Can we please stop this? If anyone wants to follow this story, she can go to cnn.com or news.google.com; let's please leave HN for interesting technical content. This is truly becoming tiring.
Why don't you just accept, that people are upvoting this, because it is relevant to them and they want to discuss the topic with fellow hackers?
I think I will never get the point of those "why is this on HN?" posts. HN's frontpage is not redacted by editors, but filled with posts people have upvoted.
The only eventual result of "people upvoting things relevant to them" in an open-membership community is the upvoting of the things the most people can agree on: pictures of cats with words on them. Communities on the internet have disparate purposes, and must be tended--if not by editors, then by the conscientious decisions of their members--lest they all become pointless microcosm-representations of society as a whole. And yes, this sometimes involves being "that guy" and telling people to think more about the net effect of everyone voting the same way they do (in a Timeless Decision Theory sort of way) before they upvote things.
There are two things wrong with this. First, you are assuming that a nonzero fraction of people will sign up for every open-membership community available to them, frequent, and vote in each such community. Realistically most people probably can't do this for more than ten communities. Second, even if there is eventually convergence it may not occur quickly. For example, the universe will eventually reach a state of maximum entropy but it isn't something that any of us need to worry about today.
Because this plays on people's basic instinct to keep being fed meaningless, content-less pieces of the current "hot news". It's the bread and butter of modern media, and is not much different from what tabloid readers experience. It would be perfectly fine to discuss this issue around articles with actual content. It's very tiring to see every attention-seeking-hyperbolic-titled news article linked here.
You are overlooking the fact that posting "meaningless" news prompts the meaningful discussion around the issue that you claim you're perfectly fine with.
I welcome these posts because they are frequently accompanied by a quality of discussion that is unique to the HN community.
The issue is important, and certainly, if some interesting new thing happens with interesting new HN-worthy implications, we should probably like to have a new conversation about it. Upvoting contentless fluff, however, will not "get us closer to some kind of progress" any more than clapping in a movie theatre will communicate your pleasure to the cast and crew of the movie.
> ...any more than clapping in a movie theatre will communicate your pleasure to the cast and crew of the movie.
I know you're trying to illustrate via absurdity, but such things do have real impact. Each member of the theater shares the clapping experience and absorbs the social capital of how good the movie is, giving them a metric for recommending the movie to friends without risk of embarrassing themselves. If they loved the movie but hear no applause or other corroboration, their enthusiasm for spreading positive buzz about the movie is vastly diminished. ("Yeah, it was okay, I guess." doesn't put asses in seats.) Meanwhile, the cast and crew receive feedback based on the ticket sales created by word of mouth, which still remains the most powerful marketing tool in existence.
It's easy to blame "the news cycle" for allowing important issues to fall into the memory hole, but I say We The People are equally culpable. The line must be drawn here, on a matter so fundamental to the nature of state power in a newly digital world, and in a rare case where the voters and ideologies of both parties are mostly in agreement, even if their leaders are too cowardly to stand up.
Oh yeah. Let's go back to blog posts complaining about how HN complained about some project or other having only the option to log in with facebook. Let's discuss flat design some more, maybe we can get closure on that.
Seriously though.. I thought I was getting annoyed by the NSA things as well, but then it let up a little, I remembered what HN is usually like, and now I'm happy it's back. As long as it at least drowns out the super trivial things without taking over everything, and as long as the issue persists, that's what I want to read intelligent people talking about.
If "we" don't stand up, who will? "We" create the infrastructure used against everyone. We have a fucking duty, actually. Not to take over HN completely with repeat posts about the same thing, but to discuss this issue, every aspect of it, and seriously. It takes as long as it takes. The problem is not solved until it is solved. That is the difference between things that matter, and things you can just talk about for a while and then just stop. Like gimmicks and symbols and marketing -- stupid trends of masses to milk, instead of wise ideas for persons to realize.
I love posts about clever hacks, but changelogs we can discuss anywhere, and not living in the US I personally never cared for that Silicon Valley stuff much, either; though I realize that I'm at a site in no small part driven by that, and being a guest I do accept it. But colour me happy exactly for that reason, because HN exceeded all of my expectations in the last weeks -- I learned so much from reading the discussions, and read so many comments that made me feel optimistic about the ability of people to think. I wouldn't want to miss any of it, and am keen to hear about future developments. Sorry.
I am not sure what you mean.. I don't think I even ever read a "tell HN". I'd probably feel weird to step on the soapbox that way.. but feel free to elaborate (or do whatever you want with any of my posts, for that matter :)
A "Tell HN" is like the selfpost (if you're familiar with Reddit) of Hacker News. Instead of posting a link you post some text.
He was suggesting that your comment is good enough to be posted as a standalone entry on here, if you want to do that go to the top and click "Submit", the rest is pretty much self-explanatory.
This is my first account of like 10 that lasted a few months before getting hellbanned, so I would feel more than a bit presumptous doing that. I'm glad a way to behave a little, so I can occasionally rant and get heard, or simply add things I know to a discussion, or upvote comments etc., but personally I am so far left leaning, and not even a professional, but "just" someone who has been into computers since he's a kid, programs a little and loves the web, that I'd seriously feel weird making an "announcement" like this, and tell others what their duties are. Am I a coward, or does that make sense?
Not that I want to diminish my post, I stand behind every word, but I also put "we" in quotes because of the above, because I really mean you guys, the people who really know their shit, the people who don't feel helpless when confronted with math, the people who build the tools I use and write the code I learn the pitiful little things I know from, the people who stand a snowball's chance in hell to ever get hired by any of the agencies or corporations that do these things, because I really don't, you can take my word for it. When it comes to democracy or philosophy, all are equal, and in that sense I'm do not want to shrink from anything; but when it comes to HN per se, I do not consider myself a peer (this time that's a compliment) and do not want to pretend I am one, I get carried away enough as is sometimes ^^
Did you see the HN front page when Aaron Swartz killed himself? The NSA stories are a drop in the ocean compared to the endless Aaron Swartz posts. It looked like this[0].
I see non-Swartz posts. There were 2 non-NSA posts the day it blew up. I actually told myself "Ah, HN is obsessing with something today, looks like it's privacy this time".
Only 28 and 29 didn't have to do with Aaron. I missed HN the day the news broke. Perhaps it was just as bad. Either way, I disagree that we should stop taking about it. Silencing something is not a good way to address it.
I think I will never get the point of those "why is this on HN?" posts. HN's frontpage is not redacted by editors, but filled with posts people have upvoted.