[theoryofx]

One thing that I appreciate about dang, and PG before him, is their intellectual honesty and strong sense of ethics.

On the face of it, HN should be terrible. It's a forum owned an investment firm as promotion for their business.

But because HN was started by an individual with real values, and has been operated day-to-day by individuals that followed in his tradition, its been capable of unreasonable greatness and real authenticity.

At this point, HN is sort of the tail that wags the YC dog. There are a great many seed funds but only one HN.

It would be a good thing for the world if HN was spun out as a non-profit and maintained long-term. But in any case, we can all hope that it will at least continue to be stewarded by good people for a while longer.

Good luck and thanks!

[jdoliner]

> On the face of it, HN should be terrible. It's a forum owned an investment firm as promotion for their business.

I think it's at least as plausible that this is part of the magic that makes it good. HN is sufficiently "on the margin" that they don't have to do things like placate advertisers with their moderation policies. The mods like dang, tomhow and pg mostly care about HN as users rather than owners.

> It would be a good thing for the world if HN was spun out as a non-profit and maintained long-term.

That sounds good in theory... in practice it might be the beginning of the end. Once there's a non-profit behind it the non-profit has a mission of its own. Although I'm actually not sure of the legal status of HN right now, maybe it's already something like that.

[graemep]

> I think it's at least as plausible that this is part of the magic that makes it good. HN is sufficiently "on the margin" that they don't have to do things like placate advertisers with their moderation policies. The mods like dang, tomhow and pg mostly care about HN as users rather than owners.

I agreed, and would say its stronger than that. Running HN well is great for Y Combinators reputation, and its focused on a relevant audience. I am sure that has to be very good for them.

> Once there's a non-profit behind it the non-profit has a mission of its own.

Absolutely. It happens a lot.

[bell-cot]

Before even the "has a mission of its own" part, an independent non-profit needs to pay its bills. I suspect that dang & Co. aren't working for free. Similar for servers & internet connections & etc.

And I'd bet that few people here want to see ads, or start paying for their accounts.

[Akronymus]

Over the years I've become quite jaded on non-profits personally. As they tend to appeal to the people who want to pursue an ideology rather than follow the goals of the non-profit. Which usually are at odds.

[throw_m239339]

I was there since around 2015 and the evolution of that forum and its population/opinion has been very interesting, to say to put it mildly...

Remember when the biggest disagreements were about ORM & Frameworks? I miss those days. I didnt even mind the discussion about the ethics of Uber or Airbnb, but now, now it is different, & not for the better.

[basisword]

Been here since 2011 and reading for a few years longer than that. I don't think the site has changed, more that the world has changed (a lot). There isn't that general excitement around consumer tech and programming that there was 15-20 years ago. We've gone from talking about how we need to start teaching coding in schools to how we shouldn't bother because AI will be doing it anyway.

The fun has been sucked out of it all. It wasn't all that long ago that we were excited by simple but fun devices like the iPad Nano and Flip camera. Now we all have phones that can shoot Hollywood films, we can access all art every created on them, and we have watches that can save our lives...and we've got a bit too used to it.

On top of that around here we used to get excited about scrappy startups raising funding and trying to change the world. Unfortunately because a number of those companies went on to dominate the world in negative ways, exploit users and hoard wealth, people have become jaded and scrappy startups are less exciting because we assume they'll eventually do something loathsome 10 years from now.

I'd love more framework debates, excitement, and creativity - but until the wider world is happy and positive again I'm not going to hold my breath.

[djhn]

I've been here since around that time and to be honest, I haven't noticed much of a change for the worse. The world around us has changed, political life may have gotten slightly more complex, but the community feels just as friendly, curious and insightful.

[Swenrekcah]

The whole western world is different and not for the better since 2015. Erosion of public trust since then is tremendous and regrettable so it is not surprising that we miss the communities that once were.

[sanswork]

So been here slightly longer and the only shift I can recall is a shift away from business to tech.

Early days had a lot more discussion about the business side of startups and vc. Then it started shifting more towards tech too the point now where startup/business discussion is mostly limited to Show/Ask posts.

[Karrot_Kream]

I think HN has been gradually losing what makes it unique. The net is filled with BOFH-style pro-FOSS tinfoil hat tech content and has been since the early '90s. The joke among my college cohort about Slashdot was that IT Helpdesk 1 will have strong opinions on how MSFT execs were engaged in crazy conspiracies. You can find that kind of content anywhere that tech people talk. HN's value proposition for me has always been informed commentary; industry insiders, academics, and practitioners weighing in based on their domain expertise. Today's HN feels a lot more like a rumor mill for random people interested in tech. Along with this shift has been a widening of scope where we don't just talk about tech but also general politics. In general, HN has been gradually trending to be just another big tech subreddit.

