Absolutely. I'd like to add that the killer feature for me (well, aside from the good quality links and discussion) is "noprocrast" and that I'm particularly grateful for the relatively recent removal of the "ignore" link. It's all very much appreciated.
While I'm not much of a coder, I come to this place because there a lots of interesting articles and insightful comments. It's refreshing to see such an intelluctual crowd of people on the internet for once.
Paul, thanks for taking the time and putting in the effort to create a website I really value. I've learned a lot over the last little bit and continue to do so.
How about a hand for the moderators? They are the guys who keep the quality of this site up. Without them, this would soon just be another clone of reddit
No, but I would like to take this opportunity to do it anyway. Reddit has become a den of melodramatic ideologues and thoughtless iconoclasts. I'm no longer a supporter.
Here are some intellectually unflattering sample headlines from the front page right now:
4. Like NASCAR Drivers, Our Politicians Should Wear Uniforms Clearly Stating Their Sponsors
5. Oh, Canada. “When statements are said that God probably does not exist, this is an implied statement of hatred towards all those who do believe that God exists.”
13. The head of the DEA spent more than $123,000 to charter a private jet to fly to Bogota, Colombia, last fall instead of taking one of the agency's 106 planes.
15. PWNED!!!
19. Citigroup, which lost $18 Billion Last year, laid off 39,000 and got a $52 Billion Govt Bailout still provides perks to directors and former CEOs such as airplanes, helicopters, and drivers costing millions of dollars per year.
20. Cousin of 9/11 Hijacker Arrested as Israeli Spy
21. Fuck the media. CBS Evening News only points to $4600 from Stanford to Obama as well as showing Bill Clinton and Nancy Pelosi. No mention of McCain's $28K or any other Republican. (1:55 video)
22. Ten years. Ten FUCKING years you've been following me. And for what? PIKACHU?
23. Woman Blinded By Acid Requests That Her Attacker Be Blinded With Drops Of Acid In Each Eye. Iranian Court Accomodates Her.
Have you looked at the subreddits? I spend a lot of time in /programming/ & I find that it has much better articles than HN. Or maybe it's just me, I'm more interested in code than startups.
I used to swear by programming.reddit.com, until the discussions went the way of reddit.com. Whatever can be said for link quality, I find the discussions here 100x better.
reddit was the beginning. it was seeded by the ycombinator crowd, and it was cool. then the number of users increased, and the noise was gaining on the signal. being a for-profit company, they valued new users more than civility.
realizing that the writing was on the wall, pg created hacker news. it started off just like reddit, but with different priorities.
it's sad that reddit has become what it has, but it's run by a company with profit motives. most of us would have probably done the same thing, had we been in their shoes.
714 days here, karma 117 and I couldn't be happier: this place is special, let's keep it that way, happy birthday to us! wiiiii ! what kind of birthday gift do you give to a website?
Despite 14x growth, the character of the site has remained intact. So far this experiment seems to be working.
I'm not sure what counts as character and this is obviously subjective but my personal feeling is that HN's quality has taken a slight hit in the past year. It doesn't seem as unique as it once was and many of the topics that make it to the front page seem to be more formulaic. Furthermore many newcomers seem to post the same things that were raised here previously. I've lost track of the number of topics about hosting providers, credit card processing and the like. Also with the increased volume it's been hard to make effective use of the "new" page. Odd things that may interest me that don't quickly get enough attention are lost faster.
Unfortunately I predict growth and network effects will speed up this trend and 2 years from now HN will likely be much less interesting as the HN of a year or two ago.
I came here to say that I really like the design of this web site (despite of what some others say), but the stability seems lacking sometimes. The site is often inaccessible. I was going to suggest reimplementing everything in ASP.NET and VB.NET, but in RMS's presence, I don't dare.
Congratulations. It was just this new year that I lucked into HN - and it has made a huge difference to this tech-retread (me) as I seek to play catch-up in my hacking education. A great community you've catalyzed!
I'm happy to see that you didn't do any major changes to the look and feel of this website, most sites tend to change for the worse after receiving more and more hits. Good job!
Wow 2 years. It's strange, but I can't really remember how I came to start reading HN. I know I had been reading PG's essays for a while, but there seems to be a gap I can't recall. It's kinda like the way I can't really remember when I started using Google for all my searches, I just kinda naturally assimilated it into my life.
HN has completely dominated all other forums I used to read frequently, even the one I pay for membership at and have been hanging around for a decade. Thank you. (I think it's a good addiction).
So, what are your plans for the next year at HN and how can we help with them?
Am I the only one here who first read this as "Hacker News 2" and got all excited for a nanosecond imagining something like beta.news.yc.com with a new design and added features???
Honestly, there's still an argument to be made that compete.com is at least semi accurate. But Alexa is just a lost cause. It simply doesn't even resemble anything accurate anymore.
Actually, I'm surprised it's so high (150,637 as of today).
It means quite a lot of HN visitors (which are not necessarily just registered HN users) have installed Alexa toolbar.
Which is what ultimately Alexa rank mean. It is a huge source of bias - different types of sites have very different likelihood that their visitors would have installed Alexa toolbar.
zomg, never realized news was born on my birthday! Best gift I got today! (Well, almost :)
"This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius ♫ Golden living dreams of visions ♪ And the mind's true liberation"... well I'm no mystic but I just love us aquariuses!
