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Re:Happy New Year, HN! by nirushiv on Thursday December 31, 2020 @12:45PM (#25594935)
I’m hoping we all have a happy, healthy 2021.

2020 was very rough, and the [almost always] insightful projects, debates, and experiences shared here helped me persevere (and sometimes procrastinate!) through the year. Thanks to you all for making this the least toxic “general purpose” online community I’ve found by far.

Re:Happy New Year, HN! by minimalismhuh on Thursday December 31, 2020 @12:53PM (#25595059)
I am rehashing this I know, but:

We really need to HNify the Internet.

Not sure if possible, but a neural network based filter for browsers that enforces HN guidelines on your Google/YouTube searches, Amazon visits etc. The filter may be called "Dang Filter".

Or we just need to create our own communities with HN guidelines. Making replacements for Stack Overflow, YouTube etc.

I really wish the Internet would be like HN.

Re:Happy New Year, HN! by nirushiv on Thursday December 31, 2020 @01:03PM (#25595181)
Dang and many other members put in a lot of work to uphold the culture here. But a lot of it comes down to two things:

- The hacker and academia cultures have historically been welcoming of beginners, eager to share, and open to learn and discuss. They comprise the vast majority of the community.

- Since you can’t delete posts or comments, and can’t edit them after a while, you really do have to think before you speak. Compare this to Twitter, Reddit, or Facebook where being toxic or unconstructive in one corner of the site doesn’t affect your other activities, and can be erased or edited in the face of backlash. This difference changes the dynamics tremendously

Re:Happy New Year, HN! by AnonHP on Thursday December 31, 2020 @01:14PM (#25595304)
> - Since you can’t delete posts or comments, and can’t edit them after a while...

Actually, you can delete posts or comments too within a short window (about two hours from the time of posting, plus some other criteria to be fulfilled).

There was a discussion here [1] on this six months ago.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23622865

Re:Happy New Year, HN! by nirushiv on Friday January 01, 2021 @11:45AM (#25604477)
Right, absolutely. But the pattern of “I’ll say something I may regret next year but I’ll just delete it if I really do regret it” isn’t present.

Thanks for highlight this, though. A lot of people are seeing it for the first time, I bet.

Re:Happy New Year, HN! by mhh__ on Thursday December 31, 2020 @02:57PM (#25596435)
HN is fucking boring, I like being able to make jokes - just as many "go back to Reddit", you can have too much of a good thing.