[throw_away12847]

I really do believe that HN is poorly designed for end users. The UI is not forward with intent, or pleasurable to use. It's been literally years and the expired link issue hasn't been addressed. ---No, I'll stop you right there. It's been acknowledged as an implementation bug, but not addressed. PG's lack of user empathy and stubbornness make HN worse.

The only reason people come here is the content.

[btilly]

The only reason people come here is the content.

I consider this a good thing. It attracts the right kind of people.

[throw_away12847]

Are you insinuating that the key to dissuading the wrong kind of people is to make Hacker News difficult to use? The notion that good users will "power through" a bad design is dubious at best.

I hope that you're not involved in product design. This thought process is not good for anyone.

[btilly]

I make no apologies for my opinion, however much you dislike it.

I've maintained for years that the key to a high quality online forum is for it to be limited in some way. It can be limited by bugs. Limited by nobody advertising that it exists. Limited by having a very focused topic of discussion. I'm willing to believe that it can be limited by moderation, but I self-select out of those forums so don't know.

But without some sort of limiting you get what happened to Usenet, Slashdot, kuro5hin, the main page of Reddit, and so on. Which is that they became the place that everyone knew that they should go. And then the noise went up faster than the signal, resulting in a poor signal to noise ratio. And then the best people found new forums to go to, and slowly disappeared.

Of course if you make the limiting TOO effective, eventually nobody will be left. There is a balance to be had.

And this only applies to high quality content of the kind that I want to engage with. Which is admittedly not to everyone's taste. It is not a way to make something popular.