Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..
I joined Hacker News around 5 years ago. I used to wake up and do the grim commute each morning to London from my home and the only thing that made it vaguely ok was Hacker News. It was a great place to go and find interesting articles from genuinely passionate people. It also used to be a really safe place to launch a startup that you'd spent days, weeks, years on - your project. It was a place where you could launch your startup and know you'd get great constructive feedback. People may not necessarily like your site but they'd admire you for having the balls to launch it, for spending time developing something that you hoped could benefit people in some way. They'd want you to succeed and they'd try and help you succeed with feedback that would ultimately help you. Unfortunately, today's Hacker News audience is no longer the same.
Today's Hacker News is a place where users want to snipe at other users and find negative aspects to anything thing submitted. No longer does someone say 'This and this I like but this needs work'. Oh no, now the response is 'Hate this, hate that, this is pointless.'. Hacker News now is about correcting grammar and points scoring. It is pointing out anything negative at all that anyone has done, has said. It is no longer a safe place. It has fast become an acidic forum.
I've launched 2 projects (11kclub and Favilous) on here over the last year - both got a similar response. There was nothing constructive, it was just sniping - they saw someone had put themselves up there and they just shot them down. It's a real shame. I hope one day the site returns with the kind of audience it once had. Until that happens, I won't be going on my favourite site anymore - the commute just got a whole lot longer.
For now I wish you all the best...
Thanks
Steve
464 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 195 ms ] threadWhy else have moderation points if not for scoring? :p
If you're still stuck with a long commute and you are looking for something to build, you could try your hand at a Hacker News replacement. There are certainly enough people here jaded by the toxicity that would make the jump someplace new.
My only piece of advice, if you decide do this, don't post it as a "Show HN". Reach out to smart people privately to beta test it.
I looked at the favilous front page. It looks pretty decent. Good luck.
Personally, I don't have a problem with people being negative. 99% of startups fail, and I think it's worthwhile reminding people of that every now and then. Hacker News shouldn't live in some magical land where everyone is going to make the next billion dollar company.
If you truly, genuinely, believe in your idea then you can take the negativity in your stride. There will be plenty of constructive feedback buried in there somewhere. If you can't take a little negativity directed towards your project, then maybe you're in the wrong business. And maybe it is a bad idea. Sometimes it's best to find that out and move onto a new idea, rather than bathe in the vague compliments of your peers.
If anything, the quality of the posts here are starting to suck because very few actually help you make money. I don't care about the latest PhantomJS technology, etc. There needs to be more ppl like patio11.
If this is the case, why even allow for comments? Just have a bot that auto-responds a bunch of times with randomly generated comments that 99% of the time is "Your idea sucks. You should do something else that is worthwhile."
Constructive feedback is generally what you want. Positive vs negative is more about mood than content - and there is plenty of worthless positive feedback out there.
However, when I considered your point of view, I choose to agree with you. This is what I like (and find maddening at the same time) about HN it's a great way to get a totally different perspective.
^This.
Sometimes people feel very passionate about something and they get tunnel vision. They invest hours, weeks, years on something and to them it is going to be the next big thing that will get the girl, kill the baddies... and save the entire planet[1]. But guess what? Sometimes... sometimes... it really is just shit. Sorry to tell you this but your idea sucks... or the execution sucks... or both. [strawman alert] If all you want to hear is how awesome it is, then go show it to your mum. I'm sure she'll tell you how special you are and that you can do no wrong.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aD3XSOBCxk
Sounds like a strawman to me. Who here has said anything about wanting nothing but positivity, or to be told how awesome they are? Even negativity can be combined with encouragement and support. And it doesn't really cost anymore to do that.
A. "Your idea is pretty bad. You suck. Kill yourself."
B. "Your idea is pretty bad; have you considered XXX? At any rate, best of luck to you!"
OK, to be fair, (B) cost a few more characters of typing for the pedants in the audience. But there's no significant extra cost involved with throwing a little encouragement and support someone's way.
Favilous: It looks like a bookmarking site. Solid site design and layout. Not too cluttered. I don't use bookmarking sites so I can't really comment on how it is different/better than other bookmarking sites.
