<story><title>Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..</title><text>I joined Hacker News around 5 years ago. I used to wake up and do the grim commute each morning to London from my home and the only thing that made it vaguely ok was Hacker News. It was a great place to go and find interesting articles from genuinely passionate people. It also used to be a really safe place to launch a startup that you&apos;d spent days, weeks, years on - your project. It was a place where you could launch your startup and know you&apos;d get great constructive feedback. People may not necessarily like your site but they&apos;d admire you for having the balls to launch it, for spending time developing something that you hoped could benefit people in some way. They&apos;d want you to succeed and they&apos;d try and help you succeed with feedback that would ultimately help you. Unfortunately, today&apos;s Hacker News audience is no longer the same.
Today&apos;s Hacker News is a place where users want to snipe at other users and find negative aspects to anything thing submitted. No longer does someone say &apos;This and this I like but this needs work&apos;. Oh no, now the response is &apos;Hate this, hate that, this is pointless.&apos;. Hacker News now is about correcting grammar and points scoring. It is pointing out anything negative at all that anyone has done, has said. It is no longer a safe place. It has fast become an acidic forum.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;ve launched 2 projects (11kclub and Favilous) on here over the last year - both got a similar response. There was nothing constructive, it was just sniping - they saw someone had put themselves up there and they just shot them down. It&apos;s a real shame. I hope one day the site returns with the kind of audience it once had. Until that happens, I won&apos;t be going on my favourite site anymore - the commute just got a whole lot longer.&lt;p&gt;For now I wish you all the best...&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;p&gt;Steve</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>victork2</author><text>Hi Steve,&lt;p&gt;I don&apos;t know if you are going to read this, but I&apos;m going to write it for the rest of the audience too.&lt;p&gt;I think the trend of dismissing critics and commenting along the lines of &quot;sour grapes&quot; or &quot;haters&quot; very disturbing. Yes I go against your commentary. The great thing about internet and communities based on pseudonyms is that you get the first reaction that people have. Very few will take a few minutes to give their opinion, weight the different possibilities etc... It&apos;s brutal, it&apos;s direct. If you have run a service online you certainly know that you receive very angry/ threatening emails from people that use your services and are displeased. If it disturbs you it means that you are not ready for having a personal project on display, it&apos;s as simple as that. People in life and particularly on the internet are very angry and you have disturbed individuals. Opening a service with your name and your address is becoming some kind of &quot;celebrity&quot;, people will HATE you for no good reason.&lt;p&gt;To come back to what I think is bad/annoying on Hacker News is of a different nature and I&apos;ll list a few:&lt;p&gt;* Well thought comments are often ignored and not read ( not up/downvoted, just ignored )&lt;p&gt;* Stardom: No matter what they post some &quot;&quot;famous&quot;&quot; people around here get their post on the front page. By courtesy I won&apos;t list who they are but everybody can spot it pretty easily. I&apos;m very disappointed by this attitude personally, and it doesn&apos;t speak highly of a place that is supposed to be almost a pure meritocracy.&lt;p&gt;* Fads/ Jealousy: A lot of people here want to be rich and famous thus it creates tension. It allows me to come back to your point: these people are likely going to dismiss your ideas based on jealousy.&lt;p&gt;* Over-repetition of some stories ad nauseum: dumb benchmarks to see the number of req/s, analysis App.net, Education sucks...&lt;p&gt;All that being said it remains an interesting community but with some drawbacks. I guess nothing can have it all.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nonrecursive</author><text>With all due respect, I think you missed the point of this post. The OP is not dismissing critics with claims of &quot;sour grapes&quot; and &quot;hating&quot;. He is saying that the community is no longer a &quot;safe place&quot; where he feels OK to share work in its early stages.&lt;p&gt;In other words, he was not saying that negative criticism should be dismissed. He was saying that there is too much negativity for him to find the site enjoyable and that he thinks the change in attitude is for the worse.&lt;p&gt;That said, I also think that you&apos;re off the mark when you say the OP is not ready for having a personal project on display. The premise of OP&apos;s note is that he considered HN to be a more positive, supportive community than the larger Internet. There is nothing wrong with wanting to associate yourself with people who will build you up rather than tear you down. If Steve&apos;s been using HN for five years, he&apos;s probably well aware of how vicious people can be on the Internet. It sounds like he&apos;s sad that HN isn&apos;t a haven from this viciousness like it once was. And just because he&apos;s sad that this one community has deteriorated, that doesn&apos;t mean he&apos;s not capable of handling the slings and arrows of the wider Internet population.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..</title><text>I joined Hacker News around 5 years ago. I used to wake up and do the grim commute each morning to London from my home and the only thing that made it vaguely ok was Hacker News. It was a great place to go and find interesting articles from genuinely passionate people. It also used to be a really safe place to launch a startup that you&apos;d spent days, weeks, years on - your project. It was a place where you could launch your startup and know you&apos;d get great constructive feedback. People may not necessarily like your site but they&apos;d admire you for having the balls to launch it, for spending time developing something that you hoped could benefit people in some way. They&apos;d want you to succeed and they&apos;d try and help you succeed with feedback that would ultimately help you. Unfortunately, today&apos;s Hacker News audience is no longer the same.
