Comment by gwbas1c
7 days ago
Hacker news, like everything in tech, is susceptible to hype. Today it's AI, a few years ago it was Bitcoin.
I do think it's worthwhile to occasionally have a discussion about what content we want to see, and if a particular topic is getting too much attention.
It's also totally reasonable for a group of people to not want their agenda hijacked.
So, IMO, let the discussion continue. Let's see what comes out of it.
I should add: Many years ago I used to read a news site that was modeled after slashdot. One day the person running it decided to switch it to be community-moderated.
Every day it was the same discussion over again, from someone who didn't bother to do a Google search or look at what was posted the day prior. After a week or so of seeing the same discussion over and over again, I stopped reading the news site.
Needless to say, it's important to occasionally have discussions like this. I also think we under-appreciate the amount of moderation that goes on here. Sometimes I look at the "new" feed and it is just loaded with lots and lots of nonsense, so I get that someone has to put their finger on the scale to keep the quality up.
Out of curiosity, what was the site?
The only clone I'm familiar with is (defunct) christdot.org.
Smokedot.org, in 2002.
I'll let you guess what the site was!
The problem was similar to a Goldfish group I left on Facebook: Every day someone, in a panic, would ask for help with a sick goldfish with the same exact symptoms as a post made the day prior.
Needless to say, if a community can't occasionally discuss what content it wants, and what content to exclude, it devolves. HN has a "no politics" rule. I think it's okay to discuss if other content needs to be excluded too.
Kuro5hin?
kuro5hin just died out of becoming a weird clique of insiders developing bullying memes that they found hilarious and everyone else found tedious. I'm sad it's gone, but also very much not sad.