I think that recently, I've been seeing more snarky and dismissive messages than compared with several months ago. They are always very brief, gotcha-style replies. Is it just me? It sometimes makes me doubt if there isn't a coordinated attempt at destabilizing the otherwise orderly (no doubt after some heroic wrangling by dang & co.) discourse taking place. Those posts get downvoted rather fast, but I feel that there's been a quantitative difference in their occurence.

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joe_the_user 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I've "felt like hn is declining" many times in the last fifteen years. Notably, when I find a whole page of slanted, snarky bad-faith posts of various sorts.

The thing someone pointed out, however, is you get particular bad threads through the process of them being seeded that way rather than things always being bad. I think that's why hn's moderation is often thread-by-thread rather than comment by comment.

And I can find some threads here with quality comments still. So quality is a difficult thing to measure.

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ThrowawayR2 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No conspiracy is needed. HN is attracting more and more new users who enjoy making low quality posts on hot button topics, which also triggers other previously well-behaved users to make low quality posts in response. This behavior naturally spreads outside of hot button topics to ordinary submissions.

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dang 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

It isn't new users who are making most low-quality comments. It's mostly people who've been here for years and should know better.

Sometimes they make new accounts, of course, especially if we've banned them many times - but even those (what you could call) bad actors are not the bulk of the problem. The bulk of the problem is (what you could call) normal users, who would probably be surprised to find this out, since it's human nature to see such problems as caused by others, not self.

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reaperducer 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

HN is attracting more and more new users who enjoy making low quality posts on hot button topics, which also triggers other previously well-behaved users to make low quality posts in response.

Posting a "hot take" on HN was unheard of for a very long time. Now people do it regularly with no shame.

I've never really understood why people write those, and even less why people read them. It's admitting from the outset that you don't know what you're talking about. Why embarrass yourself? Why waste your own time?

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dang 3 days ago | parent [-]

I think you guys are succumbing to a nostalgia-filtered view of HN's past.

	▲	NaOH 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		An unspoken inference from when you've made posts like this is that HN has largely only changed in terms of scale, that the overall community culture has been relatively static. What are the indicators that would catch your attention to indicate a cultural shift, whether they are improving the site or diminishing it?
	▲	rswail 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Rose colored glasses are just a manual version of f.lux But more seriously, I mentioned the "dotcom boom" to someone today, they didn't know what it was, because they were 2 at the time. I had to explain it as a combination of the GFC and the current AI boom.

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citizenpaul 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>snarky comments

Ive noticed this as well.