Inclusion of every new post or exclusion of every post from a particular website at user's discretion. Regexp based? Just to prevent the site from effectively becoming an RSS reader.
I'm sure that's exactly what everyone else on Digg/Reddit would say. Now, why don't you actually take the time to formulate your thoughts on why HN fails to meet your expectations and what could be done about it. Until then, please stop contributing to the problem.
Also, why is the pie chart thing "wishful thinking"? Next time I need to create a chart, this will be in my mind, and I will probably not make it a pie chart. It may not change the rest of the world, but it helps me.
Your comment is extremely disrespectful, and I believe erroneous.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics , "There is no academic consensus on the exact definition of "Politics" and what counts as political and what does not. Max Weber defined politics as the struggle for power." I found that definition applicable.
Yeah, it's the politics of a technology company's board of directors... and here it is on a site for people interested in starting technology companies.
What, exactly, is your point? This article is a lot more interesting and relevant to entrepreneurs than the one about hacking the firmware of keyboards that you did not highlight.
I never ceases to fascinate me how taboo meta discussions of HN are. We tolerate all kinds of topics, but this one almost everyone viscerally hates. It is as if everyone takes it as a personal insult on their tastes. Odd.
i don't mind meta discussion when it's constructive, such as voting, dealing with spam, backend code updates, etc.
but the OP chose to complain about links he didn't like on his page by adding his own link that many others now have on their pages that they don't like.
This is pure whining. If you don't like the articles on HN
1. upvote articles you like
2. Submit more articles you like
You have submitted just 3 stories to HN (excluding this) http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=dag and frankly the story about warren buffet is not HN material and the fashion article is also not hard core HN material.So you want others to find articles you like and upvote them and not do the work yourself.
I would have given a point by point rebuttal of how many stories you have marked as insignificant was in fact interesting but it seems like you have already made up your mind. So good luck. Try joining/making another community
I doubt he'd have much luck elsewhere. By his own graphic he had no objection to 50% of the articles and honestly that's a pretty good return rate all-in-all. No community is ever going to exactly reflect any one person's likes and dislikes. Especially a community as large as HN.
Any site that can produce 15+ interesting articles a day in exchange for the roughly minute and a half it takes to skim the HN headlines is doing great in my book.
I am surprised people keep offering this as a solution. Isn't it obvious that if MORE people upvote and submit other stories like politics, then politics we will have?
hmm ? "majority rules". How can that be not obvious? It is called a community. The advice is to do something about it rather than just complain. More often than not the people who complain (like dag) have not contributed much articles. If i remember a pg comments only 10% of the users visit the new page. And something like 4 votes are often enough to put an article on frontpage.
I wonder how much upvoting of new articles happens by the people who complain. The only publicly available metric for contribution to articles is submissions and dag certainly hasn't contributed enough. So yeah, the advice still stands.
He does have a point - today was especially full of politics. The Schmidt stories are not politics but certainly the blue state blues and german story are.
These articles that you think are useless put the technology we love to read about into a social context. I personally think this site has a great balance of low-level programming topics and high-level context articles. If the site ONLY had the articles you deem as "useful" then it wouldn't be so damn addictive and wouldn't be nearly as popular. I'm sure you'd love a small community so that you can feel special that you know about something no one else does - but I think Y Combinator is probably trying to build a popular site that they can potentially make money on some day. To that end they're doing a hell of a job so far.
Had I written a long article about the good times at early Reddit, young Startup News, or even the newly rebranded HN and written about how we should strive to return to those days, that would be wishful thinking.
When people start doing something with a website of mine that I don't want them to, I just give them some other place to do it. So with a blog on a particular topic, if people get more social and off-topic, I'll create an "off-topic forum," and direct everyone there.
There is definitely an influx of politics into HN, and it will probably continue. Why not create a HN: Politics site?
Not exactly the most eloquent criticism, but I do see what the OP is getting at. For me, HN has gone from a daily read (too much noise, hit-or-miss quality), to a weekly scan of http://news.ycombinator.com/best - which is generally pretty good. Techmeme is my daily scan for news, which I can go through in less than a minute with Instapaper as my procrastination shield.
You know, I've been here for over 2 years now and have certainly seen this link but never made the mental connection to use it for just a weekly checkup.
Excellent idea! This will keep me from getting caught up in time-wasting comment wars and cut down my daily habit of scanning through everything.
There's no real need for no-procrast with this link... Simply logout and set it as your new HN bookmark.
Another trick I use is to check the submitter of really interesting stories and see what else they are submitting. I find many users' submission more interesting then the HN front page and even best. Like pg himself for example.
You seem to think the only value in HN is providing you links to click on. What about giving you a chance to discuss the issues of the day with fellow entrepreneurs?
