PS, Editors, feel free to change my title to "Hacker News Rocks!"
I wonder if this is the eventual fate of all online communities. I've been through at least half a dozen now, and I've yet to see one survive as something other than trite, meaningless bullshit.
The curious thing is - in at least one case (HP fandom, and possibly the C2 wiki), I kept the friendships that I formed in it. Maybe that's the real point of online communities - form offline friendships, and keep those.
Looking forward to the Boston meetup on Sunday...
This is best described as "reversion to the mean". A democratic, non-moderated site like Reddit and News.YC will start off attracting folks on the right end of the bell curve, and over time, gain traction to attract the unwashed masses. Then, someone will get fed up and go start another site, and the cycle begins anew. I'm not being elitist or snobbish; this is what I have observed since the USENET of the 1990s. It always happens.
It definitely was never overrun with ignoranuses, at least not for any extended period of time.
Why? It's not like they discuss the story or you actually get prizes for a high karma?
Nowadays I prefer finding a page edited by someone who shares similar interests as me e.g. boingboing or hackaday. Otherwise things just degenerate into "FUNNAY PIC [LOL!]" quickly.
Maybe rather than have a single pool of submitted stories, you could chose whose stories show up on your page.
Personalized links (assuming personalization works well) would come closer to your interests, but there may be few people to discuss them with.
And so one might consider a way to allow users to pick some point between these two extremes that they would be happy with.
I'm surprised to think anyone didn't already realize we did this. Did you really think people on news.yc had that much better spelling than reddit users?
At some point users have to decide if they're willing to sacrifice a purely democratic community if it means an increase in quality. Is the point of a social news site to make a political statement, or is it find cool stuff to read?
Edit: Maybe the admins should just be 100% transparent about everything they do; document their actions in a FAQ.
Sure, shatter the illusion why don't ya?
Kidding aside, I don't know why people are flipping out. One should think the editors are carefully chosen to not be power-hungry jackasses out to destroy a story's integrity. It's not even like they're editing comments. Some people are quick to jump on the drama, I suppose. I share in the same sentiment expressed here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43650
But if you can't relax, goodbye. If this thread title is any indication, you produce great Reddit/Digg titles.
I hope Paul changes "title: " to "suggest a title: " on the submission page so people realize it's not their title. They didn't produce the content, and if they did then the editors aren't retitle it.
Ultimately, though, this sort of user revolt is bound to happen whenever you make major changes to how a community works. I think news.yc'll make it with or without the people who are pissed.
I don't see how a user owns a title to content they didn't produce. If they produced it, the editors won't change it.
You get karma for bringing quality content to other people's attention, not for calling the content something it isn't.
1. Have patience.
2. Be a part of the solution.
And what "solution" should I be part of? The one that makes YC more money? Or the "sense of community"? I care squat about the YC community; I used to come here to read the startup articles. I can get arstechnica/lifehacker/etc links elsewhere.
2. "Be a part of the solution" was really only half of what I intended to say, the other half being "stop being part of the problem." Being a part of the solution means voting up the articles you like, contributing knowledgeable and insightful commentary, and submitting the sort of stories you want to see. Being a part of the problem means throwing a temper tantrum without including any interesting or startup-related material.
downmod: a user must develop a certain amount of karma before the down arrows appear. additionally, you may not downmod direct replies to your own comments or stories.
Goodbye, HACKER NEWS!!!! I'm going back to Reddit.
I don't think this site was meant for everybody to post whatever they want. There should be respect for other people's resources; while Reddit and Digg want as many users as possible, there is no such leverage here.
I think the mistake is that users start thinking they can do whatever they want just because a social site is free.
0-10 comments: People who want to talk about the post per se
11-50 comments: People who want to have a conversation.
51- comments: People who want to join a mob.
Obviously, ynews is moving from the first to the second, and that changes the types of comments/people commenting/overall community.
I say this because a lot of people have a problem with the change from a startup focused to a hacker focused site.
Since you already have a community which is united around a common vision, it's probably worth acting now and create another site.
The lisp hackers did a similar thing when reddit moved from lisp to python. For some reason they thought that reddit was only for lisp hackers. BTW, I don't think that worked as most lisp hackers were already active on cll or #lisp
Isn't this how Metafilter survives and maintains its excellent quality?
Ah well, I guess I could just not click on them in my RSS.
Just take a look at this discussion: http://reddit.com/info/2ga89/comments
Wow, I was just complaining about something I found annoying; I didn't mean to start a revolt.
