On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Reddit, on the other hand, has the following guidelines:
Submit a link to anything interesting: news article, blog entry, video, picture...
The HN community is built around a particular standard. Reddit's official standard is the lowest common denominator. If the lowest common denominator is "Impeach Bush" and "Funny pic [nsfw]", then that's going to dominate.
Unfortunately, I've already seen Hacker News change over the last year (less programming-related content; more general business news). I'd love a gentle nudge back in the hacker direction. But it's still the best social bookmarking site at the moment.
Comments
The most important thing, besides the general desire to keep the community positive, is this: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Reddit, on the other hand, has the following guidelines:
Submit a link to anything interesting: news article, blog entry, video, picture...
The HN community is built around a particular standard. Reddit's official standard is the lowest common denominator. If the lowest common denominator is "Impeach Bush" and "Funny pic [nsfw]", then that's going to dominate.
Unfortunately, I've already seen Hacker News change over the last year (less programming-related content; more general business news). I'd love a gentle nudge back in the hacker direction. But it's still the best social bookmarking site at the moment.