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by dchuk
2962 days ago
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HN is quite different from forums because of the temporal nature of the content, the voting, and the threaded comments. Forums can foster very long running discussions, HN isn't really meant for that. Also, there are all the components of user profiles/messaging/signatures/etc that HN completely omits (which is totally fine, but something forums are known for that HN probably will never have). |
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This. This is the element the 'modern web' has forgotten in its rush to 'new', 'realtime' and 'current' content.
Just because a conversation happened weeks (or months, or years) ago doesn't mean it's not relevant now. Google search results appear to favour 'fresh' over 'stale'; yet it doesn't say the content is any better, or more useful to me.
Hacker news has some awesome threads and knowledgeable people, but the threads and comments are buried in the archive. Add a comment to an old thread and no one reads it or responds. Which is the HN community's loss.
Blog comments were another: I had discussions that spanned multiple years, as people found it of interest and joined in. Because I wrote for engagement, not for pageviews.
Unless people regain a sense of place in time and realise that immediate doesn't trump everything else, I don't see us going back to longer-term discussions.