zlacker

>>uuilly+(OP)
I realized a long time ago that indignation about political issues was for forums what bad currency is in Gresham's law. We actively compensate for that in various ways. Sometimes when an issue seems a genuinely big deal and/or of particular interest to hackers, we compensate less. It's always a judgment call. But don't worry, if HN declines through indignation about "issues," it won't be by default. We've fended that off for years, and I'm optimistic we'll continue to.

>>pg+C6
You do it with the stories, by weighting them manually. You do not do it with the commenters. But there are factions of commenters who are introduced to the site by following stories onto it, and they stay, they promote bad sources, and they inject both politics and a particular inflammatory mode of debate into all the threads.

There are overwhelmingly more people on the site saying quality has degraded sharply --- most of them citing politics as one of the reasons --- than there are people defending it. Also, a close look at the people who do defend the current quality of the site might be instructive.

>>tptace+md
Could not agree more. I lurked on HN for ~2 years before creating an account, also a 4-digit refugee from /. For the last 3 months I've been quietly mourning and seeking out a replacement for HN. It could be I'm no longer a target demographic and it's simply time for me to go (I'm a reserved cofounder of a profitable startup who has an angel investor and in my 20s).

In addition to the politics, I've noticed what feels like a bifurcation in age or maturity with stories and commenters. My working narrative is that much of the negativity is immaturity from HN's endless september of college and high school students, although I know that's likely incomplete as many simple narratives are. Also, something about reading a blog post with a "Discuss on HN" link at the bottom irks me to the point I feel like the content isn't so much about improving understanding as it is to generate clicks and drive traffic. I am not a fan of personal brands or personalities in any industry, though it feels like many come here to create one.

The issues I see are related to people and their behavior in the community and not the HN site or features. I believe the best way to nudge the community back to neutral is with more people correcting or excluding the negative behavior.

>>yajoe+Vg
> Also, something about reading a blog post with a "Discuss on HN" link at the bottom irks me to the point I feel like the content isn't so much about improving understanding as it is to generate clicks and drive traffic.

Offtopic, but I've considered adding such a link to my own blog before--not to "generate clicks and drive traffic", but--since I don't have inline comments--simply to give people something to click through if they want to comment on a post of mine without breaking flow. If you know where "the" discussion for your post will be happening, why not just link to it?