, the popularity on HN is having a real effect on the issue. For example, Go Daddy has lost thousands of domains, and has since retracted their support of SOPA.
md1515
Who cares. The genius part about Hacker News is that it is democratic (mostly). If it is a good thread/discussion then the people want to keep it even if it is off topic.

My two cents anyway...

Mz
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

This piece of it means that many articles will be viewed by one person as "on topic" and by another "off topic". It's pretty subjective. This same issue used to come up constantly on a homeschooling list I once belonged to. The issue boiled down to the fact that some people interpreted "on topic" very broadly and other people did not. I was on that list for some years and the issue was never settled and remained an on-going bone of contention. Given that HN has a far larger membership, I don't imagine it will ever be settled here either.

I saw no problem with the "I think your fat" piece. It was interesting and there was good discussion about morality in practical day-to-day terms, even in terms of business people trying to be honest without shooting themselves in the foot. But I was always one of those people on the homeschooling list who interpreted "on topic" more broadly there as well.

malandrew
It is also important to keep in mind that the HN community has grown a lot in the past few years and that most of that growth has come from people who are interested in tech and startups, but are not necessarily hackers.