These days HN reminds me a lot of Reddit r/programming in the early 2010s. To me this isn't a good thing because I used to come to HN to specifically get informed commentary. But there's no way for a site as big as HN to be dominated by informed content anymore because there just aren't that many people working on interesting tech in the world. So I do what most others do I suspect which is talk with friends from my alma mater and old jobs in group chats and share HN links and laugh at the unhinged, uninformed comments.

I do think at this point HN has changed its appeal. I feel that people today are attracted to HN because of its raucous, rumor-mill feel rather than informed commentary.

[frereubu]

> It would be a good thing for the world if HN was spun out as a non-profit and maintained long-term. But in any case, we can all hope that it will at least continue to be stewarded by good people for a while longer.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it...

[roflyear]

I really don't think that HN lets dissenting opinions thrive (well, not anything that is truly controversial but not clearly hateful). That may feel cozy but it's not a reflection of anything pure or good, imo.

[jdoliner]

My experience is that HN's Overton window is probably on average 15-20% larger than most forums. That's not uniform across all topics though. So if you skew toward a particular set of topics it may feel like a typical forum, or even in some ways more constrained.

[tracker1]

Strong disagree here... While there are definitely those that will bury some opinions with downvotes, there are others that will upvote. Conservative, Libertarian, Progressive, Liberal and even outright Communist views get expressed in varying comments and that's just political leanings.

I only really recognize this because I'll be actively reading/replying sometimes and see comments go +/- 2-3 up or down votes back and forth on the same comment. While you may be at say -2, that's just the aggregate. I sometimes wish I could see the total up/down votes just out of curiosity.

[otterley]

Then you're not spending enough time reading the comments on controversial stories. Disagreement is alive and well on HN.

[perching_aix]

Is that a moderation issue? Because to me that's more of a system / culture issue.

You can't argue in people's stead. If most dissenting commentary is hurtful, inciteful, manipulative, generally demagogue, etc., it's going to get culled, and you get a situation where "dissent isn't thriving".

[pstuart]

I'm not sure about that, but a lot of it depends on what you consider to be "dissenting opinions".

[infecto]

I think it’s a tough balance because you want discussion but certain topics have diminishing returns.

[airstrike]

On the one hand, I think it's a bit unfair that this comment is currently downvoted as it's discussing moderation on a topic about moderation, so very much on-topic in this particular submission.

On the other hand, I think it needs to be more specific in order to be valuable feedback. Which dissenting opinions? Can you provide specific examples of comments you think got unreasonably flagged?

There's been an uptick in political posts which are off-topic per the guidelines, so an uptick in the absolute number of flagged submissions would just mean the community is properly enforcing the guidelines, which is good. However, as a consequence of that uptick in political submissions and flagging, there's also an uptick in the number of users complaining a post is unjustly flagged, because they incorrectly conflate enforcing the guidelines with political opinion, and that is not good.

I think a lot of users are tired of this back and forth, so my guess is they are reading between the lines of what you said (since you didn't provide specifics) and filling in the blank with what _they_ think you mean about undeserved flagging, with the topic of politics being top of mind at the moment. This shows that being specific helps both by providing actionable feedback while also increasing clarity, which is your responsibility as a communicator.

[jszymborski]

Little ironic considering you're the second comment everyone sees on this thread at the moment.

[r00fus]

There are some shibboleths that you absolutely can't touch or you'll be downvoted rigorously. But less than on other fora.

[homefree]

Your comment being downvoted for suggesting dissenting opinions are not treated well on HN kinda makes your point. I agree in general and spend less time here because of it. HN is still not as bad as many alternatives, but I wouldn't say it's great for ideologically diverse views.

[incoming1211]

The problem is HN is mainly left leaning so its difficult to have discussion at times as dang and the community will shut it down quickly as differing opinions are not welcome even if its factual.

(chances are people will downvote without comment or scream "ThAtS nOt TrUe")

(Love how HN proved my comment as correct)

[megadata]

I think the fact that you're being downvoted for your comment proves your point.

[altairprime]

HN does not welcome dissenting opinions in certain areas of tech where the individual freedoms of techies come into conflict with status quo social harms to non-techies; so, for example, you won’t see many HN articles about the ethical dilemmas of working at Palantir, how our industry’s libertarian foundations obstruct labor organizing today, what advantages the ‘bros’ receive in return for their misogyny, and so on. HN is a light-touch moderation site — as libertarian as possible, in keeping with our roots — so I certainly don’t hold the mods as responsible for the community’s defensiveness in that regard. In general, whether tech or otherwise, it’s not possible for a community to welcome uncomfortable dissent against its own underpinnings without a heavier hand on the moderation wheel than is cultural acceptable for HN and for our community. That doesn’t mean that HN rejects all dissent — certainly they may be other pillars of obstinance I haven’t personally identified and studied over the past fifteen or twenty years participating here — but, yes, absolutely, HN’s community has zero tolerance for certain dissent.

[iambateman]

I'm like 80% sure this is trolling as a tee up for all the people responding with "HECK YEA DISSENT IS HAPPENING." :D