[verysimple]

Taken from http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

What to Submit

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Are there good hackers that find this interesting? look at the votes.

[davidw]

> Are there good hackers that find this interesting? look at the votes.

Uhrm... there's a flaw in this logic somewhere. You could drive a train through it.

[verysimple]

Eh, I try to be a nice guy, I like to assume the best of most people. Of course the voters are good hackers.

[davidw]

Good hackers like to look at data, and there's none that indicates whether these people upvoting the random off-topic stuff are actually good hackers or something else.

[reeses]

That was precisely my point. If this article had the sort of analysis and data that would be included in the sort of paper published in a social science journal, then it would be appropriate. I think the fact that almost all of the high-ranking posts are anecdotes that do not contribute data, or analogies to similar social problems (needle exchange, etc.) indicate that this post is more of a chit-chat post than anything with rigor.

I consider this article to be noise. Sure, it's interesting to read, but it's contributing to the creation of the sort of volume that will require either a) spending too much time skimming HN to find interesting content, or b) categorization à la Reddit/Slashdot/etc.

Chicken Scheme, the startup incubation in Chile, DSPL: Dataset Publishing Language, and "At St. Paul 'wet house,' liquor can be their life - and death."

Which of these doesn't belong?

p.s., sorry you got hit with the "I disagree with you, so I'm downvoting you" reaction on this one.

[verysimple]

I just told you I was not trying to be literal. I used the term because the assumption is that HN is for good hackers in the sense that it is employed in the guidelines, intellectually curious people. Obviously this is seriously bugging you. Would you be happy if I remove the term?

As far as the article being off-topic.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

[davidw]

Yes, the thinking that "it must be hacker news because lots of people voted for it" bothers me.

This thread is worth perusing:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2235206

[verysimple]

Looking at that thread, I think I understand what's going on, which was really not very clear from your intervention. I thought you were being petty about terminology.

I could not understand why you were bugging me for my use of the term good hackers, when the obvious main point to be made was, if yes or no the article was, in fact, HN material, which I felt and continue to feel it is.

Many of us haven't been around this site as long as some of the people raising their concerns in the thread you pointed me to. We don't know what it was like in the old days, our only compass for what makes a good HN post is the guidelines, which can be interpreted subjectively in many situations ([...]That includes more than hacking and startups[...], [...]anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity[...]). Some of the best articles that I've found on this site snuggly fit within those characteristics (e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978295). I believe the current one to have some of those same characteristics, because it highlights an out-of-the-box approach to a problem so very uncommon in the mainstream. 4 days ago I was chatting about homelessness with my business partner, and we were discussing hypothetical solutions to fix it, or at least make it less of a problem and reasons why they would or wouldn't work and some of our solutions were pretty much along those lines and also raised some ethical/moral questions. We're both programmers and though this is arguably not hacker material, we're also entrepreneurs and our ideas often stem from these little discussions that help us look beyond the status quo.

It seems from the thread that you posted that some old timers are trying to get HN to fit back into its old box. I'm still unsure if it would have much appeal to the kind of topics I'm referring to. If their veteran status grant them a say in the direction of HN, I can only suggest to push for clearer guidelines.

Btw, I cannot remove the good hackers from the original post to the thread, it appears that the "edit" timer has expired.

[reeses]

"If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

So we agree, then?

Good. Glad to put that to bed.