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morinted | 8 years ago

There are lots of open source discussion systems, and lots of transparent ones. For whatever reason, the closed and opinionated Hacker News reached the popularity that it did. I don't mind it.

Something about the mystery and the relatively tight moderation has kept HN from becoming too off topic and silly. Do you think Hacker News has somehow avoided Eternal September?

discuss

krapp|8 years ago

>For whatever reason, the closed and opinionated Hacker News reached the popularity that it did. I don't mind it.

It being owned by a multimillion dollar VC company might have something to do with it.

kbenson|8 years ago

I'm sure that helped, especially in the beginning, but at this point I think the number of people that value it for the community and discussion far exceeds those that use it to keep abridged of YC developments.

icebraining|8 years ago

HN was already pretty popular while YC was only distributing $1M/year, back in 2010. But posting was encouraged to YC participants (IIRC), which probably did help it quite a bit.