It appears as the adoption of these platforms grows, the quality goes down to the common denominator of the population involved. Not to sound demeaning, but isn't this the downfall of every social media platform?
These platforms used to be for geeks and niche audiences, but as they grew, they attract everyone, causing the decline of intellectual conversations and thoughts and reducing them to low a quality of value content. People then tend to migrate to other newer platforms for a few years, before the same cycle repeats. This is similar and common among social media platforms like myspace, facebook, instagram, etc as the age of the population grows, newer generations want a segment specific platform.
Where I think the quality has gone down is in the number of people who are here to argue, not to discuss and learn. People who won't listen even to reasonable counter-arguments, won't change their position, and won't stop arguing, because they're here to win, not to think. But that's kind of the problem with a growing platform, because the more readers you have, the more useful it is to an ideologist to win over the users of your platform.
Yogi Berra said "That place? It's too crowded, nobody goes there anymore!"
One answer is to form an "inner party" from the best 5% out of the "outer party" and repeat the process every 5 years or so. Look at the "Cell structure" used by V. Lenin and his comrades.
And there was an HN post about sealioning. Where you pose inane, easy to google answers constantly to troll someone with an opinion you dont like. Then play the tragic innocent trying to have "a conversation". I've been subject to that without realizing it... a phone may or may not have hit a wall at high speeds due to my frustration with my fellow humans.
Proposition 2: Some people are more able to come up with good new ideas than others.
Outcome: A place like HN, which is for the discussion of highly intellectual ideas, is inevitably attractive to thinkers. Even people who aren't as bright as those who come up with avante garde ideas are attracted to those ideas and quite legitimately want to discuss them. Their responses follow a learning curve - at first people don't fully understand what they're seeing but as time passes their understanding of new ideas deepens.
Wherever I go, I'm on the lookout for ideas that might change my outlook and deepen my understanding. Such ideas are very rare, but I find that HN is a good place to look for them. I admit that I don't always appreciate an idea for what it really is, from the beginning. :)
Are you being hyperbolic?
Also, don't forget Sturgeon's Law.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
My guess is that the patina of freshness has rubbed off for you and you're seeing it how it's been the whole time. But now you have a big enough sample size to make a more comprehensive and accurate judgment.
Last but not least HN is full of knowledge and I got to learn a-lot from this community and In my opinion no post is low quality you always get to learn something new from each post
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Although HN and some sub-reddits started for niche and geek audiences, nothing about them made them exclusive to the niche. Nothing about "Hacker News" says niche to me, since "hacker" has a vague and shifting definition. All kinds of stuff gets posted here, much of it having nothing to do with hacking or tech geeks.