Comment by vadfa
4 years ago
>readers reacted negatively, even violently, to seeing [...] stories that were placed there randomly
>HN users have an intense emotional relationship with the front page
If a "greatest 80s hits" radio station started broadcasting music from the 00s and people got pissed off you wouldn't say "listeners of this station have an intense emotional relationship with it". When they tune in to the "greatest 80s hits" station, that's the only thing they're looking for; they don't want to listen to random songs.
HN is not a “greatest 80s hits” radio, though. Users submit links and users vote on them. There is nobody making editorial decisions about what goes on the front page, beyond extreme cases. Sure, there is some tweaking, but in the end it’s all stories posted and upvoted by us, collectively. So it is entirely pointless to whine about the content: it is what the community wants to see.
There is nobody making editorial decisions about what goes on the front page, beyond extreme cases.
HN is more actively moderated than this, you can find piles of moderator comments about it.
YC companies can put in an submission; it goes to the front page but sinks fairly rapidly and can't be commented on. I think that these are usually employment ads.
I also think that's the only direct placement, but I can't be certain.
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There is the second chance, but stories that don’t resonate disappear quickly even after that. I included this in the tweaking the mods can do. I guess I went a bit far about editorialising, but it’s still a minor effect.
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You can't scroll past a song on the radio
Radio is a one way medium though. HN missed an opportunity to sell users on it but adding it as an opt-in/invite feature instead.
So as long as something doesn't challenge our beliefs, values, opinions or prejudices it's OK.
The parent is trying to tell that off-topic is not welcomed by some users. I am the same opinion, I don't want to see on HN news about some non-technical political thing in LA or India , or see 3 days in a row someone toy Rust project.
You can try to change my mind that I should never use GOTO, some fanatic submitted such articles and comments using the "NEVER" and I will be happy to reply because is still on topic. But don't submit something like "God says vaccine is bad but hearth pills are good" since is obvious off topic , though I am curious about such illogical believes if I want to learn more there is a better forum for that.
Entirely agree about political stories and rust projects du jour (I’d go as far as associating out-of-topic posts on $random_software about how it’s be much better in rust).
Just ignore/downvote/flag and move on, though. Nobody is forcing anyone else to read anything, and it’s normal that some people here are interested in things in which I’m not. None of us is the arbiter of what should or should not be on HN. Not us mere posters, anyway.
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> You can try to change my mind that I should never use GOTO …
It’s handy for jumping to the bottom of a control loop if the language lacks a CONTINUE statement - the sin being outweighed by cleaner and easier to maintain code.
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I don't think it is hard to pick clear examples. It is harder to pick clear policies for examples that end up in some gray area.
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>God says vaccine is bad but hearth pills are good
Anyone else wondering what a "hearth pill" is?
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> So as long as something doesn't challenge our beliefs, values, opinions or prejudices it's OK.
You're trying way too hard to make this about bias. There are more charitable and simpler explanations, such as signal-to-noise ratio and the expectation that submissions to HN are focused on geek-oriented science and tech topics.
I'm saying there is bias. And I'm saying it because it is healthy to acknowledge that we're both capable of bias and denial of same.
The reply you are quoting is currently at -3. Voting is more about about affecting visibility than whether one agrees or not. Or ideally should be. Does this tell us something? Doesn't it kind of prove my point for me?
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Playing 00's music on an 80's radio station isn't challenging someone's fondness of 80's music, it's just annoying.
I was disagreeing with the premise that Hacker News is, or should be, very narrow in scope. Though I'll grant you that there are certainly degrees to this. There are regularly posts that make me wonder why they were posted to HN when I first see them here - and yet, these often manage to enrich my day.
There are risks to making too many rules about who gets to be a member in your club.
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