My wife grew up in North Dakota where the brutal winters make life miserable for many people. I once asked what the benefit to living there might be and she repeated the oft-given reason the locals usually say - "It keeps the riff-raff out".
One of the reasons HN has a really good signal/noise ratio is that its simple design and lack of 'flashiness' does not attract the usual Internet crowd. Only people who really care about technology and the details of how it all works stick around here for very long. Those who want cat videos and meme discussions quickly move on.
HN doesn’t really give you the dopamine hit of a well-placed tweet or Reddit comment (though I’ve never submitted through to the front page so maybe that does).
Some older forums feel similar but they’ve often fallen to spammers who automate attacks against phpbb
I grew up in North Dakota, and yeah, everyone said that but it was only because we couldn't think of any other logical reason to live there. (I grew up in the western part of the state during the 1970s and 1980s, when the economy was terrible.)
This is usually the meaning behind places that are expensive, or have similar barriers to entry - but how does cold tolerance correlate with riff-raff-iness?
I would assume it would correlate higher with having few choices, or stubbornly refusing to move..
I was going to write about how I would prefer to have HN a bit more user friendly / clear in UX, but you know what, you're kind of right. HN's UX takes a certain commitment which may contribute to people being more invested in the site.
another great point. HN isn't even responsive. it's designed for older times, and i love it. (i also love that i can browse HN on lynx or w3m; definitely can't do that with reddit.com, you can, sort of, with old.reddit.com, and you can with i.reddit.com)
One of the reasons HN has a really good signal/noise ratio is that its simple design and lack of 'flashiness' does not attract the usual Internet crowd. Only people who really care about technology and the details of how it all works stick around here for very long. Those who want cat videos and meme discussions quickly move on.