Edit: Ok I see from posts here what 11kclub is. I'm not sure why user napillo is hellbanned but [s?]he makes a good point here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4397318
ya... probably is. Thanks for the feedback. ;) Although, the OP pretty much says "I hate you all because all you ever say is mean things" so there is that.
Your account was created a little short of a year ago. We are talking about how the newer crop is rude and sarcastic and how that has ruined the quality of the old HN and then you post this. There is no call for it, you could have easily worded your post to say "hey everyone thinks their idea is great, but sometimes we have to help them see reality". Instead you reinforce the very issue, that has caused the decline. Seriously it's sarcastic, condescending and rude.
tl;dr: *Your
I don't care to spend the time to dress up my reply as you seem to do. All your comments can be succinctly stated as, "Go fuck yourself." But you feel the need to apply some pseudo-intellectualism/cleverness to prove your point. You're not better than everyone else. You're not smarter than everyone else. And you don't know better than everyone else. And before you say, "Well I never said that." Your attitude just screams of this kind of arrogance/know-it-all-ness.
So really, go fuck yourself. Maybe that'll unearth whatever stick is shoved up your ass.
You:
* implied the possibly they might not be a human (perhaps a bot?)
* used exceedingly formal language in an informal setting, fully knowing this appears like you are talking down to someone
* noted they made a typo - the "valueless" part mentioned
* say it is with "deep regret" that you noted that typo - I doubt you had any regret whatsoever
In short, your comment does highlight the issues fairly well.
However, it does shock me how Hacker News just hates absolutely everything. I was so shocked when Nexus 7 first came out and the thread piled up with hundreds of negative comments just blasting Google for it. It was a break-through to have such a tablet at $200, and there should have been at least equal levels of hate and love.
I think the accurate statement would be: Absolutely everything will find some people on Hacker News that hate it.
However, if someone just wants to get a couple hundred thousand dollars over the next 2 years, the same level of criticism is not needed.
If your app truly is good, your users/customers will be the only thing that matters.
4-5 years ago it felt like the only people who understood what you went through to launch were people on this site, everyone else including family and fellow co-workers at big corp were negative about the idea of leaving a "safe job" to pursue a dream.
But now with everyone having an idea about the next big app, and blockbuster movies coming out about the geeky kid who did follow his dream, everyone else is starting to "get" us, they can relate. So the feedback you get from outside of HN has become positive, and so the feedback from HN has become more of a "reality check".
I don't see why it just can't be polite but constructive though.
HN != "The Internet"
I somewhat agree with the OP... HN has (had) almost something of a "family" or at least "tightly knit community" vibe to it. Traditionally feedback here was expected to be honest and not sugared down, but polite in tone and constructive.
No one is saying that feedback here should consist of nothing but "Wow, that's GREAT. You're definitely going to be the next Zuckerberg." And no one expects all of us to get together around the campfire, hold hands, and sing Kumbaya. But there's no reason people can't be encouraging and supportive while also being totally honest.
Example:
"Congrats on the launch! Here's hoping your project succeeds wildly. I took a look, and while I like the Froozit and Gizamble features, I do kinda think the Frizgombit could use some improvement. I also have some concerns about how you will make money from this? Is the market for a Zvezkikit for octogenarians really big enough to support this? Anyway, best of luck!"
I mean, is it that hard to show a little support, throw some encouragement to the app launcher, while also giving useful feedback? This isn't "The Shark Tank" or an interview with pg (unless pg is the one giving the feedback, in which case it kinda is) where you go in mostly expecting to be challenged and not really encouraged.
All of that said, I don't think HN has totally descended into "nothing but negativity." I still see a lot of great comments and feedback here, although I would agree that the tone may have shifted a bit over the years.
(A thought: if you launch a public-facing project and announce it here on Hacker News, most of the reactions you get will be like reactions from the general public. If your code base is not exposed to view of hackers, as it would be as a GitHub submission, many of us will only be able to comment on, for example, whether or not we see typos in the copy on your public-facing Web pages, and not on how cool your technical solutions are. That probably generates mostly negative--or at least, consumer-oriented--feedback, rather than hacker feedback, but maybe that is helpful too. I can say as someone who has written for a living in a journalistic organization and also has worked as an editor that every writer needs an editor, because every writer overlooks some of his or her own mistakes, if only because of being busy and tired.)
