6 ms·

Platform starts, intelligent, well-spoken early adopters sign on. Fast forward 7-8 years. Platform is overrun by normal people. Early adopters leave and move

by liface 12y ago

Platform starts, intelligent, well-spoken early adopters sign on. Fast forward 7-8 years. Platform is overrun by normal people. Early adopters leave and move on to the next platform The cycle continues.

transpy 12y ago
Let's see how (or if) Quora or HN follow that path.
- colinbartlett 12y ago
  I don't really see Quora ever getting the regular Joes.
  - cusx 12y ago
    that is a very fair statement
  - bellerocky 12y ago
    The kinds of conversations I have seen on Quora and arguments about god and other things have led me to believe it's already kind of overrun with silliness.
  - RickS 12y ago
    I think it has already. My feed now looks like this: What should a 22 year old do with $3000 What should a 23 year old do with $2000 What should a 25 year old do with $5000 on and on and on. A few years ago, it would have been "How can/should spending and saving evolve over a person's life?" I know that's a specific and perhaps pedantic example, but there's been a definite shift in the vibe on Quora, from a place where users hoped to contribute insight, to a place where users feel entitled to receive it.
    - digitalengineer 12y ago
      Agreed. Killed the e-mails with toplists from Quora some time ago. Too much bs.
    - transpy 12y ago
      I also think it has happened already: I want to search for questions about the big bang, I'm typing lazily, expecting the system to auto complete my intent; but when I am at "big b", the suggestions are: "big brother", "big breasts", and "big booty".
- mtalantikite 12y ago
  Well, HN used to be much more technical early on, so I'm sure some would argue it's already happened. Long gone are the days of waking up to a front page full of Erlang posts in an attempt to scare off the general public whenever there was press about HN. I think it's been accepted that HN is more just general interest about startups these days.
  - dang 12y ago
    I don't think that HN is less technical than it used to be. It has always had mixed content. Perceptions of it are perennially mixed as well—someone was just asking me why there hasn't been much startup news on HN lately.
    - johnward 12y ago
      I still think HN is full of mostly relevant discussion and a good bit of it is higher quality than you find elsewhere. I really think it's still reddit before reddit became mainstream. Reddit was technical/intellectually focused from what I remember. Now it's a bunch of trolls in most places (some sub reddits seem to avoid this). Hopefully HN is niche enough to stay about where it is now.
    - mtalantikite 12y ago
      I don't know, as I'm writing this there are about 7-10 posts that are actually technical on the front page. The rest are product announcements or fluff tech articles from Wired. Actually, some of these technical posts (like GHC passes in Coq) are feature announcements as well. That's not to say I don't enjoy HN, it's great, but I certainly could use less of the "Show HN" startup announcements on the front page or techcrunch articles that are about nothing.
      - dang 12y ago
        I really think this is whatever that bias is where we rewrite our memories to match how we feel about the past. As long as we're taking random samples, let's see what, say, November 2010 looked like: https://web.archive.org/web/20101119073443/http://news.ycombinator.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20101119073443/http://news.ycomb... How about March 2008? (I'm picking these arbitrarily...) https://web.archive.org/web/20080327223917/http://news.ycombinator.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20080327223917/http://news.ycomb... If either of those front pages showed up today, people would be complaining very loudly about HN's steep decline.
kordless 12y ago
Where are we going again?
- egeozcan 12y ago
  We don't have to go anywhere. It's the joy of trying new ways to communicate and having feedback. So we're going nowhere. We're just running in circles. Social circles, I guess.
- chippy 12y ago
  Back to the safety of IRC - #hackernews freenode
ducuboy 12y ago
It doesn't have to be this way. If the platform is designed to cluster the users based on their interests automatically, you'd have early adopters and normal people co-existing without bothering each other. That's what I'm working on now.

by liface 12y ago

transpy 12y ago

Let's see how (or if) Quora or HN follow that path.

colinbartlett 12y ago
I don't really see Quora ever getting the regular Joes.
- cusx 12y ago
  that is a very fair statement
- bellerocky 12y ago
  The kinds of conversations I have seen on Quora and arguments about god and other things have led me to believe it's already kind of overrun with silliness.
- RickS 12y ago
  I think it has already. My feed now looks like this: What should a 22 year old do with $3000 What should a 23 year old do with $2000 What should a 25 year old do with $5000 on and on and on. A few years ago, it would have been "How can/should spending and saving evolve over a person's life?" I know that's a specific and perhaps pedantic example, but there's been a definite shift in the vibe on Quora, from a place where users hoped to contribute insight, to a place where users feel entitled to receive it.
  - digitalengineer 12y ago
    Agreed. Killed the e-mails with toplists from Quora some time ago. Too much bs.
  - transpy 12y ago
    I also think it has happened already: I want to search for questions about the big bang, I'm typing lazily, expecting the system to auto complete my intent; but when I am at "big b", the suggestions are: "big brother", "big breasts", and "big booty".
mtalantikite 12y ago
Well, HN used to be much more technical early on, so I'm sure some would argue it's already happened. Long gone are the days of waking up to a front page full of Erlang posts in an attempt to scare off the general public whenever there was press about HN. I think it's been accepted that HN is more just general interest about startups these days.
- dang 12y ago
  I don't think that HN is less technical than it used to be. It has always had mixed content. Perceptions of it are perennially mixed as well—someone was just asking me why there hasn't been much startup news on HN lately.
  - johnward 12y ago
    I still think HN is full of mostly relevant discussion and a good bit of it is higher quality than you find elsewhere. I really think it's still reddit before reddit became mainstream. Reddit was technical/intellectually focused from what I remember. Now it's a bunch of trolls in most places (some sub reddits seem to avoid this). Hopefully HN is niche enough to stay about where it is now.
  - mtalantikite 12y ago
    I don't know, as I'm writing this there are about 7-10 posts that are actually technical on the front page. The rest are product announcements or fluff tech articles from Wired. Actually, some of these technical posts (like GHC passes in Coq) are feature announcements as well. That's not to say I don't enjoy HN, it's great, but I certainly could use less of the "Show HN" startup announcements on the front page or techcrunch articles that are about nothing.
    - dang 12y ago
      I really think this is whatever that bias is where we rewrite our memories to match how we feel about the past. As long as we're taking random samples, let's see what, say, November 2010 looked like: https://web.archive.org/web/20101119073443/http://news.ycombinator.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20101119073443/http://news.ycomb... How about March 2008? (I'm picking these arbitrarily...) https://web.archive.org/web/20080327223917/http://news.ycombinator.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20080327223917/http://news.ycomb... If either of those front pages showed up today, people would be complaining very loudly about HN's steep decline.

kordless 12y ago

Where are we going again?

egeozcan 12y ago
We don't have to go anywhere. It's the joy of trying new ways to communicate and having feedback. So we're going nowhere. We're just running in circles. Social circles, I guess.
chippy 12y ago
Back to the safety of IRC - #hackernews freenode

ducuboy 12y ago

It doesn't have to be this way. If the platform is designed to cluster the users based on their interests automatically, you'd have early adopters and normal people co-existing without bothering each other. That's what I'm working on now.