[evantbyrne]

I've been lurking on Lobsters for a while, and have definitely noticed that the self-promotion rule is selectively enforced. Just pivot into exclusively writing content about an impractical docker alternative, and you should be golden.

Snark aside, they could codify exactly what frequency of self-posting is allowed, and let the existing voting system dictate what rises to the top. I'm not sure Lobsters sees any issues with how they self-moderate though. Personally, I have always felt that invite-only communities have weird vibes to them. Still find it worth lurking for more esoteric content though.

[narag]

I have always felt that invite-only communities have weird vibes to them.

So have I. The most weird thing is nobody ever invites me :)

Still find it worth lurking for more esoteric content though.

More esoteric content than HN? I find a lot of alien topics here. My biggest complain about HN is not on that particular.

[evantbyrne]

> More esoteric content than HN?

In bits and pieces. The advice and some things that trend diverge significantly from HN. I prefer to think of Lobsters discourse as sort of an Inverse Cramer Index, but for software development.

[narag]

That's interesting. My personal advice is to look at trends here as evidence of who's the public, but be very skeptical of their usefulness. What's good for faang or for a money-burning-a-series startup will kill you.

Boring tech like RDBMS, Unix servers and native clients mixed with simple web apps are better solutions for most other companies. Or even Lisp if you are in a startup and need to move fast.

But if you look at trends, you might think that you absolutely need some cloud rusty golang key-value store, with a scrum functional serverless proof-of-work nft SPA :)

[evantbyrne]

Absolutely. HN is more representative of what is popular amongst software developers, but software developers have a nasty tendency to chase shiny things. Lobsters trends on the other hand feel consistently contrarian, and being contrarian tends to be highly impractical. They have been right about the return to server rendering HTML though. It's a place to find different perspectives, for better or worse.

[gumby]

What are your complaints about HN?

[narag]

The tone of the comments have evolved over time. When I first found this site, it had a high percentage of entrepreneurs trying to build startups. Refreshing compared to Slashdot that was getting a little more cultish by the day.

Later the founders got diluted, I guess by the influx of employees of said startups, big tech or consultancies, like myself, then anyone from the outskirts. The vibes changed dramatically, until it was unhospitable for the original population. Many of them vanished. Even pg doesn't write here anymore and when some of his essays are posted the reception is outright hostile.

I'm not talking about politics, not only. A lot of comments are on the opposite extreme from the original curiousity and build mindset. People saying that any idea presented won't work, is useless, is nothing new. People talking about what should be, but in denial about what is and of course never doing anything.

There are many perfectly reasonable things you can't say here.

So we have like... the Internet, more civil than average and with a lot of interesting links. Also there are some fellow commenters that I love to read.

[ksec]

When I first found HN in 2008 it was a refreshing community that actually understands business. Which is a very rare thing on the internet. Because the site is geared towards startup and entrepreneurs, they had to understand business one way or another. And hence this somewhat pro-business stands earned its early reputation as an alt-right site.

Now that is mostly gone. The business side of the discussions has completely vanished.

[rewmie]

> Later the founders got diluted, I guess by the influx of employees of said startups, big tech or consultancies, like myself, then anyone from the outskirts.

I am one of the new users who contributed to dilute entrepreneurial founder. I didn't worked for a startup when I joined. What made me join and stick around is that NH hosts the best stream of tech-related submissions, and discussions tend to attract knowledgeable people who know what they are talking about, and some of which are even the leading expert on the topic.

I am also an ex slashdot lurker. That place used to serve that itch, but nowadays it reads like their comment section attracts mostly the 4chan crowd. Quite the fall from grace.

[kaba0]

The general quality of discussion is ridiculously low on anything not strictly CS-related. Software engineers tend to be quite cocky, self-confident also regarding unrelated stuff to their expertise, and it shows very much.

With that said, the occasional gem of some well-known expert of the field chiming in is worth digging through some bullshit comments, I just dislike that CS-topics are quite rare compared to just general news.

[boffinAudio]

Just try being critical of the American military-industrial complex. You will get stomped by members whose livelihood depends on the perpetuation of the phony moral authority that is necessary to continue that heinous state of affairs ..

[narag]

Why do you think "American military-industrial complex" exists? and why is it the most powerful military-industrial thingy in the world?

[boffinAudio]

It exists because the American people have been lulled into the false narrative that their nation protects the world .. when in fact the absolute opposite is true - the worlds safety is constantly under pressure from the 1000 torture sites the American people pay for every single year - the ruling elite of the rest of the world knows this and responds accordingly, thus feeding the loop which justifies yet more actual repression from the USA, with regards to its military ..

[narag]

Our world is unjust and replete with suffering. The question is what are you going to do about it?

There's a lot of things you can do to improve your life and the life of people around you. Discussing world problems in an online forum is not one of those things.

These up and down arrows near the comments give us the illusion that we can vote for the solution of everything.

[giancarlostoro]

I think the sweet spot is opening up x number of registrations every few months.