Re:GitHub has 20,927,907 closed issues
by kowdermeister on Wednesday April 27, 2016 @06:54AM
(#11579286)
Which cannot be said of Reddit :D
Re:GitHub has 20,927,907 closed issues
by forgetsusername on Wednesday April 27, 2016 @07:20AM
(#11579377)
>HN deliberately tries not to be as popular as Reddit.
No they/we don't. They might like to pretend that, because, after all, it's cool to be an "exclusive club". But this is just another internet forum that happens to have content you/I like.
See above about flooding the front page with Haskell stories. That was a real thing that happened. And yes there was a post from pg at the time actually asking people to make the site seem unappealing to newcomers until the traffic surge from TC died down. It is a very deliberate attempt to limit the growth rate to a manageable amount and maintain a certain type of culture.
It's not because we're an "exclusive" or "elite" club, it's just that with a broader community there would be a need to appeal to broader, more general interests that would eventually drive away the people who originally came here for the tech-business related content.
A few years ago HN was featured in a relatively popular publication, (TechCrunch maybe? I forget) and we flooded the front page with stories about Haskell (I'm pretty sure, or some other esoteric topic) to drive away any would be newcomers from that piece.
HN is trying to appeal to a particular type of demographic - people interested in computer science / programming and start ups.[1] The more you try to be all things to all people, the more you end up with the blandest content with the broadest appeal, like many of the more popular subreddits.
[1] Contrary to some people's beliefs, I don't think this means there should be stories only about computer science, programming, and startups, just that the stories should be interesting to people who find those things interesting. Of course, even among a similar group of people not everyone is going to agree what other things are interesting, but that's what we have the voting for.