Hacker News Reader

Comment by diego | Hacker News Reader

Is every famous musician death going to make it to the top of Hacker News from now on?

Yes, if the community around HN loves and has a certain respect to it.

I'll ask myself the same question. Is every nonsense comment going to make it to the top of a topic that people care from now on?

You think my question is nonsense? How would you feel if you saw a post about Erlang or Clojure on a site called "Music News?" Especially if you had been on the site for years, when it was actually about music news? FYI I play several instruments and I love(d) Ravi Shankar. However, this site is Hacker News. There is a limit.

I think if Music Lovers some how find relevance to the way Clojure or Erlang works and have been motivated/influenced by it they definitely would discuss it.

Music is a pretty popular topic among programmers. And many programmers/hackers are instrumentalists.

So it makes sense for them to discuss. Besides if somebody doesn't like it he can always chose to no up vote the story and not discuss. But if somebody else wants to, why should he have any problems at all?

This is the sort of slippery slope which deteriorated the culture of Reddit. Here's an example of the front page from 5 years ago: http://mashable.com/2012/05/10/reddit-2007/ If the users don't maintain a sense of courtesy and stay on topic, the noise to signal ratio will become intolerable.

Content isn't killing Reddit, users are. This post is clearly relevant to people based on the upvotes, yet here we are in a thread where someone decided it was more appropriate to condemn the post rather than acknowledge that it exists and people are happy that it does.

Reddit is a tough example, because of the plethora of subreddit topic areas. Almost every sub blessed with "default" status (visible logged-out and a default subscription for every new user) suffers extraordinarily due to their significant reach -- which is in line with your point. Example: /r/pics.

There is still good content on Reddit if you find the good subs and learn to ignore and not perpetuate the overt sexism and racism that decorate that site like Christmas. (I think those are more to blame for killing Reddit. Internally, I'm calling it 4chanitis.)

This site is not strictly about programming, it deals with topics of a larger nature. Altho he might not have created a social media site, Ravi Shankar can be considered a revolutionary that had disrupted society for the better. In addition music can be viewed as a form of math and programming.

'Hacker' doesn't only refer to software developers. It has evolved to mean more than that. HN is a community and if a story makes it to the front page the community obviously wants to see it there and finds it interesting/useful.

How would you feel if you saw a post about Erlang or Clojure on a site called "Music News?"

I probably wouldn't be such a cry-baby asshole complainer about it.

Wow, easy there tiger! Diego has a valid point, and while you may disagree with him, personal insults such as this are futile and very unbecoming of an HNer. Please do keep it civil and understand that HN is an open arena for discussions and dissenting viewpoints, that's what makes it interesting and different.

http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#what_is

Specifically:

"The hacker mind-set is not confined to this software-hacker culture. There are people who apply the hacker attitude to other things, like electronics or music — actually, you can find it at the highest levels of any science or art. Software hackers recognize these kindred spirits elsewhere and may call them ‘hackers’ too — and some claim that the hacker nature is really independent of the particular medium the hacker works in."

I hate when a specific question is asked and tersely dismissed with only an abstract quote from an unrelated source that doesn't really apply. It's a trend I have noticed online, and it's such an empty, rude answering style. (I am similarly annoyed by answering a question with a quote from the documentation and nothing else; it smacks of "RTFM", and although sometimes necessary, the attitude is overused.)

esr's definition of hacking doesn't really apply to what is considered on-topic for Hacker News. So, allow me to quote the Hacker News guidelines[1], specifically:

> If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

I happen to agree, and I think fighting for this piece to be applicable on Hacker News is a waste of time. The trolls slugging on diego for asking the question are worse, because they skipped the guidelines in two respects (the other imploring us to remain civil).

[1]: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sometimes I'm not interested by the articles on HN frontpage. Well ... I don't click on them.

If you don't think a post should be on HN, hit the flag button and a mod will look at it. HN is as good as you want it to be after all.

I already flagged the parent comment, as the typical Hacker News complaining is inappropriate for an obituary thread.

I agree, there's often a time and a place for it.

Flagging actually also works as a massive downgrade of votes. Get a couple of people to flag an article and it will go down 10 places on the front page. So don't use flagging just to "bring it to someone's attention". It's far more powerful, and should be used judiciously...

If it's interesting to the community of hackers who hang out here, then yes it should hit the front page.

Don't worry, in 10 years you'll have forgotten all about this.

Evidently not--Galina Vishnevskaya didn't make it today.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com