←back to thread

I Quit Hacker News

(mattmaroon.com)
261 points cwan | 2 comments | 23 Nov 10 17:00 UTC | HN request time: 0.56s | source
Show context
DanielBMarkham ◴[23 Nov 10 17:13 UTC] No.1934425[source]▶
I agree with Matt on about 75% of these points. That's why I have severely started limiting my time here.

Probably the worst part is the time-sink and the predictable nature of the comments. Most of the time I can tell from the title what all the comments are going to be like. Anybody that tries to swim against the stream, if only a little bit, can be mercilessly punished. In fact, it's somewhat of a game to see how even-handed I can make a thread -- human hacking. Which makes it even more of a time sink.

HN has changed for me from being a site where I can hang out with fellow hackers to being a site where people I like hang out and spend too much of their time. I'm trying very hard not to make the same mistake. Hopefully I won't be joining Matt. (Lunch is over. Back to work)

replies(2): >>1934505 #>>1934519 #
1. grandalf ◴[23 Nov 10 17:27 UTC] No.1934505[source]▶
I have noticed a decline in the "interestingness" of the stories, so it seems inevitable that the comments will be less interesting. Though I attribute this to random fluctuations in the news and meta-news cycle, rather than to some failing of the HN community (which I think is awesome).

That Matt's blog post made the front page is a case in point.

replies(1): >>1934728 #
2. pmjordan ◴[23 Nov 10 18:17 UTC] No.1934728[source]▶
Though I attribute this to random fluctuations in the news and meta-news cycle, rather than to some failing of the HN community (which I think is awesome).

I don't know. Do you monitor the 'new' page at all? The SNR there is certainly worse, but I do come across submissions I enjoy far more than practically anything on the front page these days. I realise that submission quality is subjective; I guess the community's average opinion on this has diverged far enough from mine that the front page isn't doing it for me anymore. Due to the low SNR (and rate of change) on the 'new' page, consuming HN via it is even more time consuming than normal.

I do catch myself idly looking through front page discussions and even commenting, but there is zero intellectual value in it most of the time. At least I don't upvote the stories.

/classic is slightly better on the surface. (currently 6 upvoted stories by me vs 3 on the frontpage) Unfortunately, submissions seem to hang around there for longer than on the frontpage, so it's like a distilled version of the front page's top 60 into 30, not a truly different set.