My point of view, being mostly a lurker for 1.15 years: I'm a programmer, musician, comp sci graduate, neither a Windows user nor a Mac user, and generally an all around geek. I don't remember how I came across Hacker News, but it didn't take long for me to conclude for myself two things:
1) the proportion of interesting (to me) links was high;
2) the comments revealed a community of clear-thinking, logical, rational, articulate individuals.
That hasn't changed significantly since last year, though I admit that I get the sense that the community has grown lately.
I don't have a big problem with HN's current state. If it has deviated from its original goals or gone through some other metamorphosis, that doesn't bother me; I still like what it is today. In fact, if it were extremely focused on entrepreneurship and startups and such, I probably wouldn't be interested. What I get out of HN is great tech/geek links and insightful, intelligent commentary.
If the percentage of links that interested me eventually fell below some threshold, and if the comments started getting inane, irrational, nonsensical or just plain stupid, I'd probably just leave HN and find another community, or start my own.
1) the proportion of interesting (to me) links was high; 2) the comments revealed a community of clear-thinking, logical, rational, articulate individuals.
That hasn't changed significantly since last year, though I admit that I get the sense that the community has grown lately.
I don't have a big problem with HN's current state. If it has deviated from its original goals or gone through some other metamorphosis, that doesn't bother me; I still like what it is today. In fact, if it were extremely focused on entrepreneurship and startups and such, I probably wouldn't be interested. What I get out of HN is great tech/geek links and insightful, intelligent commentary.
If the percentage of links that interested me eventually fell below some threshold, and if the comments started getting inane, irrational, nonsensical or just plain stupid, I'd probably just leave HN and find another community, or start my own.