Comment by bitcharmer
5 years ago
I don't think HN is a higher quality site in the sense you are referring to here. At least not recently.
You will see some well grounded, expert opinions here down-voted into oblivion simply because they clash with the mental picture of a number of HN users.
As much as I love HN it is slowly sliding into reddit-ism.
You will also see entire threads of people confidently stating utter speculation as if it's fact. HN is well-moderated and has high information density compared to most subreddits, but that doesn't mean the information is correct. What you see on HN is that both correct and incorrect comments tend to adopt the same academic affect in their writing. If you're not fairly familiar with the subject at hand, it's hard to tell who knows what they're talking about because it all sounds coherent and reasonable.
If you really want a lark, read the typical HN subthread on a topic involving trading, finance or economics. It's like watching the YouTube-educated spar with the Wikipedia-educated. Commenters with real world experience are downvoted just as often as they're upvoted when they try to earnestly correct mundane misconceptions.
Likewise you can't have a bug bounty story on HN without someone repeating the farce that web app vulns have some sort of shadowy black market. There is invariably a comment near the top claiming the security researcher could have received so much more money by selling it to criminals. It is amazing that something so wrong gets repeatedly so carelessly and easily.
These are a substantial number of people here who think they can confidently talk about anything if they just deconstruct it to first principles and treat it like something else they know about.
I think this is the main thing, which is that the quality of the discussion really depends on the topic. As a post-doc in astronomy, I'm happy to report that the quality of HN discussion on astro-related submissions tends to be quite good[1]. The top level posts tend to be either be broad-level questions that get some good replies or "fun facts". This probably has to do with most folks being interested in space but not really having strong opinions, leading to cordial comment sections and a decent supply of actual astronomy experts on HN.
Now, for things like finance, markets, politics, etc. like you're getting at, those are a different store. I've been baffled that some political and finance posts have devolved to threads worse than Reddit... Maybe some subs have become homogeneous enough that they don't generate quite the same conflict?
[1] About once a year there's a Dark Matter related post that usually brings out a very critical set of responses. That and Dark Energy are just things you need a lot of investigation into the evidence of because, like Quantum Mechanics, they are just weird and don't make sense to the uninitiated.
I mean, people have been saying this basically since the site began:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=66057
(I didn't find these, they're linked in the site guidelines.)
Because Reddit is a moving target. At any given time HN is of a similar quality to Reddit-as-of-three-years-ago and declining towards Reddit-as-of-now.
I’ve been on HN for many years and don’t notice this decline. Could it be that those who observe a decline in quality simply have gotten more sensitive to low quality posts with age?
1 reply →
Reddit has always been a few steps ahead of HN in its slide toward redditism, but I agree with GP that it feels like there is more disagreement-downvoting and replies that add nothing to the conversation. Not to the same degree as Reddit, but I think on both sites we’re just witnessing the eternal September as they become less self-selective niche sites and more like mainstream social media.
I'm aware of that. It's just that it got much worse recently.
You joined recently, not sure how you've got any ability to say it's gotten worse 'recently.' Unless you are referring to the past 10 months or so where there was one or two things that might have impacted the discourse a bit.
HN still is the place it's always been. You have more data now, perhaps, but fundamentally it hasn't really changed. People continue to upvote and downvote in roughly the same ways, and they are used to agree and disagree just as they always have been.
2 replies →
Sites with "high quality" content are only high quality in very specific areas, and are not devoid of noise. HN is good for getting quality information from insiders and experts in various elite fields (particularly technology related). Reddit is good for DIY stuff and special interest groups for personal things (finance, healthy living, repairs, building things, etc).
But of course the content of each site tends to go far outside its areas of competence, which is where moderation is needed (otherwise they turn into 4chan or youtube). You get a feel for the bullshit after being on the site awhile, and once you're well tuned to it you see it everywhere (the "this site has gone downhill" effect).
