>Hacker News is hardly in danger of becoming indistinguishable.
I very very much disagree. Online communities really are a slippery slope. People are naturally predisposed to upvote cotton-candy content, and if you start letting any of it in, eventually it will overwhelm whatever nutritional content used to be there. The people who care about good content will stop checking HN, and you'll left with nothing but stuff like this.
> People are naturally predisposed to upvote cotton-candy content, and if you start letting any of it in, eventually it will overwhelm whatever nutritional content used to be there.
Totally. That's a very valid point. It's much easier to upvote an amusing BBC2 video than to digest, upvote and participate meaningfully in a discussion around a serious technical article.
However Hacker News has remained remarkably tonally consistent in my opinion:
Ok, maybe not entirely overblown. Most of that stuff looks like it was at least submitted by people who could drink legally.
My current concern with HN is actually not fluff content, but the preponderance of inane business and personal development blog posts. If I have to see one more "how to find a technical co-founder" post... ;)
I very very much disagree. Online communities really are a slippery slope. People are naturally predisposed to upvote cotton-candy content, and if you start letting any of it in, eventually it will overwhelm whatever nutritional content used to be there. The people who care about good content will stop checking HN, and you'll left with nothing but stuff like this.