every single HN comment on these articles makes me doubt both the sentience of my fellow nerds and whether there are any actual human users of this website remaining.
Hacker News can only be good if enough people make the effort to make it good. There is always going to be a mix of things that push the standard up and things that drag the standard down. That's how averages and distributions work.
Unfortunately what we see from you is a pattern of low-effort comments, some of which don't even bother with basic sentence formation features like capitalization at the start and a period at the end. That's a high-signal hallmark of low-effort comments. Looking down your comment feed we see many single-line comments that are low on substance and high in snark.
The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. They ask us to be kind, and to avoid snark and swipes. They ask us to converse curiously. They ask us not to fulminate, and not to sneer, including at the rest of the community.
It's fine to want HN to be better. As moderators we certainly do; that's why we do this job. But it requires us all to actually make the effort to be better in our own conduct. When you see comments from other users that aren't up to standard, we need you to use the tools that have always been here, like downvoting, flagging and emailing us ([email protected]) so we can take action.
It isn't other people's job to make good enough for you whilst you conduct yourself in this way. If you really want HN to be better, please do your part to raise the standards rather than dragging them down further.
If I were you I would be more concerned with the fact that you have allowed what was once a well-respected forum to become little more than a spam platform for AI shills. You can silence me, but I am not wrong and I’m not the only one who has noticed this. It’s very obvious.
You should understand that one way people improve the standards of a commons is by imposing social controls on those who violate norms which create a healthy society, such as by shilling. That is normal behavior on every forum I’ve ever seen.
When you allow there to be 100x more of this mindless slop than of anything else, the most any individual can do to resist the tide is to contribute to the voices trying to make antisocial behavior come with a cost.
It works, and because it works, people will continue to do it until you figure out how to keep a clean commons.
PS. I suppose you would probably say the same thing to Rob Pike (if he were a user of your site which he doubtless is not).
Please don't sermonize to distract from your own record of disrespect towards HN and its guidelines.
The people you claim have “allowed” this have maintained HN for many years – 13 in dang's case, the majority of its history. The primary reason this is a place where people want to participate is because of the guidelines that have been developed and refined since HN's inception, and that we spend hours each day upholding. People have been heralding the decline of HN since it was barely more than a few months old [1], yet it continues to grow as a place where people want to showcase interesting work, which is what we most care about.
Generated comments and posts are banned, and we state this frequently. I spend time each day evaluating submissions and Show HNs to determine whether they're human-authored or AI-generated. We welcome people to flag generated content and email us so we can ban accounts with a pattern of posting it. Yes, it takes time for these mechanisms to kick in. HN is a public, anonymous site. Anyone can post anything, and the immune system takes time to do its work. That's always been the case.
There is a cohort of community members who have demonstrated a commitment to making HN better over several years through: (a) submitting good articles, (b) posting thoughtful comments, (c) observing the guidelines, (d) flagging bad submissions and comments, and (e) emailing us to point out guidelines breaches and to discuss the healthy functioning of the site. These are the people we listen to when they express concerns about HN's health, because they've established a track record of genuine contribution and care over several years.
From you, we see two comments prior to 2023, and little or none of the above kinds of actions. Instead: ragey fulmination, hyperbole, and ascribing views to us without basis. And now you hold yourself up as HN's heroic defender, having never undertaken the earnest, unglamorous, unseen work that other community members do to make this the place you claim needs you to defend.
Please, if you really want HN to be better, you are most welcome to start doing the things that other community members quietly do every day to help make it better.
I wanted to express similar sentiment, but I didn't understand how I would without leaving a rule breaking comment.
It's my sincerely held opinion that we're fostering a culture here that ignores the "human impact" of the technology that we're rushing to adopt.
I'm well aware that many members of this community have achieved "success" through software. This includes the rapid adoption of new computing paradigms, new technology stacks, new frameworks, etc.
I am fortunate to be employed. But around me, when I step out of my house, it's painful. People are hurting. They're unemployed. They're depressed. And the younger generation is even worse. They can't even afford to dream.
I live in a corporate world of forced smiles and fake enthusiasm. I would hate for that same culture to take root here. We need to be able to express significant doubt, or even cynicism against AI, without fear of backlash.
