[dylangs1030]

The worst part of that life cycle is being one of a minority group trying to explain what's really going on. I had the top comment on 3 different NSA stories at one time, correcting misinformation in each. I still don't think it helped.

[jamesaguilar]

The demographic of the site really feels like it has shifted in the years I've been here (this is my second account -- the first one was around for even another couple of years before).

In the past, I would say that most people on the site were successful doers, either working on startups or in tech. The focus was almost exclusively tech, with very little politics. But over the last few years it really feels like the tone has shifted in the anti-business, especially anti-big-business, direction. There are also a lot more commenters who seem to feel disenfranchized in the current system. And there are a lot of folks who seem to have a pretty pessimistic outlook and are ready to believe and upvote stories that confirm it. Not sure if these things are related or if it's just different groups of folks who have happened to become attracted to the site around the same time.

That doesn't mean the site is going down the tube, but it definitely has a different character than back in the old days.

[bad_user]

HN always contained a healthy dosage of politics, anti-big-companies rants and gossip. I distinctively remember a really popular link at one point showing a picture of Steve Jobs on a meeting with Eric Schmidt over coffee and people were considering it some kind of historic event and also commented on Steve's choice for shoes, not to mention all the stupid speculation about what this meeting was about. It made me sick.

What really happened is that some noise threshold was reached, while the website's implementation hasn't changed much and so links about engineering, programming, startups, weekend projects and so on have a much harder time reaching the front-page and managing to stay there for a couple of hours.

HN is still the best place on the web if you crave for rants. I swear, if you want confirmation bias or to read funny and informative rants of smart and educated people, you can hardly beat HN.

[interknot]

I agree with you, but it's worth remembering that the early days of HN predate things like the financial crisis. Maybe HN's stance on big business has changed because society's stance also changed?

The prevalence of posts about politics can likely be attributed to the increasing(ly disturbing) intersection of politics and the internet.

Regardless, I'd say HN has done a pretty good job remaining relevant.