I love how K5 articles have their own writing style. It's a shame the community is dead, because I genuinely miss the writing that came out of there, with its own unique rhythm and set of tropes.
* The masterful series: Tales of the Hive.
* The insightful whistleblower: How IBM Conned My Execs Out Of Millions.
* And even the (insane) writer's self-inflicting goatse-style: An Introduction to Anal Masturbation.
Counter intuitive principles and highly thought provoking ideas make it a great, although long, read. The application of the conclusions in this article would be interesting to behold and analyze.
Author, rightly or wrongly, holds some strong opinions against Clay Shirky's ideas.
Meta-discussion blending with topical discussion here, I'd be interested to know what the moderation burden on HN is. HN has maintained quality up to this scale and may be able to prevent additional growth, but what's the cost?
PG gives a lot of credit to the editors for keeping HN clean. But let's be honest, people behave here because they don't want to burn their bridge with PG. He's said himself that he created HN in part to get a taste of what YCombinator applicants are like before they apply. This whole site is one big, ongoing public job interview. That's a big part of what keeps people in line.
I don't think that that is quite accurate. I doubt that the majority of people here are here for the ycombinator seed money. I come here because it is the best aggregation of topics that are interesting to my tastes. Will I apply for ycombinator seed money? Probably not.
Even if you're not applying to YC (though quite a lot of people here are), the fact remains that PG is somebody who's fairly well-known in the hacker community, and he's very active here (compare that to how the heads of some other social sites don't directly get involved on their sites as much). People will always be more wary of making an ass of themselves in front of somebody with a reputation than they will be of doing the same in front of anonymous strangers.
In fact, on Hacker News it's even more so a matter of known people, since there are a lot of well-known people who come on here and say stuff. I know one of the big Delicious people do, because my first month here I got rebuked by him for insulting Delicious. There are people from most of the major YC companies, along with guys from 37signals, Joel Spolsky, Jason Calcanis, and more - and when there's a site frequented by a lot of people who have reputations, suddenly spouting stupid mouth noise seems a lot more foolhardy.
(I find that whenever somebody whose web site I use gets annoyed at something that I say here, it absolutely makes me at least reconsider what I said. I judge people by the awesome things they make, so this is a community that has a lot of people that I respect a ton, and it encourages me to remain civil and reasonable here.)
Yeah, I agree with that. I had a well known entrepreneur respond to one of my posts, and I was slightly shocked. While I don't think my original post was rude or unreasonable, I really wasn't expecting it to be read by the person it was talking about.
After that I was more impressed with HN. It seems like a very unusual social news site, because the news is actually discussed with the people involved. For example, recently there was an article on nytimes.com about somebody who makes jellyfish tanks. Well, I find out in the comments that the person actually is an user here.
That does help me think about what I say. I might be interested in working at some startup or tech company after I graduate. And there's a good chance that not only will my future employer find this account, but that I have actually already said something about that company. I really don't want to write a thoughtless comment and then find out that it was about some company I'm interested in.
Partly it's that, yeah. But partly I think people stay nice and responsible because there are people here worth being nice and responsible to. Some of the people here are really fascinating and really stand-out. (I also love how many people we get here who submit their own writings: this site produces a lot of original stories.)
Not everyone here is a fame worshiping whore, me for instance. I give a rats ass who's been blessed as a "known people" by the inbred circle jerk of techies esp startup techies. In fact if you are "famous" you have to work esp hard to impress me otherwise I assume your just riding the fanboi wave.
The reason I "behave" here (not this post obviously, cause your smug elitist attitude pissed me the fuck off) unlike on say reddit.com is because that is what the community here wants and expects. If I'm not civil, on-topic, serious, unfunny, have proper grammar/spelling, don't know the logical fallacies or false arguments, I'll be voted down to oblivion. I would be unappreciated, unwanted, and unwelcomed. Moreover people here are smart/mature enough not to fall for trolls and griefers so there's no fun to be had there. Eventually, I'd get bored and wonder off.
p.s. pg gives me money, I got a website with unpronounceable domain, gradients, ajaxy lightboxes, everything!
I've got news for you: I am a smug elitist. I judge every person I meet and I usually find myself more interested in the things I don't like than about the things I do like. Some people call that elitism: most people I get along with call it taste. It's something that's a necessity when you're a writer or a designer. It lets you make things that don't suck.
It's not about being a fame worshipping whore (and, for the record, your using a phrase like that is exactly the sort of thing that leads to my judging you as a bit of a jackass yourself). It's about having a respect for the people in the world who have good ideas and execute them. There's only one thing I really, really respect in the world, and that's the ability to get things done.
So when the guy on Delicious responded to me, my reaction wasn't "Oh man! I got Delicious'd!" It was kind of an awe that I was talking to the guy who'd created the first big social bookmarking site. I mean, this is something my classmates use. I had a class that taught use of Delicious. Meanwhile, here was the guy who made it, responding to the opinions that I'd stated. That's pretty awesome. And I don't go out and advertise it, and I don't try to get publicity out of talking to people like that. I do it because, when all is said and done, these are the people that matter to me. Some of the guys here create the online world in which I dwell. There are Facebook employees and Google employees, there are guys with ties to Vimeo and Flickr and Tumblr and Last.fm, and I'm not in awe of them, I respect them. Is that unhealthy?
I don't give a shit about fame. I hate fameballers. I insult people who are well-known and well-liked if they're full of themselves. But I do the same in reverse to people I don't know. Fame isn't indicative of good or great either way, so I opt to ignore it.
