Hacker News Reader

Comment by DrJokepu | Hacker News Reader

I find it interesting how insightful, technical articles like this receive hardly any comments while the usual "softer" articles that tend to dominate the Hacker News frontpage these days receive dozens if not hundreds of comments. I wonder what this says about us, HN readers.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law_of_triviality (whence the "bikeshedding" expression comes from, AFAICT)

There's a difference between comments and upvotes. With articles like this (which I really liked), I certainly upvoted it but because it's so technically detailed, I don't have anything useful to add.

Same here. I really enjoyed reading it, but I don't understand a lot of what it is talking about. I also bookmarked it. When the post had 0 comments I was tempted to post something to the effect of what I just said, but I figured it didn't really add any value.

That the audience is diverse, but common “softer” articles appeal to a wider demographic.

While I'd love to see more of that thing, I don't really think of HN as a technical venue. More like a virtual pub frequented by a variety of folks who participate in the VC ecosystem in one way or another.

Is there a better technical venue?

Hint: it probably isn't /r/programming :)

I'm not aware of one that's broadly-based though I'd love to find it. Slashdot used to be, although I haven't frequented it in many years.

https://lobste.rs has some good content, although the bulk is already on HN.

This is common on every aggregator: most content is not selected for depth or insightfulness, but rather ease of consumption. The extreme of this is Reddit's proliferation of images and memes.

To be fair, HN doesn't feel like it has a hacker spirit to it. It's too preoccupied with business crap and self-promotion.

Maybe that's a good thing.

The softer the topic, the more room for subjectivity. The more room for subjectivity, the more room for controversy. Mountain long threads tend to be highly emotional/opinionated bickering that doesn't go anywhere, because the topic is so subjective that people can easily stick to their own biased worldview, reiterating the same old talking points.

case in point: this branch of comment tree, and your post in particular.

oh, you.

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