‹ BackHN Continuity

Thread

If we do not stop to help each other, what do we become?

212 points · 100 comments · signa11

  1. jacobgold · · focus · HN ↗
    > An LLM would have done exactly what I wanted back then. But would it have given me what I needed? At the time, I needed to know somebody cared enough to help me.

    Were StackOverflow, Google, and LLMs not all created by people who cared enough to help you?

    There are much better places on the internet to find personal connection than StackOverflow ever was.

    1. necovek · · focus · HN ↗
      Not really?

      They may have cared about helping "people", but not the individual D. (from the OP) who posted a single question and needed a bit of human connection in the process.

      1. jacobgold · · focus · HN ↗
        Assuming OP is a people, they're included, but I get your point.

        And it's great they did find personal connection on Stack Overflow, but it was infamous for its hostility to noobs. It's sad to say, but Stack Overflow very possibly discouraged more people than it encouraged in this way.

        I'd guess that both IRC and Discord have a much better track record of personal connection and helping people, and they're still thriving.

        1. necovek · · focus · HN ↗
          Indeed, I was not trying to defend SO, but their point.

          Most communities like this develop some (lot of?) elitism, but if you are in the in-group — or early — it can be very rewarding.

          My online hacker community time was well before SO (forums even before phpBB, IRC, mailing lists, free software on their self-hosted infra like Gnome, FreeDesktop etc), but you could see the same patterns always (even if you go through usenet group archives or BBS archives).

          The beauty of online is that you could always find a community to be in-group of (sounds like a lot of that is happening on Discord these days, but I do not have an account really).

          Similarly, you can see that on HN too (passing comments on "green usernames" etc), but it feels like both in-group self-moderation (with flagging and downvotes) and active moderation by dang and co at least keeps it low profile.

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.