What I was saying, which you apparently find elitist, is that I'm much more affected when it's somebody who's done something, regardless of whether or not I've heard of them beforehand. I feel that having created something that I judge to be good entitles you to more of my time than I'd give somebody completely at random, and that means more respect.
So does that make me a whore? Am I a smug elitist because I think the people here are more worth talking to than the users on Digg?
(Also, just to be certain: you're the njharman of Storymash, right?)
I worked on/for Storymash, I also put a couple of my writing exercises on there. I wouldn't consider myself "of" Storymash cause I don't own it / didn't design it / it's not my baby. Not encountered any other njharman's and it's almost always what I use for username (some employers force nharman) so if you see that it's probably me.
> responding to the opinions that I'd stated. That's pretty awesome
I have that feeling for anyone responding to me, I doesn't matter if they are famous(done "something"). Famous people are just people, like you and me. They aren't gods. Jeez you're more of a fame worshiper than your first post implied.[later reading made me doubt this observation]
You contradict yourself: Saying you opt to ignore fame just after you say "kind of an awe that I was talking to the guy who'd created the first big social bookmarking site"
Hmmmmm, writing that out I can see that you might consider creating first big social bookmarking site is having "done something" (and therefor is not contradictory) I consider "having created a social bookmarking site" as something not much though. Being the first and being the biggest is just "having been lucky" and worth little regard.
Most people in the world who have good ideas and execute them aren't famous/don't get famous. I'm impressed by people who try. success is meh (cause if you haven't noticed I consider success largely attributable to luck)
> Am I a smug elitist because I think the people here are more worth talking to than the users on Digg?
That there is a strawman, mister.
btw you should insult even unknown and unliked people who are full of themselves.
And honestly you really don't see the rah, rah, rah hero/fame worship that goes on round here? Some days it's like a Apple forum just with different objects of adoration.
I have that feeling for anyone responding to me, I doesn't matter if they are famous(done "something"). Famous people are just people, like you and me. They aren't gods. Jeez you're more of a fame worshiper than your first post implied.[later reading made me doubt this observation]
When I was something like 13 I made a Flash video that turned into a sort of cult success. To date I've seen a few hundred reviews of the thing online, and I've had IM from a ton of people who want to talk to me about it. And the conclusion that I drew? Most people really aren't worth talking to. That's not to say they're bad people, or inferior people: it's that this world is choked with people and if you want to get something meaningful out of life you've got to figure out who's worth talking to and who isn't.
I think that the people who've done the sorts of things I want to do are people who have interesting things to tell me.
Hmmmmm, writing that out I can see that you might consider creating first big social bookmarking site is having "done something" (and therefor is not contradictory) I consider "having created a social bookmarking site" as something not much though. Being the first and being the biggest is just "having been lucky" and worth little regard.
There's also the fact that Delicious is a very good web site. I haven't seen a social bookmarking site that's as good at figuring out its intent. I agree with you: if the site's bad then I'm less interested in the person that made it.
Most people in the world who have good ideas and execute them aren't famous/don't get famous. I'm impressed by people who try. success is meh (cause if you haven't noticed I consider success largely attributable to luck)
That's another good thing about HN, though: the people that haven't made cool things are very often working on it right now.
That there is a strawman, mister.
The point I was trying to make was that HN has a more condensed group of interesting users than Digg does. I'm sure a lot of people here use Digg, but they'd be a lot harder to find.
And honestly you really don't see the rah, rah, rah hero/fame worship that goes on round here? Some days it's like a Apple forum just with different objects of adoration.
Sometimes I'll join in on the rahing. (I happen to adore Steve Jobs.) Sometimes I'll be more critical of the person (say, Mike Arrington or Seth Godin) and sometimes I'll to out of my way to state my dislike of the guy (Cory Doctorow springs to mind). I guess I treat it on a case-for-case basis.
This is probably true, though it's impossible to prove without data.
My point was that there's an extra incentive for good behavior here that you don't find at many other online communities. If you kick butt on HN, assemble a team that follows PG's rules and pitch him a great idea for a startup, he might give you $15k and open a lot of doors for you. That setup just doesn't exist on many other community sites, perhaps any, and I think it must be taken into account when we marvel at how great this place is.
I've always felt the same about HN. I've behaved a particular way on HN, though not much different than I behave elsewhere. My suspicion is that most people on HN also severely limit what and how much they say because they're worried about pg getting a negative image of them. This does help keep the community on topic and very civil, so maybe that's ok.
people behave here because they don't want to burn their bridge with PG. ... This whole site is one big, ongoing public job interview.
This is probably not true for the majority of people posting here. I suspect quite a lot of users came here from reddit when that site went the way of digg and 4chan and to them pg is just another handle on the site.
Also: Believe it or not, but I had never heard of Paul Graham before coming to this site.
pg is part of why the active moderators behave the way they do. The effect ripples to all users, and creates a (planned) broken window effect.
I was surprised when a few of my comments were downmodded just because they had a "reddit style". But I got the message - this is not reddit. I suspect most newcomers have the same experience, and later themselves help set the tone.
There's a lot to be said for this theory if you look at the real world, where anonymous interactions play out well 90+% of the time (selon anecdotal experience.)
I disagree. The anchoring point of this article is rooted in the multiple-identity problem in online communities. Shirky's idea is to limit scale and embrace identities, while this article's counter is to deemphasize identities and disincentivize secondary accounts.
In other words, this whole article is about tackling the ONE issue that real-world interactions don't have.
on a practical side what's happening at the moment with facebook and twitter is destroying the classical online communities and replacing them with your personal social recommendation network. That works quite well for people who already have a wide network and a lot of people to follow, but I think it's a bit sad for the kid who wants to learn and just starts...