This seems to be inevitable as the number of users grows. See: daypop, del.icio.us/popular, reddit. All of these were wonderful when they were small, and then converged onto a mix of top 10 lists / funny photos / outrage of the day links as they got big. I predict if HN keeps growing, it will experience the same fate.
1. Why I don't find HN useful anymore (imgur.com)
76 points by dag 1 hour ago | 37 comments
2. Hack Your Own CNC Machine (buildyourcnc.com)
27 points by dag 77 days ago | 3 comments
3. Fashion for Geeks: Why bother? (urbanmonarch.com)
27 points by dag 508 days ago | 26 comments
4. The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville (classic Warren Buffett article) (scribd.com)
3 points by dag 550 days ago | 2 comments
So you've been here for 593 days and have only made 4 submissions. Yet you complain about the submissions of others. Want a more useful hn? Stop complaining and start contributing.
As the community increases the quality decreases to have a higher level of comprehension. If anyone is a webmaster they know that a -well- written article about how to hack X vs. a dumbed down version will lose out to the dumbed down version. Quality will simply continue to decline here. I have noticed this as well. Let's start a quality hacker site, this one is slowly turning into another Digg.
I disagree, but had to mod you up from the zero you got before I came here: I think your opinion is legitimate and does not deserve a down vote. I think what is -- not killing, but corrupting -- HN is down votes on opinions one disagrees with. This is a crack for groupthink to seep in, which is dangerous.
Different strokes for different folks. You apparently don't like news about copyright law or big tech employers that hire tons of hackers. I do. On the other hand, I don't care about resetting my sleep cycle, exploding ipods, or rails and apparently that isn't too offensive to you. This is a social media site that serves up news to tons of people, not just you.
58 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 197 ms ] threadhttp://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=90944
Inclusion of every new post or exclusion of every post from a particular website at user's discretion. Regexp based? Just to prevent the site from effectively becoming an RSS reader.
Take your smug sense of superiority, turn that sumbitch sideways, and stick it up your candy ass.
Also, why is the pie chart thing "wishful thinking"? Next time I need to create a chart, this will be in my mind, and I will probably not make it a pie chart. It may not change the rest of the world, but it helps me.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics , "There is no academic consensus on the exact definition of "Politics" and what counts as political and what does not. Max Weber defined politics as the struggle for power." I found that definition applicable.
What, exactly, is your point? This article is a lot more interesting and relevant to entrepreneurs than the one about hacking the firmware of keyboards that you did not highlight.
Yes it's f*cking political! Everything's POLITICAL!!!!!!
http://imgur.com/8yx0Z.png
but the OP chose to complain about links he didn't like on his page by adding his own link that many others now have on their pages that they don't like.
I don't read it as people being insulted but more so that they see meta discussions as distracting from the more valuable function of HN.
Also, this topic reminded me of this post:
"Meta is a social problem, period. It's applicable to everything you do in life."
(Source: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001282.html)
1. upvote articles you like
2. Submit more articles you like
You have submitted just 3 stories to HN (excluding this) http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=dag and frankly the story about warren buffet is not HN material and the fashion article is also not hard core HN material.So you want others to find articles you like and upvote them and not do the work yourself.
I would have given a point by point rebuttal of how many stories you have marked as insignificant was in fact interesting but it seems like you have already made up your mind. So good luck. Try joining/making another community
Any site that can produce 15+ interesting articles a day in exchange for the roughly minute and a half it takes to skim the HN headlines is doing great in my book.
2. Submit more articles you like
I am surprised people keep offering this as a solution. Isn't it obvious that if MORE people upvote and submit other stories like politics, then politics we will have?
Isn't it obvious that majority rules?
I wonder how much upvoting of new articles happens by the people who complain. The only publicly available metric for contribution to articles is submissions and dag certainly hasn't contributed enough. So yeah, the advice still stands.
That's a damn good batting average.
Had I written a long article about the good times at early Reddit, young Startup News, or even the newly rebranded HN and written about how we should strive to return to those days, that would be wishful thinking.
...thus restoring the balance (for my likes, anyway).
PS: I noticed sin curve of _goodness_ I see in HN content. Should be something related psychological patterns.
There is definitely an influx of politics into HN, and it will probably continue. Why not create a HN: Politics site?
Excellent idea! This will keep me from getting caught up in time-wasting comment wars and cut down my daily habit of scanning through everything.
There's no real need for no-procrast with this link... Simply logout and set it as your new HN bookmark.
http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=dag
Propaganda, payperpost and FUD are killing HN.
There must be editors who enforce and maintain the spirit of the community or it will become a propaganda outlet for the rulers.
We've seen it happen with Apple many times, one post about the GV fiasco is enough, not ten posts a day for a week trumpeting your own horn.
Or ten posts a day about dropping the iPhone.
Or ten posts a day about how much the AppStore sucks.
If you think we don't distinguish propaganda from real news, you'll be greatly disappointed.
HN is going down, whether we like it or not, and only PG can save it.