I'm annoyed that Hacker News isn't as active as Reddit. We need more (good) content and discussion. How can we achieve this while... maintaining the culture?
I appreciate you're probably referring to /r/Programming or a similar sub but in my own, non CS educated, non Developer opinion, HN can be quite intimidating if you don't thoroughly understand technology and all its various intricacies. The primary reason for this being the instantly observable fact that 98% of those who contribute in the discussions blatantly know what they are talking about.
/r/Programming has a lot of 'average' content that's easily understandable and the prevalence of memes and off-topic humour on Reddit significantly lowers the barrier to entry.
well, one way forward is to have the moderator's role more clearly defined. This is a society that no one runs in essence. Thus, the good way to deal with it would be a little bit of tech as I described above and some more moderating...
/r/Programming has a lot of 'average' content that's easily understandable and the prevalence of memes and off-topic humour on Reddit significantly lowers the barrier to entry.