I disagree with that notion.

I've been a contributor on HN for around 5 years and over the period of time I've seen a constant decline in the quality of comments, community support (read some of the 'Show HN' posts) and to an extent even the quality of the stories submitted.

A new improved hacker/startup community can be a serious contender for replacing HN (in its current state), just like Reddit is/was to Digg and others.

I'm relatively new to HN (<1year) and the one thing I notice on here is a HEAVY amount of cynicism. Perhaps the tech industry needs that to keep itself in check, but I feel like a lot of argumentative comments can sometimes be REALLY nasty.

I understand that in a competitive, fast paced and big money industry there will be massive egos, but I could sure do without some of the jerks

Well a real problem is the fact that it takes no effort to by cynical. It doesn't take intelligence or facts to be cynical, only doubt under the cover of pragmatism.

Isn't that true of every geek-oriented news site with comments? In every community that reaches a certain size people start complaining that everything was better in the early year(s). There's always a lot of cynicism because that's just geek humor (actually I think HN is far better in that regard than many other sites - I don't know any other major site where you can get so much useful and positive feedback). And on sites with lots of comments you will always find lots of negative comments. That's just the way it is.

While this account is only approaching its 2 year anniversary, I was a lurker for a while before that. I do agree there has been some decline, but my biggest complaint about the comments these days are the complaints about the decline of HN. They are all over the place and to me are a bigger annoyance than anything that the actual comments are complaining about (except for the community support comment - that needs improving).

Not meant to single you out - just my opinion on the overall sentiment on HN these days.

This account is 4+ years old and I was a lurker as well for a while before creating an account. I too have noticed a distinct decline in the quality of commentary over the years. It's not downvotes that are messing up the community; it's upvotes. The things that get upvoted more lately seem to be short quips or similar scoped posts. Maybe pg needs to experiment with removing the upvote feature from new accounts until they reach a threshold of x karma. If it wasn't for the 10 or 20 prolific posters here this community would be full of people with nothing to say but saying it loudly. I don't know if the removal of points from comments changed the environment for the better but I can only hope that it staved off the decline in community for a bit longer than inaction would have.

Edit: I think it's funny that the title of this post was changed to lobsters from its original title.

that's not entirely true, the amount of time any of us spends online looking at tech news is finite, therefore as the pie gets bigger some of the online communities shrink their viewership, have less participation and less engagement. So the idea of competition is actually quite valid. It's like saying there's room for Facebook and Google+, while that's true there definitely are winners and losers because user engagement in a community is a function of its health and status.

I applied for lobste.rs, sending an 8 paragraph email about myself, the admin didn't even take the time to reply to me, which I find extremely rude, if I am too lowly for his application, then letting me know how to improve would really have been polite.

As it is, because of how I was treat by them, I have an extreme aversion to this website. I don't see it as competition for HN, I was merely curious about the community there and it's comparison to the one here.

I guess I got my answer...

When did you send it? I don't know about the recipient of your email, but it's not uncommon for me to have a multi-week backlog of email. Long emails tend to get a long reply, so those take even longer.

I sent it when the site was released, day 1 or 2 I think, the first time it was posted on HN.

Wait, what? You have to apply for lobste.rs? What kind of nonsense is that?

Yeah, it's invite only too, so the idea is, you lower yourself and apply or you get invited by a friend because they like you.

So the end result is either it's full of really friendly, intelligent, hand picked people, or it becomes a clique full of friends who are less than intelligent.

I think you either missed or ignored his point.

I do think there is a risk of 'intellectual ghettoization'. The quantity in a community might not be that important after a while. But the quality, in terms of diversity of ideas, is very important.

lobste.rs for sure has/will have his public but what I like in HN is that is not only technical but also features interesting stuff for smart people allowing curious people from other fields to join and enrich the community (even if lots of people claim the opposite). For example I'm an architect (buildings not IT) and HN is my favourite community. You can say that for me there is reddit but it is full of BS where people too many times comment without having nothing to say.

I'd like to cite the Nader Principle: Groups of people with similar ideas should look for ways to compromise instead of splitting their effort.

There has always been value in collecting very different people with similar goals in one place. Greater diversity of perspective, backgrounds and points of view. I'm always a little sad to see a group of people split over a minor dispute or philosophical difference. It's taking what could be a great combined effort and diluting it.

I agree with you in principle, but in practice it is hard to even have that discussion on HN, where metadiscussions are frowned upon, there is zero transparency into how moderation is conducted, and you can be hellbanned without explanation or recourse.