I do. This is one of the few places where a tech outsider can be exposed to some of the topics that are on the minds of insiders. The caveat is that criticism of any of the conceptual bodies orbiting the starry notion of "tech startup" (social ramifications, diversity and discrimination, wealth and income, etc.) are heavily frowned upon. Now, are mods going through and sweeping away every comment that proclaims, "Tech bad."? (Mostly) no. But no one wants to bite the hand that feeds it, particularly when so many have usernames easily tied to their public personas. So it's disappointing but not surprising to see people hostile to or tip-toeing around said criticism.
In any case, the basic dynamic is interesting: the less you pay for things directly, the more power you give up to those who do. The abstraction is largely symbolic for ads (consumers pay advertisers in higher product costs), but apparently where and when money exchanges hands matters to who ultimately has influence.
I think HN attracts a certain political/socio-economic bias (for better or worse) but as far as public internet forums go, it is definitely one of the better ones for high quality discussion, whether you agree with what's being said or not.
I'm not sure HN would benefit from requiring a paid subscription. I think that aversion to the aforementioned criticism would be avoided even more, or otherwise replaced with sheer entitlement.
Yes, I'm not quite sure what the solution would be. It's unfortunate that the purview of this forum would include discussion for which users tend to produce comments of both high technical quality and occasionally mixed quality otherwise. I'm not the first person to say this, also, but I think the technical expertise many can claim creates a false sense of security in attempting to analyze and comment on things outside their experience. raises hand I just wonder what structural changes would facilitate a better experience beyond just, "Hey guys let's do 'better'."
I think I'd just put that down to the human condition. We all like to have thoughts and opinions on things, derived from our own knowledge and experience. We can't all be experts in everything and neither should we be.
While some of these thoughts are definitely unwelcome, as they should be (we do need boundaries), I'm quite happy to engage with the mixed and low quality non-tech content either to educate myself to other points of view, or to attempt to counter them in the case of misunderstanding. And that's what a good debate is all about.
For me, that's a great experience because I enjoy being given the opportunity to be sensibly proven wrong.
Are you aware of any other forums with high quality discussion? The quality of discussion here can be found occasionally in a few subreddits but they are even more niche and users have less decorum overall.
To be honest, I used to frequent a few forums that were high quality because of the established community. RLLMUK was my old go-to for gaming chat and, at least back then, was frequented by gaming/games journalism industry insiders too. It was fantastic and most of the people I chatted with back then found careers as journos and game devs.
That was back in the early 2000s where if people wanted to protest against a forum's new policy, or a decline in quality, they'd just boot up a fresh instance of phpBB and essentially 'fork' the community. I don't know anyone back then who hadn't had experience setting up and modding a phpBB board, or dealing with vBulletin and Invision Power Board. I kind of miss that because now we just have various SaaS that run managed communities through apps...
There are likely plenty out there, but you're probably looking at niche forums that require some time and investment to become a part of. HN is one of those. Reddit will only offer you so much.
In any case, the basic dynamic is interesting: the less you pay for things directly, the more power you give up to those who do. The abstraction is largely symbolic for ads (consumers pay advertisers in higher product costs), but apparently where and when money exchanges hands matters to who ultimately has influence.