Comments on: 5 (Possibly Fixable) Reasons Why Y-Combinator’s Hacker News Is Flawed

By: Berislav Lopac

Berislav Lopac — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:09:58 +0000

There is another issue, for me at least, but I’m not sure how to fix that (and whether to): More often than not — at least for the front-page articles — it turns out that the comments are so informative and interesting that I don’t even go to the articles themselves. And if we discount the article I follow in Netvibes and I would read anyway, I would dare say that I read less than 25% of what’s left…

By: Jonas Huckestein

Jonas Huckestein — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 21:11:35 +0000

Jay, I am going to try Answers.OnStartups.com right now to ask the question I was referring to earlier. Let's see what happens. Let's see if you can get me to switch. Thanks for your feedback :)

By: Jay Neely - Boston Entrepreneur

Jay Neely - Boston Entrepreneur — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:38:21 +0000

One of the best things you could do to get action actually taken is link to specific features on the HN Feature Requests List that would help solve the problems you've identified. Encouraging people to upvote those will catch pg's attention much more surely than the blog post by itself. Your no-search point is a much-bemoaned one; the HN search at the very bottom (by WebMynd, a YC company), isn't that great. I've found SearchYC.com to be excellent, though. Do a search and then check out the further options you have. For using HN as a discussion forum, it's unfortunate that the great discussions that do happen have such high barriers to taking place -- there's so much untapped potential. But, Hacker News' primary purpose is, well, news. If you're interested in discussion on similar subjects from a similarly high quality community, take a look at Answers.OnStartups.com. Props for taking the time to write such constructive criticism, Jonas.