Why do you still use HN?

You can have actual intelligent conversations with people who think. You can read ideas that differ from your own, from people who can tell you why they hold those ideas. The knowledge available here is remarkable. (I was doing some research on some number-theory-type stuff. I asked a question here. A Cambridge PhD gave me some pointers. Gave them to me, a random nobody on the internet with a BS, no affiliation, and no academic work for the last 35 years.)

It doesn't always work that way. Sometimes you get ideological wars. Sometimes you get people who Just. Won't. Listen. - who are, on that topic anyway, just going to argue their position to the end of the earth with scorched-earth tactics. Sometimes people come here to do ideological battle rather than to have an actual conversation. That happens here more often than I'd like. But it's still better than anywhere else that I've found.

The quote goes, "If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room". HN is an enormous room where I'm confident I'll never be the smartest person, ever, and that is invaluable for someone's curiosity. Every day I get to converse with and learn from intelligent people (many of whom are also as curious as I) I would've never had the privilege of interacting with in person or another online forum.

I'm an ordinary person from France. I don't work in IT but HN has helped me to get a hard as steel general culture (sorry , I'm french, not a good english speaker !).

1. Top quality articles and research paper every day, in every domain of science 2. The real news, I mean, the news that matter 3. Very informed opinions in the comments.

HN is the top of the top of the web !

I use HN because it's the one place I can find a variety of intelligent discussions on different topics that don't devolve in name calling, flame wars, doxing, etc. The latter is why I only use Reddit for pop culture related topics, since the political and cultural ones there devolve into absolute hell. Same with their equivalents on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.

At least on HN, you know that everything from a discussion on web design best practices to a talk on the changing role of journalism in the modern world will have some form of civility to it. And that the people involved will be at least trying to have an intelligent conversation rather than fighting over red team vs blue team tribal politics.

I also find it one of the few places online where I can find, how best to say this, obscure/personal sites, articles and content written by people knowledgeable or passionate about a topic. Links on Reddit are about 40% mainstream media outlets, 50% YouTube/Twitch and 10% stuff from other sources. The links on Hacker News are far more varied, and far more supportive towards independent creators.

The discussions on here are what keep me coming back. I often dont even read the article, just jump into the discussion. Provides a lot of interesting perspectives from people who clearly think and can articulate those thoughts. As an aside: I am not IT but I do work in tech.

I come here exclusively to read the comments and sometimes participate in them. I often only end up clicking a link because I need more context to read the comments.

The comments are often insightful and intelligent. Its interesting conversation, from people with different backgrounds, different opinions etc. As opposed to most other forums, HN is heavily moderated and the crowd it draws helps. Sometimes I see a comment that looks out of place and an hour later it is either down voted into oblivion or removed already.

I also use HN to pick technology. I search HN for threads relevant to the technology I am thinking of using and read the comments to see what people think. This helps me get a whole bunch of different opinions and thoughts that I otherwise wouldn't have access to.

I also love the minimalist look of HN. If they'd change it, I'd be incredibly upset. It's one of the last places on the internet that always loads in an instant and doesn't distract me from the only thing that's important: the content.

Incredibly detailed and well written technical articles. I still have a very well detailed description of the UEFI boot process saved on here that I need to get through.

Surround yourself with people smarter than you. I'm not that smart though... so it might not be a compliment...

It's simply discussion around links, and isn't dominated by competitive people trying to get top comment like Reddit/Imgur is.

There's much more emphasis on innovation and technology, rather than cat pictures. I think this rather serious and neutral nature of Hacker News is why I keep returning

For the discussions under each article. It helps me see a lot of interesting perspectives.

Perhaps due to its connections to business, some influential people hang around HN. For example, once I got a response from the CEO of Namecheap (my web host) in a thread related to their services. It was very informative and I can't imagine getting that kind of interaction anywhere else.

You don't get that on places like reddit because the standard of discourse is generally lower and it's not worth their time.

Also: the moderators are consistent, clear, professional, and easy to talk to.

> I don't know why though. What makes HN special?

Cry baby echo chamber is not the preferred normal behavior here. This is exactly why I deleted my Reddit account (r/programming).

I never got addicted to social media. I have Facebook, twitter, Instagram, reddit, HN, digg etc etc, but I rarely if ever use it. Although I do read reddit and HN regularly, I never felt a desire to delete it in order to curb the usage. Haven't posted anything on Facebook in two years, on Instagram in almost a year, on Twitter in 4 years.

It's the one forum where people seem to attack ideas not each other. :)

A lot of people that people can look up to are here too. Lots of famous engineers, computer scientists professors, data scientists, you name it.

I wish there was something similar for business/economics.

Because when I see an article about some obscure topic I'm interested in, but know very little about, there's a high chance someone knows so much about that topic and will make some outstanding post to add to the conversation.

I keep my social media accounts only as utilities with reddit the only exception. I've found Product Hunt, Indie Hackers, and now HN to be awesome communities of people smarter than me and actually building stuff. The world needs more people building stuff.