Thank you, yes I am aware of that guideline. At the risk of excessive pedantry, I didn't actually say that Hacker News "is" turning into Reddit. You are correct that there are a lot of thoughtful and nuanced conversations on Hacker News. In fact I'd say that it's an understatement—this community is remarkable in how it has managed to defy entropy despite its scale.
Even so, it's not perfect. Certain topics seem to unearth some rather bitter trolls—and I find the lack of push-back to be striking in contrast to how similar behaviour is responded to in other topics.
(As for the guideline, I'm sure whoever wrote it a decade ago was well-meaning in their intent. But in 2022 it reads as reductive, maybe a bit passive-aggressive and, dare I say it, perhaps even a wee bit narcissistic. "Of course the Hacker News audience isn't turning into Reddit, you noob. It's impossible. Our audience is forever perfect.")
> Thank you, yes I am aware of that guideline. At the risk of excessive pedantry, I didn't actually say that Hacker News "is" turning into Reddit
Hello fellow "pedanter" :-)
I did pick up your nuance. To be clear, I was replying to this part of my parent message "It feel like it already is. Gone […]"
But sorry anyway, I didn't mean to annoy you.
Against a strong reflex of "never change a running system" (because your first paragraph is spot-on and meta like this is already watering down the quality), I wonder if offering "inappropriate for hn" flags to the posting person as lightning rods to prevent that kind of discussion on the main channel could be an improvement.
Categories like "reply jokingly/consent without adding much/dissent without adding much/reply meta" that could be flagged while posting, and filtered out for reading unless explicitly enabled (per flag).
That would most likely ruin hn in one way or the other. Why? Because it must have been tried hundreds of times before and those attempts lie in obscurity while hn works. But how exactly would it fail? "What if" wargaming through possible failure modes is surprisingly fascinating to me (and difficult: in what way exactly would it fail? no idea!).
By the way, from the guidelines:
> Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html