Comment by mdhb
1 day ago
I don’t think that actually engages with literally any of the points I’ve made but sure, I wasn’t expecting anything else. Like I said earlier it seems from where you’re sitting everything is going great and there’s nothing to answer for.
I was hoping however you could at least shine some light on the active page question… what percentage of users actually visit in on any given day? We can play semantic games about secret vs obscure but it’s not a debate about semantics.
If you knew how bad HN regularly makes me feel, you would be attributing very different sentiments than those. The point isn't that HN is perfect or even very good. It's that your objections are ignoring what the site is for. Improving the site means making it better fulfill its mandate, but you're not arguing from that place at all, and in fact are (implicitly) arguing that we rip out that mandate and replace it with a different one.
I haven't looked up the number of users who visit the /active page because I don't accept the premise of your question. Of course fewer users look at it than the frontpage; otherwise it would be the frontpage. This is just another variation of the mandate argument.
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You're not making me feel bad! I just mentioned that HN regularly makes me feel bad as a way of letting you know that I definitely don't think this place is perfect.
I'm not disinterested in answering your questions—that's why I've been replying repeatedly! Nor am I interested in making hand-wavey responses; that would be a waste of time. We must be working with different assumptions, though, because I feel like I'm answering your questions and you feel like I'm not.
If you want to try again, I'd be happy to, but maybe we could take a different approach? I would like to know what principle you care about here. What principle are we failing to abide by, that you think we ought to?
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