For what it's worth, I continue to find interesting (and uplifting) things to read here on HN after 1369 days here. But I don't read every thread here. I don't suppose that anyone reads HN exhaustively anymore. Maybe reading a different sample of threads here will help you get more enjoyment and encouragement out of HN again. Good luck.
personally, I wouldn't tear anyone's work down, but I can see why some people would, given how crowded it is now.
But I find that even that tactic is pretty silly and shouldn't be used too much, because as you say, it turns everything far too sour.
So my final solution is to often ignore discussions altogether and us HN as a feed of intellectual peculiarities, and nothing more, only the odd comment here or there. But that does leave me feeling very sorry for the poors sods who ask for feedback here.
Slashdot, Digg, Reddit, HN.
On a two year or so schedule new ones come along, old ones become worse. People on here are already using those illiterate, infantile 'memes' to express themselves. The next step is HN gone wild.
The only question is, where do I go next? I'm not going to pretend it's going to have than two years to live though.
/. has gone entirely to shit, but some subreddits are still good (it feels like the average user age has been suppressed down about seven years, though).
The problem is the revenue model. You can't be exclusive when you need to cater to as many users as possible.
Here's a free startup idea for someone: Design an analytic process that determines the perfect userbase range for a successful community. It would have to scale according to niche. This would apply actual numeric goals for marketing campaigns. Instead of "the sky is the limit!" which we know is not true, you could provide an actual target and cut off membership (or start a second instance with an isolated userbase) at the maximum number.
Okay, now someone else do it, because I'm not smart enough.
It would be fine if ALL the good ideas were made by super confident thick skinned people but they are not. So we, as a species, just lose the potential of the less confident, thin skinned people. This is a HUGE waste of talent. This community should be here to fix that.
Now it's true that in the wide world, thin skinned people need to 'toughen up'. THIS community should be here to help them by helping, guiding and supporting. After all that is what communities are for.
I agree with sw007 that this community is atm worth less than it was a few years ago due to this.
I think my main complaint about HN is the cyclical obsession with the Torrent/Kim Dotcom/Wikileaks side of things. There is a sizable minority that seem to have some ignorant idealism that everything should be free and that developers/musicians/filmmakers ought to just produce content simply out of the joy of doing so, while neglecting that if you give away the store, you can't pay your bills. The recent story about the 200,000 downloads game devs who were now homeless illustrates what happens when that logic is actually implemented.
As Fred Wilson has said, the key to reducing piracy (and the need for it) is the frictionless, low-cost ability to acquire desired content.
I'm am glad that the Bitcoin fad seems to have faded from the HN pages. The fringe types (constantly looking for conspiracies, no problems with "warez" and very "hack the planet" (i.e. Hackers (1995)) seem to provide some interesting "color" but also occasionally drown out the original purpose of HN -- startup-related news and the technologies involved therein.
I was a late comer to the party, so perhaps I'm part of the problem, but still, on the whole, HN, even with its snark, is a great place to be and I'm proud to have earned a few Karma points over the last year.
There is a nostalgia associated with when the community was smaller and more intimate and I think that's what drives people to make claims about how things are declining. And I can relate to that. But, the fact is that there have always been "negative" people here, as there are in any community, and there always will be. But there are also a lot of people who have a lot of positive feedback to contribute. I know that it is increasingly difficult to get your ideas heard by those who are willing to provide feedback, but that's to be expected as a community grows.
This site remains, for me, the go-to source for intelligent, thoughtful, informed discussion on tech/hacking-related issues.
I suspect part of it is that it's been a very meta/self-aware experiment from the start, whereas many communities sprout up accidentally for various reasons, and only later get more self-conscious about it.
Criticism is one of the best ways to learn to be better at what you do. "Hate this, hate that" may be negative but it is useful feedback from actual/potential users of your site/service/app/whatever.
HN is a far better site with useful comments than it is a site with solely positive comments.