Today&apos;s Hacker News is a place where users want to snipe at other users and find negative aspects to anything thing submitted. No longer does someone say &apos;This and this I like but this needs work&apos;. Oh no, now the response is &apos;Hate this, hate that, this is pointless.&apos;. Hacker News now is about correcting grammar and points scoring. It is pointing out anything negative at all that anyone has done, has said. It is no longer a safe place. It has fast become an acidic forum.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;ve launched 2 projects (11kclub and Favilous) on here over the last year - both got a similar response. There was nothing constructive, it was just sniping - they saw someone had put themselves up there and they just shot them down. It&apos;s a real shame. I hope one day the site returns with the kind of audience it once had. Until that happens, I won&apos;t be going on my favourite site anymore - the commute just got a whole lot longer.&lt;p&gt;For now I wish you all the best...&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;p&gt;Steve</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>victork2</author><text>Hi Steve,&lt;p&gt;I don&apos;t know if you are going to read this, but I&apos;m going to write it for the rest of the audience too.&lt;p&gt;I think the trend of dismissing critics and commenting along the lines of &quot;sour grapes&quot; or &quot;haters&quot; very disturbing. Yes I go against your commentary. The great thing about internet and communities based on pseudonyms is that you get the first reaction that people have. Very few will take a few minutes to give their opinion, weight the different possibilities etc... It&apos;s brutal, it&apos;s direct. If you have run a service online you certainly know that you receive very angry/ threatening emails from people that use your services and are displeased. If it disturbs you it means that you are not ready for having a personal project on display, it&apos;s as simple as that. People in life and particularly on the internet are very angry and you have disturbed individuals. Opening a service with your name and your address is becoming some kind of &quot;celebrity&quot;, people will HATE you for no good reason.&lt;p&gt;To come back to what I think is bad/annoying on Hacker News is of a different nature and I&apos;ll list a few:&lt;p&gt;* Well thought comments are often ignored and not read ( not up/downvoted, just ignored )&lt;p&gt;* Stardom: No matter what they post some &quot;&quot;famous&quot;&quot; people around here get their post on the front page. By courtesy I won&apos;t list who they are but everybody can spot it pretty easily. I&apos;m very disappointed by this attitude personally, and it doesn&apos;t speak highly of a place that is supposed to be almost a pure meritocracy.&lt;p&gt;* Fads/ Jealousy: A lot of people here want to be rich and famous thus it creates tension. It allows me to come back to your point: these people are likely going to dismiss your ideas based on jealousy.&lt;p&gt;* Over-repetition of some stories ad nauseum: dumb benchmarks to see the number of req/s, analysis App.net, Education sucks...&lt;p&gt;All that being said it remains an interesting community but with some drawbacks. I guess nothing can have it all.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wickedchicken</author><text>&amp;#62; Education sucks...&lt;p&gt;This is my main gripe with HN right now -- the anti-intellectualism of the community. I recall an article submitted where the author claimed &quot;Academic papers are shitloads of crap. Want to read something? Read some beautiful source code instead.&quot;&lt;p&gt;Nearly all breakthroughs in computing sprung up from an academic context; why would you be so cavalier in dismissing it? You might actually find out what a Y Combinator is!&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-point_combinator#Y_combinator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-point_combinator#Y_combin...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>