At the risk of being called obvious, I'm going to say, "Hacker News." I've never found a site that lets me tap into the brains of so many extremely smart people. This site has made me a much smarter person, dramatically improved my writing, and made me far better at what I do.
I don't think HN deserves this reputation. Most discussions are shallow, some people don't even bother reading the story. Meta discussions are frequently the most upvoted and stories that takes more than a couple of minutes to appreciate are often left to die.
Partly it's because of the format and the platform. Instead of seeking out the information yourself, you're feed bits of it before moving on to the next bit. It works great for news, commentary, as entertainment or a starting guide to startups. But less so for actually acquiring and/or exchanging information.
For anything "opinion" related, the conversation will go to hell very quickly. Read snippets and ignore.
For anything "knowledge" related, this place is phenomenal. Much to learn from the giants amongst us.
Opinion and knowledge are two different axes and I really enjoy reading the opinions of those who know a lot about a topic I don't know. Opinions about topics such as economics are best avoided.
If you think this could be true, simply focus on those discussions that elicit expert knowledge and opinion, rather than those that anyone can contribute to. Er, like this one. Bye.
Well, if there was someway to mark links as "opinion" or "knowledge" related, I'd be happy.. But, that is certainly not the case. Like some sort of crowdsourced opinion/knowledge on each link. Like upvotes, but a little more meaningful/useful.
Then again, you're still relying on the crowd and its whims. But it'll be consistent!
I can't tell the difference between which type a thread is without reading the comments or article.
Agreed. The groupthink mentality here is almost as bad as reddit from what i've seen (say...50 to 70% of the way there); however, i think some of the show HN thing have been interesting to see (and I don't think i would've found them on metafilter, reddit, etc.)
I'm not sure that HN has dramatically improved my writing so much as it has gotten me in the habit of only posting when I have something worthwhile to add to a conversation. I appreciate how many users seem to follow this rule of thumb on HN.
Maybe it taught you something else too. Maybe it has taught you, and anyone else who reads this only to add to the conversation when you have something worthwhile to say in real life as well. This isn't trying to be offending, am I am glad you found that, I just thought I would point out that you can carry that to your real life as well.
Isn't HN proving the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory wrong? And showing that a decent discussion level is achievable in a anonymous environment. New Users creating their account don't even have to provide a legit email address. And at least your and my account are relatively "anonymous".
> Isn't HN proving the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory wrong?
HN employs anonymous, unaccountable, unnecessary, possibly automated and most definitely counter-productive hell bans.
And with that any level of decency becomes quite irrelevant. I implore you to turn on "show dead" and gaze upon our "shadow people", check their comment history and notice about half of them got hell banned for some rather petty reason, and are currently being made to waste hours of their time writing comments before realizing nobody reads them. The other half might have actually deserved some sort of disciplinary action, but a hellban is actually less effective than a regular one except in some quite rare situations[1].
If [the unseen mods of] HN believe that's what it takes, I'll gladly deal with some more Fuckwads. (though the more probable reason is that none of them seems to want, or is able to bugfix the modding code)
This is not a site full of smart people submitting and discussing smart things. This is a site where someone says 'stealing' and someone else patiently points out that piracy is not stealing because bla bla bla YAWN.
A mullah, a scholar of Arabic Grammar, once fell into a filthy ditch and couldn't climb out.
He waited for a while until someone came by. The passerby extended his hand and said "Your hand. Give me!" The mullah angrily told him "Move along. You are not one of our people!"
Some more hours passed while the scholar stood knee deep in foul matter, until another man passed by. He said to him "Here my hand. Take!" Again, the scholar glared "Move along! You are not one of us!"
So this went on for few hours until, finally, the scholar's nephew happened to pass by and saw his uncle in that filthy ditch. He cried out "O dear uncle! Here, take my hand!". The scholar said, "Yes. You are one of us!" and reach[ed] out to his nephew.
But the nephew was weak and he too fell in the hole.
This needs to be corrected. The story is called the "blind grammarian" and naturally far more robust in the original by Shams (as translated into English) than my recollection above. There is also a second part to it that has been omitted.
Piracy isn't stealing; it's copyright infringement and often a contract violation. Using metaphors for complicated legal issues is not a good way to approach things.
Smart people keep having the same tired arguments for the nth time for the past 2500 years. That's just the result the result of those question being fundamental and difficult to answer objectively.
The piracy thing seems like a silly semantic issue on the face of it but the semantics strike at the heart of the issue.
Hackers news is only intellectually stimulating if you are a developer, programmer or work in start up. It doesn't really have that much interesting discussions beyond that.
Completely agree with your comment. The only thing I am not quite sure of is if it really changed my writing style. Any suggestions how you approached this/how HN helped you on the way?
Sometimes, I have a bad habit of making an argument a little too concise. I forget that not everyone is in my head and knows exactly what I'm thinking, so I gloss over important details. The joy of this site is that everyone is so intelligent that they pick up on this and call me out right away.
As a consequence, I've had to work on being concise enough that people read me, yet detailed enough that people understand me. Learning to balance those two things has made a tremendous difference in my career!
Quick caveat - being concise is something I've always struggled with. Therefore, I think I took inappropriate shortcuts to try and become concise.
Here, i write sentences three or four times searching for a short clear statement. I can't say my writing is good, or even correctly punctuated, but it's far better than some of my direct to email incoherent rambling.
The biggest problem i'm noticing now is verb agreement. I'll rewrite parts of a sentence and fix all the things i break. If only there was a typechecker to warn me of those silly mistakes.
I am more aware of when it's acceptable to wave my hands and when it's not. I find myself looking at my writing more critically. HN has been a conspicuous influence in that.
Thanks!