If you don't mind me asking dang, what sort of technical work do you do?
If you'd prefer a private conversation, I'd be open to that; I'm curious to know if you write code on any kind of regular basis professionally.
As I see it, your response further cements my point, that there's a huge chunk of people unhappy with content here, and a moderation instrument that is acutely aware of it and firmly poised to change it, and yet refuses to.
You might say something about diversity of content, I just don't think that's what HN is best to pursue. I'm here to read news that appeals to me. I write code, I read code, I want to read news about that. Enlightenment is not it.
The flaw in your argument is that you assume that it would be possible to make everybody happy. That's extremely not possible, and often trying to appease one subset ends up pissing off a much larger subset.
These complaints are not coming from a "huge chunk of people", and the fact that they've been more or less stable since the community started is at least evidence that there isn't a massive decline, which is what the complaints always posit.
I'm happy to answer your question about technical work but why does that matter in this context? (I'll tell you why I ask: you've already made more than one comment about the moderators here which express that you've got a problem with us for some reason, so this feels like a gotcha question, and it feels lousy to be cross-examined.)
Curiosity, more than anything. You're an enigmatic figure. Little is known about you, though you act as gatekeeper over a large number of conversations, I'm curious what makes your opinion worth anything in this context.
I could gather thousands of voices that want to read news leaning to the hacker side of the content spectrum. All these voices with commits and code reviews to show for themselves, and then there's you. There's almost nothing about you on Google, and there are MANY examples of your supposed entitlement to act as executor over conversations here.
I'm not meaning to accuse. I know what it costs and what it demands from a person to even attempt to moderate a community of this size and as diverse as this one. I do appreciate the role you possess, I just can't really appreciate your opinion, given so much evidence that the quality has decreased.
You probably used reddit early on, surely you wouldn't say the quality has skyrocketed since then? It's terrible. That's really all I'm saying. HN totally IS getting worse, and posts like these are directly attributable, given a long enough time frame.
Statements like "I'm curious what makes your opinion worth anything" come across as more aggressive than curious. FWIW I've been a professional programmer for many years and write code every day, though not as much as I'd like to.
Well, your attributing my opinion to "flawed arguments" seems to be tit for tat.
I call it a wash ;)
Thanks for sharing. I assumed you didn't code, and just existed perhaps attached cybernetically to the news.yc HTTP pipeline. Nice to know there's at least some depth to ya.
If you'd prefer a private conversation, I'd be open to that; I'm curious to know if you write code on any kind of regular basis professionally.
As I see it, your response further cements my point, that there's a huge chunk of people unhappy with content here, and a moderation instrument that is acutely aware of it and firmly poised to change it, and yet refuses to.
You might say something about diversity of content, I just don't think that's what HN is best to pursue. I'm here to read news that appeals to me. I write code, I read code, I want to read news about that. Enlightenment is not it.
Thanks for the response.