A question that taps into personal experience and gives users a chance to express their philosophy on a subject.
This works to some degree; if you ask "what is your experience with (Node.js|Electron)?" I feel like that won't do well due to the polarization and broadness attached to the subject. Some people will just avoid it because they don't want to read through pages of conflict (and they already know the popular quips that get copy pasted on every thread like that) and the people that are flocked to it will ultimately turn it into a flame war that gets shut down.
I think it has to be a question people can relate to, but at the same time, not have an obvious or universal answer. Ultimately your question is "what makes you click on an Ask HN thread?" and, apart from obvious clickbait, the simplistic answer is "an Ask HN where I'm interested in reading the answers." To extrapolate from that, who is I? Well, I is shaped by "the prevailing themes and culture of HN," so I figure anything that taps into tech or entrepreneurship is fair game. Is there more to it? Without clickbait..I don't think there's an objective answer.
That's an interesting position, I would expect clickbait to be more important on the normal posting format, because users are being asked to go to some external resource for reading.
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This works to some degree; if you ask "what is your experience with (Node.js|Electron)?" I feel like that won't do well due to the polarization and broadness attached to the subject. Some people will just avoid it because they don't want to read through pages of conflict (and they already know the popular quips that get copy pasted on every thread like that) and the people that are flocked to it will ultimately turn it into a flame war that gets shut down.
I think it has to be a question people can relate to, but at the same time, not have an obvious or universal answer. Ultimately your question is "what makes you click on an Ask HN thread?" and, apart from obvious clickbait, the simplistic answer is "an Ask HN where I'm interested in reading the answers." To extrapolate from that, who is I? Well, I is shaped by "the prevailing themes and culture of HN," so I figure anything that taps into tech or entrepreneurship is fair game. Is there more to it? Without clickbait..I don't think there's an objective answer.
That's an interesting position, I would expect clickbait to be more important on the normal posting format, because users are being asked to go to some external resource for reading.