[ben_w]

> I do, however, have a huge HN problem.

So I've noticed — you and pjc50 are on enough threads, with interesting enough comments, that you fit into the same bit of my brain otherwise used for celebrities like Tom Scott and Scott Manly.

(Weirdly, most other high-karma accounts don't get filed like that in my head)

[TeMPOraL]

In my case, it's likely because I post a lot of sophisticated sounding nonsense - I'm the biological ancestor of ChatGPT :). That, plus I tend to binge on HN, which makes my comments come in bursts - I either post nothing, or comment in 15 different subthreads across 5 different submissions simultaneously. So when you spot me in one place, you'll probably see me everywhere that day.

Other high-karma accounts likely post in less bursty mode, and only write high-value comments on select topics, so you spot them less.

[gonehome]

I recognize your account too, and while I’m way less prolific I can relate to the same conversational draw and compulsion.

I noticed I had it less when working in the office in the Bay Area where it was more possible to engage in these kinds of discussions more frequently in person.

I suspect it’s just hard to get that kind of group together in the world outside of weird circumstances so it’s easier to find it online.

[imartin2k]

Interesting. I almost never comment on HN, and if I do, it tends to be without a lot of substance, like this one.

The thought of feeling a compulsion to participate in a lot of HN comment threads is very hard for me to imagine. My general reflexive feeling towards commenting is “waste of my time”. Particularly if there’s the risk to end up in some heated argument. Those are the worst.

[ben_w]

> Particularly if there’s the risk to end up in some heated argument. Those are the worst.

Yeah; that's why I blocked twitter on my desktop and deleted the app and saved passwords on my phone.

Fortunately, HN doesn't seem to face those with anything like the same frequency, and flagged sub-threads seem to get snipped out of comment history at least by default, so I find here to be a good place for discussion.

[mixmastamyk]

You might ask to get limited. My account is limited to a about three comments per hour. If I exceed I’m told to slow down. dang didn’t like one of my posts—not sure why this solution was chosen but it was.

I’ve also set my maxvisit and minaway on my profile. So I can get more things done.

[dredmorbius]

TeMPOraL has extensive experience with trying to limit HN distractions, see in part:

<http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2020-05-25-blocking-distraction...>

But see: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36125138>

I also recall him specifically asking dang to disable his account, which ended up being accomplished through either the "noprocrast" or "limit" features, though I can't find the comment (it was likely either on HN or the Fediverse).

Somewhat amusingly, I happened to catch his re-appearance on HN within 45 minutes of his resuming commenting, for whatever that has to say about the both of us.

[TeMPOraL]

Yup, I asked 'dang to ban me for 2-3 months, to force myself to have a break. 'dang suggested me to instead just put some large number in the 'minaway field and turn on noprocrast, achieving the same thing, and then to e-mail him if I need the setting to be reset.

I did just that, set noprocrast to a large number (IIRC, I copy-pasted MOST-POSITIVE-FIXNUM from a Lisp REPL), which amounted to banning myself for (IIRC) ~3000 years.

I planned the break to last for those 2-3 months. It actually lasted a year. In the process, I've learned a few things about myself:

- Somewhat quickly, I found myself commenting a lot on Reddit; when I tried to limit that, I ended up posting a lot on Mastodon; there were also brief moments spent on some niche discussion boards;

- My procrastination problem did not get better;

- Both Mastodon and some of the subreddits were... OK. They satiated (what I finally realized was) my need for interesting conversations on-line. At the same time, something always felt off. I eventually realized that those communities were a bit short on civility, intellectual curiosity, and related qualities. Switching to them from HN felt like switching from home-cooked meals to living on McDonald's and party food diet.

Which is why, after a year, I mailed 'dang to reset my noprocrast, and came back here - if this type of conversations are to be my drug either way, I could at least stick to a high-quality supply.

[dredmorbius]

The real bonus for me is bouncing ideas off of people who can comment meaningfully on them.

That is becoming harder with time, and there are few sites which satisfy my need. I've taken largely to reading and commenting on my own. A closed discussion (or several) might also be useful.

I've found myself becoming increasingly annoyed at the general noise level on HN (and elsewhere). I'm not sure it's gotten worse here, though it doesn't seem to be improving. (There are exceptions, of course.) There's also far too often a lack of follow-through --- an exchange such as we're having here is quite rare.

I've also been doing some analytics of the HN front page over the past few days (some of that's in some recent HN comments, most is in my Mastodon stream, #HackerNewsAnalytics). I'd scraped every front page from 20 Feb 2007 to present (updated to 28 May 2023, and I can grab additional pages and update data fairly quickly).

Looking at the HN Leaders page, it's interesting to see how wildly different individual members' activity is. Quite a few of the leaders have very few front-page submissions (at least one has none at all), others have many hundreds. I notice you've had few FP submissions (though you do submit a fair number of items). I don't know quite how commenting on others' stories vs. submitting your own changes site dynamics and usage, but it's another element to consider.[1]

Mastodon occasionally clicks for me, though it's mostly with people I've known for a long time, and often across multiple platforms, typically HN & Google+ (you'd be in that group).

Mostly, though, I'm less enchanted by the state of online discussion of late.

________________________________

Notes:

1. For the curious: highest number of front-page (FP) stories from a Leaders profile is 1,183 (795 distinct sites). For 7 profiles there are no FP stories. Mean is 164.09, median is 104.5, standard deviation, 199.988. 10%ile: 3, 25%ile: 11, 75%ile: 217, 90%ile: 493.5. Distinct sites range from 0 (obviously) to 795, mean 102.77, median 53. It's quite a range.

It's quite a range.

[fragmede]

I wonder how often dang gets asked to do that, because I just came off the same thing.

[klyrs]

When I quit a site, I change the recovery email to a burner, change the password to line noise, and log out. It doesn't stop the pangs, but it does stop me from logging in. I halfheartedly planned to quit HN at 10k karma, but that came and went. One of these days...

[dredmorbius]

The most effective method I've found has been to start using a Google service and wait for it to be sunset.

Other than that: yeah, I've generated and set some very long (40-80+ chars) passwords which I've promptly deleted from my own records on occasion. I don't think I've swapped out email addresses though that's an option. I could see that resulting in an account being hijacked though, depending on how email addresses are handled in the account-recovery flow.

[klyrs]

Every place I've used that, email addresses are not publicly visible. To compromise that, they'd need to guess the very long random email address and its very long random password.