Interested to know how long your twice a week sessions are and how far you go back in the pages? I come twice a day for 10 mins and then once a week going back to article 90. Total time for the week is just under 3 hours, but I feel I've learned something.

About half an hour on Sunday mornings and 10~ mins the second session, but I'm slowly making that as close to 0 as possible.

One thing that's helping is Lobsters. Lobsters is super slow so if I do make a full switch from HN to that I only need to check it a handful of times a week.

But to me, it's not so much about how much time I spend on the time but rather the why. I simply don't get as much value out of HN as I think I do. Most news are irrelevant and unimportant, and I haven't really learned anything too insightful like others said they have (sadly). Simply put, tech news boards apparently just aren't for me.

What is Lobsters? I'm curious about the thing that's helped you wean yourself off tech news, but googling it hasn't helped.

I'm on both. HN has a more diverse community and array of content. There's just a ton of stuff on here. That can up the noise for many people but one must simply filter it in their head more effectively. I only click on a few links on the front page with occasionally looking at New and 2nd-3rd pages to see if readers and I would benefit from me bumping one up.

Now, Lobste.rs is different. They're a small community with a narrower focus on mostly tech stuff. They have relatively low noise with a preference for deeper insight on tech. You'll see more writeups on algorithms than product releases for instance. They also have an open-source website and open moderation log. A bit radical on occasion like where owner JCS just got rid of downvotes to experiment if upvote-only would keep quality without total censorship.

Definitely check out the articles over there on top of the ones here. The comments especially as people often say something there that someone here overlooked or vice versa.

Most forums ban obvious spam - viagra, porn, etc. But HN bans people for being overly critical, for not agreeing with the groupthink, or perhaps not having enough tact or politeness.

That's not true. I don't like to leave such statements unanswered—the community has a right to know that we don't do these things.

It would be helpful to see the specific links that you're basing this view on, so we could clear them up.

Maybe they did in the past. I haven't seen it since I've been here. The bans I saw made sense. I countered it with detail on Barnacl.es:

https://barnacl.es/c/91kcev

If someone has an invite, may I have one? No worries if not. (Sorry for the off-topic spam.)

I can no longer edit my post, but wanted to comment that I just received an invite. Thanks! :)

Sent. If anyone else needs one, ping me @GuiAmbros.

Cheers!

It's dangerous to go alone. Take this: https://news.ycombinator.com/best

It's hilarious that HN conflates popularity with "best".

So even at HN, the most addictive content is considered to have the highest value. Seems…topical.

The way this usually works, at least in comment threads, is that usually upvotes end up being stronger than downvotes. So the most popular thought in the community ends up at the top of the page... and then usually, the most popular counter-argument is its highest child.

It's interesting to see HN debate itself. The asymmetrical karma allocation can be a really interesting factor.

The name of that page goes back close to ten years, when HN was created. That was a time when lots of people had more faith in social forum upvoting than they/we do now.

Hi dang, I could swear I once saw a list of front pages with different algos, but now I can't find it for the life of me. Also, is there a "most commented" or "controversial" page?

It may also be a question of how you use sites like HN. I've found that this site is useful for learning when I simply click on the headlines and ignore the comments. Yes, the comments are informative. On the other hand, I have found that reading comments is a behaviour that I have adopted to procratinate (rather than to gain deeper insight).

I primarily visit HN for the comments. My usage is as follows:

1. Scan headlines for a topic I'm interested in, say, geometric algebra.

2. Rapidly scan the comments for people linking to other media (books, blog posts, libraries, etc.) that are related to geometric algebra.

I get vastly superior pointers to useful material this way than any other approach I've tried, and I'm extremely good at research anyway.