What brought you here?

5 points by Remmy 18 years ago | 4 comments

digg has become cesspool which I refused to believe for the longest time. I was one of their biggest supporters in the early days and looked over the influx of mass stupidity as it arrived in waves.

I just couldn't take it anymore and stumbled upon (pun not intended) reddit which seems to have become a political battlefield and 4chan playground along with digg.

I am here and content for now. It offers the quality stories I have to literally search for on digg and reddit without the words, "newfag" or "sheeple" in every other sentence.

From the very short time I have been reading here, I've seen something that digg and reddit has lost. A sense of maturity. A genuine desire to converse rather than enrage. That's why I am here. I am curious to hear what brought others here and hope this didn't sound too much like a soapbox speech.

thaumaturgy 18 years ago |

I've been following Paul Graham's essays for a while. I like most of what he writes. That led to finding out about the YCombinator, and although it wasn't for me, I liked the idea of it.

More recently, I came across news.yc when it got some exposure on Reddit, which I've become increasingly less interested in.

I thought, cool! People doing things. Stuff about the things people are doing. Stuff about how to do other things. I can dig this.

Then the last few days happened, and ... eh.

In the last week, I've:

Ground out a few hundred lines of ksh for a pretty cool in-house sysadmin package;

Developed a nifty JavaScript/CSS effect for a client website;

Worked out a wireless hotspot deal that might make my area pretty unique;

Started wondering whether Google's entry into health records systems has closed the doors on that market.

I'd like it if news.yc was about people doing things.

makecheck 18 years ago |

You've actually summed up pretty well my own reasons for coming here. :) I think frustration with other once-great sites is common.

But I have also started to appreciate what is unique about yC, both in site design (e.g. you can't mod things down) and that the content is even closer to what I'm generally interested in.

crystalarchives 18 years ago |

Interestingly, I've never really been to Digg or Reddit, so all this "fluff" is foreign to me. The content here has always been good, I hope it stays that way.

I guess most people (myself included) found news.ycombinator.com through the Paul Graham essays and the YCombinator program. As a result, I'm not too worried about fluff; I think those who read PG essays won't be inclined to post garbage, and karma helps as well to encourage good content. Keep up the awesome work here guys!

david927 18 years ago |

I understand. I came here because I have a start-up, but the community here is one of the best I know. I'm afraid as it becomes more popular, that will change. But I'm enjoying it for now.