> overall, it just feels loud and crowded.
I think this is part of the real reason. More people have been coming there since I joined (2015 I think?). The submissions were also more technical then, a bit more, not much more.
I think this is part of the real reason. More people have been coming there since I joined (2015 I think?). The submissions were also more technical then, a bit more, not much more.
There's two parts. 1) the negativity is increasing a bit 2) the commenter came back and chose to defend/counter themselves. #1 alone typically has sorted itself out in the past, negativity got downvoted fairly heavy to the point where I think folks probably self censored themselves. The community and mods have managed this type of thing fairly well. The #2 part seems to me a relatively recent development. I'd blame it on the WFH flexibility giving everyone more real-time usage of the site and that facilitates debate/arguments.
That's my totally made up hypothesis on this. I still don't think I'd characterize the level of discourse as problematic. The fact we're discussing politics and world topics more often as a community it's natural for us to disagree more.
Come to look at their account and they post maybe once every 3 weeks and never respond to a single thing that is a response to their post.
I've even considered making scrapers to find and avoid those kinds of users; but that's just me.
On top of that, HN doesn't notify you when someone replies to your comment... so maybe they just forgot.
I was recently cleaning up some passwords and unused accounts, and found an account I had created in my password manager that I forgot about. I signed in for the first time in about 5-6 years, and the same thread was the top thread from 5-6 years ago. So I get timing things out. But it seems way too short here.
I've noticed this, and am not innocent myself. I suspect many of us have been abusing HN as a cathartic output from the frustrations of reality over the past couple of years, and as a form of escapism from the increased hysteria online in general.
As an example - I recently agreed fairly clearly, with a reply challenging one of my upvoted comments... the commenter then replied with even more aggressive rhetoric - Almost as if the expectation has become that comments must be adversarial and that people are not open to changing their minds, that our only recourse is to publicly ridicule others with more aggressive rhetoric. I don't think the commenter misunderstood even, they simply couldn't change their mode even after convincing their "opponent". Discourse has basically become too adversarial.
FWIW, I have found HN comments and submissions tend to ebb and flow. There are times when I feel the quality goes downhill, but then 3, 6, maybe 12 months later it seems like things get back on track. I'm unsure of the cause, possibly dang and co. are tweaking knobs in the background?