Have you considered this is due to the overarching change in the startup society as a whole? I mean, have you HAD an actual conversation with other startup founders/CEOs/early employees lately? :) Either they have nothing to say (because they're so new to the scene and probably have an IQ of around 100), or they are ubercritical (because they've seen SO many microcompanies come and go and they're still around - so everyone wants their advice).
Don't take it personally - their meaning isn't what's changed, it's their wording. Saying "I hate your UI" is essentially the same as saying, "Your UI needs to be cleaner." Look at extremely negative comments as a way to start an excellent conversation:
Them: "I hate your UI." You: "I know! I wish it was cleaner. What do you think about this toolbar?"
If someone is willing to give you honest "I hate" or "I love" feedback, they're ASKING you to want their opinion. And it sounds like you do - so ask them something in return.
And read if you haven't already: http://www.launch.co/blog/good-to-great-to-excellent-a-roadm...
Lida
You base this statement on a sample size of N=2. On many Show HN submissions I tend to see just the opposite, people act as test users/engineers/etc for free and then write their impressions.
The problem that you faced, I think, is one I (and others) have noticed before: HN response dynamics is not stationary, i.e. it tends to change quite a bit with time of day (different moods or geographic audiences?), time of week (TGIF or the reverse effect), and even by time of month (full moon?). There are many posts analyzing the optimal time to post.
Having your project (or thoughts) bluntly criticized publicly can be painful. One solution could be: (i) Closely read and re-read comments offering constructive criticism (ii) ignore "snarky", etc. comments but note their ratio to the constructive ones, if the SNR is low then you have to think what on your product triggered such an outpouring.
I vehemently agree with this. Aside from a few parent comments on each thread, the comment threads are sure to have somebody being overly finicky about the minutia of another comment. Diction is important, yes, but an important tool to any conversation is understanding when NOT to correct somebody, or make them clarify their obvious statement. It's kind of like HN's much crueler version of a Reddit pun thread, with the notable exception that, as soon as I see one, I will immediately collapse the former.
You're seeing what you want to see. If your idea is truly noteworthy, you will get lots of usable feedback on this site, despite all the negative (but still relevant) criticism. Two recent examples are Ouya and App.net; these ideas received tidal waves of negativity, but they were interesting ideas, and the ensuing threads were filled with useful and valid criticism (as well as supportive comments from backers). If your idea is only receiving negative comments, it's probably because it isn't compelling enough to merit the attention of thoughtful critics.
- Rumors about what Apple will do next week, and the ensuing flamewars between Apple fans and Android fans
- TorrentFreak articles of any kind
- Overbearing hype about the latest fad (App.net at the moment)
- Mindless hatred towards the latest villain (Twitter at the moment)
- Anything political that's posted under the justification that "all hackers need to care about politics"
Sorry to see you go, I hope that you find somewhere with more civil discourse.
Agreed. "Show HN" posts are probably the most important part of HN to me. I don't always comment, but I always enjoy seeing them, and I love it when you see somebody post something that is incredibly useful to the OP. It warms the heart to see one of those conversations that goes:
somerandomuser "I like this, but FOO seems kinda wonky. We did something similar once, and found that BAR increased our conversion rate by 12.9%"
submitter "Holy shit, that's a great idea. I never thought of that, but I'm going to implement that tonight! Thanks for sharing."
A separate, heavily moderated forum on HN dedicated to product launches and feedback. Non-constructive criticism like "Your product sucks, it's a terrible idea and you're a terrible person for thinking of it" results in an HN hellban/permaban.
Myself - I'm not opposed to receiving negative feedback. It's the worthless, non-constructive feedback that riles me. Say something positive and/or insightful. Meaningless, parroted comments are what ultimately sinks an online community.
It may be seasonal, or something similar, and I'll admit to having anecdotal evidence only, but I have had a similar impression to the OP, albeit not quite as strongly.
I wonder if some of it is defensiveness from users scared HN will turn into Reddit? Certainly, I've seen a lot of "downvote this post, it's not something that should be on HN" comments lately.
I don't know if you are going to read this, but I'm going to write it for the rest of the audience too.
