I find many of the critical comments to be shortsighted, especially those talking about trust/credibility. Do people really believe folks will check this site then run over to book an international ticket straight after?
This is an awesome site to get a general idea where I (or my friends & family) can and can’t travel with and without extra work. It has a nice interface, a good collection of information, and is easier to browse than, say, Wikipedia on mobile.
If I’m actually interested in locking down and going on a trip to somewhere where I may possibly need a visa, of course I’ll do additional due diligence with the embassy, which the site often helpfully links.
“1HaKr in the corner reminds people of hackers and may turn people away.” Really?
I have a completely evidence-free theory that, over time, the average sentiment score of comments on HN has gone down.
Maybe I'm succumbing to bias with this theory (hello Eternal September), but it seems like all I read on "Show HN" anymore is negativity and dismissiveness.
I really ought to try and do the analysis. I think it wouldn't be hard (HN is very good about keeping historical data, and sentiment analysis looks as easy as importing a library and passing it a dataset), just time consuming.
To me, HN is a place where ideas are workshopped. If one is looking for accolades, Reddit might be a better forum.
I don't think I have any trouble with critical sentiments as long as they are correctly critical. Of course, too often they are not because some HN folks have an ax to grind, and to make things worse, they are misinformed because a little knowledge is a dangerous thing (pseudointellectuals). [1]
But at the same time, if people are not critically examining ideas, that almost defeats the purpose of this place. I've seen some really bad and incorrect ideas on Show HN that are given a pass due to lack of expertise and discernment on the commenters' parts.
Criticism, when done with civility with the intention to build up rather than tear down, can be a wonderful thing.
Also, despite its purported negativity, people still dip their toe in the comments sections from time to time, holding out hope for finding the one or two gems. For all its flaws, there's no other general forum on the Internet (that I know of) that congregates this level of intellectual ability mixed with technical expertise. (specialized forums notwithstanding)
The comments on HN tend to be so completely out of touch with reality, that it's sometimes hard to separate the wheat from the proverbial chaff.
If the negativity was constructive, I'd be with you, but I don't think it is. It's the incorrect or incomplete application of concepts people pick up in blog posts or half-read books about one person's opinion about how to do a certain thing, represented as gospel.
Regarding your link, I urge you to check the dates those comments were posted. You'll find, I theorize, that the number of these quality posts has gone down over time. I believe the "good parts" are fading, getting lost in the increasing noise.
I'm curious, given your feelings, what motivates your (fairly active) participation in the comments section?
Not trying to be snarky, just want to know what people are truly looking for in the comments, because I happen to have a different view of the comments (maybe it's just in the sampling of topics I'm interested in).
Shouting into the void about the void helps me deal with the void's existence.
Honestly, if I were a completely rational actor, I wouldn't comment on HN.
Besides, I think you'd find the level of comments on HN to be no better than what's on Reddit or Stack Overflow or Quora or Slashdot or Twitter or Facebook or even Google+.
I think I see where you're coming from. Humans aren't always rational.
I have a different view. I think the quality of a subset of comments here are appreciably better in some respects than many of the sites you listed. Of course there are contrarian, misinformed pseudointellects, but at the same time, one also gets to hear the unvarnished thoughts of lead developers of specific products (e.g. Timescale, Azure services, D programming language, etc.). I know of no other forum where this is true.
Maybe my mind is used to filtering out stuff I don't care about, so most of the cruft and negativity doesn't really bother me. I also come from an academic tradition where debate and disagreement (high quality or not) is just part of life. To me, it's just a reflection of the world out there -- all forums have their brand of stupidity. HN's just a different kind of stupid from Reddit, and I'm ok with all kinds of stupid as long as there are still good bits that edify me, which is why I keep coming back.
Site(s) like StackOverflow and certain StackExchanges have higher quality exchanges on particular topics, but they aren't designed for discussion. They are heavily constrained Q&A sites. The bar of acceptability is much higher (questions get closed all the time), but the topics also more or less have verifiable answers, which makes it easy to achieve "quality"; this is not true of a general purpose discussion forum. Jeff Atwood (StackOverflow's founder) was interviewed on the MIT AI podcast recently about this, and his answers on how to arrive at high quality online communities were insightful.
Finally, and this is my opinion, the way to counter incorrect and unhelpful discussions isn't to withdraw but to redirect the discussion in more helpful directions by providing correct information and a counterargument. HN is just the aggregate of people who visit it -- the same people have to self-govern it to some extent.
The problem with this attitude is that it's, in a word, superior. Superior attitudes are rarely productive.
I dislike very strongly those communities who encourage their members to put themselves above others, and I see that as more harmful than any inherent value the community might provide.
If HN were really superior, people wouldn't have to keep telling me it's so, yet that's all I am told when this topic comes up. Why isn't it self-evident?
A large portion of my time on HN (nearly 10 years, blame XKCD) has been devoted to this topic specifically, and no one has yet shown me the merits of this site to a degree that it outweighs the arrogance its members have shown over and over.
I've very recently started writing my thoughts out more long form, maybe I'll dedicate a post to this topic. Otherwise, I am probably done talking about it, as dang tends to get upset with me when I go on like this.
I'm not sure I agree, but I too will stop here too except to say that this whole exchange is a bit meta in that it seems to reflect the content and attitudes it is opposing. (I'm not excluding myself from this--I'm equally culpable)
This is an awesome site to get a general idea where I (or my friends & family) can and can’t travel with and without extra work. It has a nice interface, a good collection of information, and is easier to browse than, say, Wikipedia on mobile.
If I’m actually interested in locking down and going on a trip to somewhere where I may possibly need a visa, of course I’ll do additional due diligence with the embassy, which the site often helpfully links.
“1HaKr in the corner reminds people of hackers and may turn people away.” Really?