> Reddit is good for DIY stuff and special interest groups for personal things
If you say so. I used to Reddit heavily, but all the topics I followed definitely started trending into the "crazy people" territory. For instance, personal audio and mechanical keyboards. At one point, the "average" person could get on there and find a good price-per-peformance recommendation.
Now, those subs are taken over by the elites for whom money doesn't matter. I mean, it's neat that someone spent $2,000 building a custom-PCB'd, custom-switched, custom-capped keyboard -- and boy, those pics sure are sexy -- but there are only so many of those posts I can take until I realized that no one was talking about the range I can afford any more.
Reddit exists now as the worlds largest porn hub, with a very, very thin veneer over the top for respectability. If I google something specific -- like a question about a video game -- I specifically add "-site:reddit.com" because 1) 9 times out of 10, there's actually no answer, and 2) it takes a few clicks and many seconds to get TO the answer, because of their horrendous web site.
And, yes, I'm bitter, and bag on Reddit whenever I can.
The culture changed, reddit just follows. I still miss the thoughtful discussion of difficult ontological questions in the popular culture around 2017-2018. Soon we will be discussing rhe expectional mechanical keyboards, and then some time after that the tasteful keyboards, and then some time after that the sexy keyboards. It goes on, consistency is not rewarded as the wave of cultural interest moves on.
Is it, though? Maybe there’s been some regression to the mean as the readership has grown, but Reddit is pretty much intolerable drivel these days. There’s no comparison. dang and his team have done some heroic work to keep a high quality of content here.
I agree dang and co are doing awesome work trying to maintain some minimal expected level of discourse here, however they are unable to do anything against mass down-voting of perfectly valid comments from people who actually know what they are talking about.
The Reddit experience depends, to an extreme and absolute degree, upon the moderators and culture of the specific subreddit. Each subreddit is almost literally its own independent kingdom.
Saying anything about the quality of "Reddit" as a whole is very much like saying something about the quality of bars, or messageboards, or knitting clubs as a whole.
I upvoted you because you’re right and I’m wrong, which is the most un-Reddit thing I’ll do all day.
> You will see some well grounded, expert opinions here down-voted into oblivion simply because they clash with the mental picture of a number of HN users.
I don't agree. I read HN constantly.
As far as I see, the areas where downvotes tend to occur are where they skew to opinion, or have some tidings to politics. In other areas, HN comments are generally high quality, and have a high signal-to-noise ratio.
I wouldn't also correlate expert opinions being downvoted as just because it would "clash with the mental picture of a number of HN users". That's a false correlation.
Well, if I were to talk about addiction and the "opioid crisis", I would most likely be down-voted (happened before) even though what I would say would be supported by tons of evidence. When I bother, I just recommend a credible book instead that talks about it and supports it with lots of evidence.
Actually, I am going to suggest it here just now because it is a great book and I would like more people to have a more accurate view on addiction: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/addiction-and-choice... (Addiction and Choice: Rethinking the relationship by Nick Heather and Gabriel Segal). It is from 2016, but most people's views on addiction is more than a few decades old, and all things considered, it is still fairly recent and all recent studies support these views. Please, if you are interested in addiction, have a read. :) It will get you up to date with it, and dispel lots of misconceptions that are still in the head of laymen.
Sociology, demographic and history are all pretty bad when they appear here.
ANnything that requires empathy for different demographics too. (Like old people.)
As long as they are still readable, and not hidden, it can be reconciled.
When things start ‘disappearing’, that makes it much more difficult to contrast.
I have been on HN long enough to know that points != facts.
But, yeah, I have noticed lots of downvotes for people stating facts or their own personal observations.
Quality in HN has always been in a pendulum. It swings between Reddit and comes back to old HN or better. I think it goes in waves, maybe new users, or maybe it's the weather affecting people mentally.
Supplement your HN with Blind.
I personally find Blind to be a low quality, young demographic driven community with egotistical folks obsessed with money.
Was your experience different?
What is 'blind'? Can't google it.
4 replies →