It's actually not cool that some third-party apps are modifying the shared space of the community. I've noticed that even some apps that don't do any writes, just display HN data, are significantly breaking the intentions of the site. For example, they'll display dead comments as if they were ordinary comments—and then we get outraged emails from users who ran across $awful-thing in $app and think we condone it. Often they assume that $app is an official HN client, or that it just is HN. Lord knows how much such outrage is circulating on Twitter as well—I can't bear to look.
I'm not sure what to do about this, but there are increasing signs that it's a problem. HN is what it is because it has a specific, opinionated, highly intentional design. It's fine to disagree with that design—plenty of users do. Probably every user does in one way or another. What's not fine is for third party clients to break this design in a way that alters the community itself.
There's also the fact that some apps are now charging money, which feels to me like a violation of HN's spirit, which has always been to be completely free. I like to say that the currency of HN is curiosity, not money, and we'd like to keep it that way.
We may have to produce some sort of standards for HN apps, which is a drag because that sort of bureaucrat is the last thing that any of us is interested in being.
dang|5 years ago
I'm not sure what to do about this, but there are increasing signs that it's a problem. HN is what it is because it has a specific, opinionated, highly intentional design. It's fine to disagree with that design—plenty of users do. Probably every user does in one way or another. What's not fine is for third party clients to break this design in a way that alters the community itself.
There's also the fact that some apps are now charging money, which feels to me like a violation of HN's spirit, which has always been to be completely free. I like to say that the currency of HN is curiosity, not money, and we'd like to keep it that way.
We may have to produce some sort of standards for HN apps, which is a drag because that sort of bureaucrat is the last thing that any of us is interested in being.
Wowfunhappy|5 years ago