Comment by dictum
12 years ago
I can think of 3 possibilities:
1. HN has an influx of new users who are somewhat interested in technology and technology businesses, but do not have enough domain expertise to engage on discussion of technical subjects, or subjects related to startups, such as design, customer support, finance, laws (as in interpretation of legal code, not politics), etc. For them, it's easier to engage in political debate. [EDIT] As a secondary theory: politics is a subject which interests a greater number of people than an specific technical subject or business practice.
2. HN's format concentrates debate and attention on articles that get popular just after being submitted: because more pondered or technical articles take more time to get popular, they never reach the front page.
3. With no major shift in the industry in the past year, and with mostly the same players (all of which were implicated in the NSA leaks, for instance), legal issues sparked from executive and judiciary actions are getting more attention, because they make for fresher, more sensational news, and reveal unanswered questions.
"because more pondered or technical articles take more time to get popular, they never reach the front page."
That's a really interesting point. As much as I've generally enjoyed the quality of front-pagers on HN over the years, I am now wondering about all the really good stuff that never made it there -- whether because the posters didn't optimize the timing properly, didn't game the headlines, or simply posted material that took awhile to digest and sink in.
Overall, there's probably a strong correlation between material that makes the front page and material that this community considers upworthy. But timing plays a huge role. I wish there was some way to counterbalance the effect a tiny bit. I can think of a few -- most of which would, unfortunately, be just as likely to harm as to help the reading experience.
I can remember quite a few recent product/tool launches that received just a couple upvotes, while I'm sure they would have been in the front page for a whole day just a year ago.
> HN has an influx of new users who [...] not have enough domain expertise to engage on discussion of technical subjects.
I think that a simpler explanation is that politics is universal while technical topics will only be interesting to the subset of people that are affected by said technologies. Not everyone uses AngularJS/Python/Haskell/etc.
pg addresses this in his essay "Keep Your Identity Small". I think this is the root of the problem.
http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
It is much harder to distinguish ignorance in current political discussions -- in part because nowadays political preferences often induce ignorance in those you'd think most capable to judge it in others.
As a result political discussions become largely unresolvable. People participate not to share information but to give witness to their particular beliefs, which inspires others to do exactly the same.
More technical conversations may grow for a while, as more interesting points and lines are opened, but after a while what there is to be said, has been said, and the conversation moves on.
With those dynamics, political conversations are likely to add noise around signal until they drown it out. Unless actively beaten back.
The real solution is to change the way people talk and think about politics. This seems unlikely.
I'm part of #1. I avoid commenting on/upvoting political stories though. They're definitely the easiest to talk about. I stick to issues where I have some expertise.
I'm a bit torn by these NSA revelations because most other sites seem to be ignoring them. But I feel they've become too prominent.
Dito. I rarely comment or upvote as I feel I'd contribute to the change in quality I'm seeing myself even though I have only been here for 2 years.
A fourth possibility is that the growing user base has made HN a larger target for social media marketing.