I think the trend of dismissing critics and commenting along the lines of "sour grapes" or "haters" very disturbing. Yes I go against your commentary. The great thing about internet and communities based on pseudonyms is that you get the first reaction that people have. Very few will take a few minutes to give their opinion, weight the different possibilities etc... It's brutal, it's direct. If you have run a service online you certainly know that you receive very angry/ threatening emails from people that use your services and are displeased. If it disturbs you it means that you are not ready for having a personal project on display, it's as simple as that. People in life and particularly on the internet are very angry and you have disturbed individuals. Opening a service with your name and your address is becoming some kind of "celebrity", people will HATE you for no good reason.
To come back to what I think is bad/annoying on Hacker News is of a different nature and I'll list a few:
* Well thought comments are often ignored and not read ( not up/downvoted, just ignored )
* Stardom: No matter what they post some ""famous"" people around here get their post on the front page. By courtesy I won't list who they are but everybody can spot it pretty easily. I'm very disappointed by this attitude personally, and it doesn't speak highly of a place that is supposed to be almost a pure meritocracy.
* Fads/ Jealousy: A lot of people here want to be rich and famous thus it creates tension. It allows me to come back to your point: these people are likely going to dismiss your ideas based on jealousy.
* Over-repetition of some stories ad nauseum: dumb benchmarks to see the number of req/s, analysis App.net, Education sucks...
All that being said it remains an interesting community but with some drawbacks. I guess nothing can have it all.
Maybe I've just missed it, but I haven't seen a lot of responses here that seem to be obviously motivated by jealousy. I get the feeling that, despite how many of us there are, most of us are working on different things. I mean, there are so many ideas, and potential ideas, I don't feel like I've seen a lot of overlap.
And when I have seen it, I feel like a lot of the comments have been of the "Hey, this is similar to what we're doing, shoot me a message offline and let's talk" variety.
Those are never obvious. Jealousy, unless in a romantic personal context, is never displayed directly. It is hidden behind multiple layers of rationalizations or a barrage of negative comments (jab at small detail, over emphasis of small mistakes for ex.: "Oh you just worked 5 months on this website, well it sucks because you use the wrong serif font").
I would say this is the biggest issue for me - I am just not into that habit.
I would suggest putting a header into the orabe bar:
"Please generously upvote if you think something is intelligent, well written or inciteful or otherwise postiviely contributes to the conversation"
That said, here is a +1
In other words, he was not saying that negative criticism should be dismissed. He was saying that there is too much negativity for him to find the site enjoyable and that he thinks the change in attitude is for the worse.
That said, I also think that you're off the mark when you say the OP is not ready for having a personal project on display. The premise of OP's note is that he considered HN to be a more positive, supportive community than the larger Internet. There is nothing wrong with wanting to associate yourself with people who will build you up rather than tear you down. If Steve's been using HN for five years, he's probably well aware of how vicious people can be on the Internet. It sounds like he's sad that HN isn't a haven from this viciousness like it once was. And just because he's sad that this one community has deteriorated, that doesn't mean he's not capable of handling the slings and arrows of the wider Internet population.
I have noticed in the last year on here it's become a lot more like other sites with more general hacker interested threads and (maybe I'm wrong) less and less startup relevant stuff. I know HN is for both, but I personally come here for startup signal.
Also I guess HN was mostly about the startup ecosphere, and now that goal shifted. Now it is about technology, programming, social issues _and_ startups.
Announcing a new startup might get a positive reaction from people interested in startup but will get no or negative reaction from those not interested in startups.
I'll raise my hand and admit that I am not interested in startups at all at the moment. I try not to comment negatively or positively on them I just skip those topics.
Should I feel guilty for not being interested, and are characters like me perceived as destroying the HN culture?
Well thought comments are often ignored and not read ( not up/downvoted, just ignored )
You cannot tell if they were read or not. Exhorting users to use their 'mod points' is a challenge (yes its a slashdot reference). The community is larger and only the opinionated seem to vote.
Stardom: No matter what they post some ""famous"" people around here get their post on the front page. By courtesy I won't list who they are but everybody can spot it pretty easily. I'm very disappointed by this attitude personally, and it doesn't speak highly of a place that is supposed to be almost a pure meritocracy.
