[ploggingdev]

> But the voices that pg once enjoyed talking with are still here.

Just to be clear there are still a lot of incredible people who post to HN, but from the signs that I see, a fairly large chunk of early HNers who are well known in hacker circles basically stopped posting. And there are also a large number of people who are very reluctant to take part in the discussions here knowing how a vocal subset of HNers react to any post or comment : talk trash. Examples of the latter : tptacek, dguido and other secuity professionals. If you read some of the security related threads where tptacek takes part, you will notice that he is literally talking to a wall, people refuse to listen to the guy or try to understand the reasoning behind his comments, though he is respected in the security community and is always right on security related topics. Especially on security related threads there is dangerous advice floating around. Eg- use Tor or some stupid suggestion on how to trick the CBP at the border.

I also noticed the rise of anti-semiticism and just generally hateful comments when the topics of religion, nationality or Trump are brought up. This issue is only getting worse and god help the moderators who have to read these comments on a daily basis.

Though this might be controversial, the general quality of discussion has gone down over the years. I think this is inevitable : as the community grows, quality of discussion goes down. HN is doing incredibly well on this count, the discussions are still the best on any public forum, but IMO the quality is going down. As the community grows, veterans generally tend to become inactive.

(Before people point out that my account is only 159 days old, I've been part of HN for much longer under different handles.)

[metaphorm]

I respect tptacek's expertise in his domain. I sometimes argue with him in other topics, where he is out of depth but assumes that because his a respected expert in one domain he is also an expert in others when he is actually not an expert at all.

this applies to all sorts of things, and PG is no exception. PG is an expert on programming and on founding VC funded companies. he is certainly not an expert on most other things but would frequently comment on those things as if he was, and then act very defensive and shocked when he was criticized for things he was wrong about or tone-deaf about.

really this applies to ANYONE in this community. there is lots of very intelligent, well-reasoned discussion, but nobody ought to get a pass on things because of their reputation. we ought not defer to authority. we ought to discuss the arguments as presented.

[ploggingdev]

I never said he should be given a free pass on all topics, I specifically mention tptacek as an example of an expert in the security industry whose security related advice, people ignore here on HN.

[hkmurakami]

Some forums I frequented 10 years ago have avoided the veteran retirement by having a private forum for veterans.

That has its own issues but has been really nice for me to keep in touch with the old familiar faces.

[psyc]

I've been here since ~2009, under my real name account that I don't use at all anymore. At this point, I find it nearly impossible to interact with this forum in any positive or useful way. IMO the quality went WAY down. Gradually at first, starting around 2011. Worse each year.

[dustingetz]

> a fairly large chunk of early HNers who are well known in hacker circles basically stopped posting

is the problem one of diversity? Writing for a diverse audience is hard, especially at internet scale, it's a lot easier to write to people who agree with you. Writing for people who don't agree with you is way harder but also way more valuable. It's a shame that most people just give up. I see this not just on HN but also in other elite communities that over time begin to mainstream. A lot of the clojure discussion forums died once the language grew enough that it wasn't just elites. The people who know the most just don't say anything in public anymore. All the discussion is on slack now which is a shame.