I just read through the whole submission and replies. I woke up with a feeling of dread because I remembered that I posted something (and not what that something was) to HN last night after having a few drinks at my friend's going away party. Yikes...
With that admission, and in a completely sober state this time, I would rephrase the question. First, I apologize for the over-the-top remarks in the original submission completely.
Since it sparked some discussion on improving HN though, at least it wasn't a complete waste. Obviously I do think HN is an amazing resource already and I'll be here for a long time to come hopefully :) I also do understand some stories (esp. ones about exciting happenings at bigger companies, which all were once startups) get votes and are interesting to HN readers including myself. I totally followed the Yahoo/MS stuff as well, like a moth to a flame :)
As a discussion forum or a resource someone can turn to for access to the startup community though, HN as it stands is a news site and not a forum. The news-style voting efficiently filters for hackers who have little time to be sifting themselves, and a few false-positives being missed is worth it. But I think there's an opportunity to improve the utility of HN as a community and make it even more useful for founders and would-be founders.
I don't think adding a forum is the right approach, because that eliminates the filter, which is undesirable. But if you add a section for 'Ask' style posts, you'll keep the voting and you've essentially got a forum with a filter.
If the site keeps growing, which it seems you're actively trying to control (I remember recent discussion about removing HN from some search engines), adding a few other sections might help too. But limiting growth is good, and multiple sections may enable an explosion of growth in content and so in types of readers (as opposed to just founders and would-be founders).
Whatever the current algorithm is, it did bury my last post within seconds. I had my partner vote on it right away as well, but we literally went page after page and gave up after about 10 pages of clicking 'Next' and didn't see it anywhere about 10 seconds after submitting it. So it seems like it never had a chance, and it may be that new submissions are being too aggressively filtered in the current algorithm...
Anyway, I better go set my workstation password to something I can't type if I've had a few drinks ;)
With that admission, and in a completely sober state this time, I would rephrase the question. First, I apologize for the over-the-top remarks in the original submission completely.
Since it sparked some discussion on improving HN though, at least it wasn't a complete waste. Obviously I do think HN is an amazing resource already and I'll be here for a long time to come hopefully :) I also do understand some stories (esp. ones about exciting happenings at bigger companies, which all were once startups) get votes and are interesting to HN readers including myself. I totally followed the Yahoo/MS stuff as well, like a moth to a flame :)
As a discussion forum or a resource someone can turn to for access to the startup community though, HN as it stands is a news site and not a forum. The news-style voting efficiently filters for hackers who have little time to be sifting themselves, and a few false-positives being missed is worth it. But I think there's an opportunity to improve the utility of HN as a community and make it even more useful for founders and would-be founders.
I don't think adding a forum is the right approach, because that eliminates the filter, which is undesirable. But if you add a section for 'Ask' style posts, you'll keep the voting and you've essentially got a forum with a filter.
If the site keeps growing, which it seems you're actively trying to control (I remember recent discussion about removing HN from some search engines), adding a few other sections might help too. But limiting growth is good, and multiple sections may enable an explosion of growth in content and so in types of readers (as opposed to just founders and would-be founders).
Whatever the current algorithm is, it did bury my last post within seconds. I had my partner vote on it right away as well, but we literally went page after page and gave up after about 10 pages of clicking 'Next' and didn't see it anywhere about 10 seconds after submitting it. So it seems like it never had a chance, and it may be that new submissions are being too aggressively filtered in the current algorithm...
Anyway, I better go set my workstation password to something I can't type if I've had a few drinks ;)