Except it isn't a meritocracy is it. Its a place for Y-combinator folks to share links they are interested in. Both current and past members of YC have a few more options than available than folks who just happened by here. One of those is that YC launches always make the front page.
Fads/ Jealousy: A lot of people here want to be rich and famous thus it creates tension. It allows me to come back to your point: these people are likely going to dismiss your ideas based on jealousy.
I've heard this a number of times but I'm not sure I buy it. Some people are angry at themselves because they haven't launched and they lash out at those who have in attempt to position their own failure better. Constructive criticism takes time, a jab takes only a few seconds. So you're looking also at a time penalty.
Over-repetition of some stories ad nauseum: dumb benchmarks to see the number of req/s, analysis App.net, Education sucks...
Well given the way the karma system works this would seem to be a reflection of what is important to the community at large vs perhaps some individuals. There are a couple of great add-ons that knock out stories about things you don't care about (I believe Bitcoin was the motivation but could easily be wrong about that).
For example if there are 6 comments on display at anyone time and they are on display (without scrolling away) for 2 minutes, one might arrive at a probability of how much of that page was read, and how much time was equally spent on previous/subsequent parts of the page.
Especially when factors like, people tend to scroll text to be at the top of the screen to read it, or like me, highlight text I am currently reading with the mouse. Using these factors, we might be able to know what is/isn't read...
before improving something, try to measure it first!
news.YC is biased and will always be biased towards YC-oriented stories, which means it will never be as good as it could be. The status quo doesn't mean that news.YC isn't any good - it's just suspect and you have to filter everything through that lens - the story rankings, comments, and job posts are not ordered by merit, there is a sub-filter in place.
I hope there is eventually a start-up news site that isn't architected and gardened to benefit a small group above all else.
Disclaimer: I was a YC reject, and you can chalk it all up as sour grapes if you like.
Well that's all available on the internet at large. You don't need any kind of catered community to have that experience. What he's bemoaning is the loss of the intermediate, the more thoughtful and useful type of honesty.
This is my main gripe with HN right now -- the anti-intellectualism of the community. I recall an article submitted where the author claimed "Academic papers are shitloads of crap. Want to read something? Read some beautiful source code instead."
Nearly all breakthroughs in computing sprung up from an academic context; why would you be so cavalier in dismissing it? You might actually find out what a Y Combinator is!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-point_combinator#Y_combin...
To learn something, I read books, like textbooks. But maybe that's just me.
It's true that many papers are badly written, but (1) to emphasize: sometimes there is no other source for something, and (2) most books are pretty awful, too, you have to be selective with anything.
For many things (especially raw information), I appreciate that cynicism. For launches and discussions around early products, it annoys me to no end. I think it really shows the character of a person who, when somebody puts themself out there, their first reaction is to tear them down.
Alas, there is probably nothing that can be done. It is the tragedy of the commons, where goodwill is the resource being depleted.
Surely there's a some balance point between "hugbox" and "hatefest". Also, we're not talking about the Internet, but a small self-selected community of humans that happens to connect via the internet.
HN is not "the internet". I don't think HN should strive to be as terrible as most of the internet can be. If I want "the Internet" I can go to /r/all. That is a much better snapshot of what "the Internet" actually is. I don't see why it's a bad thing to want HN to be better than most parts of the Internet.
I also think your type of attitude really brings communities down. People who treat others with disrespect and insults like to defend their actions as "This is the internet. Deal with it." I've never thought it to be a particular worthwhile argument.
I agree that there's a problem with fads and jealousy but I disagree with what that problem is. I think the jealousy comes from us nobody's and not the stars. It's the proletariat, so to speak, that are jealous of not just the stars but anyone who has the guts to put something cool they made in front of HN.
Fads again are just what promotes groupthink. Why does everyone on HN love Ruby but most people outside HN don't have any strong feelings for or against it? Because it's trendy. I work at a company in Chicago where we run our sites and apps on either Java, PHP, or Ruby. No one in the company ever looks down their nose at anyone else not using the language their primarily working with because that shit doesn't matter. The fads on HN aren't real. They're specific to HN and possibly Silicon Valley but people talk about it here as if it mattered somehow.
Overall though, you nailed it. And your very last line definitely holds true.