Bilingual

Bring back crappy forums
4 days ago
- Usenet, the early forum-like system, had over 110,000 newsgroups but declined in the late 1990s.
- Web forums emerged as an alternative to Usenet, with the first software, WWW Interactive Talk (WIT), developed in 1994.
- Key historical forum software includes Ultimate Bulletin Board, Slash, vBulletin, phpBB, and Discourse, each influencing internet communities.
- BBCode, created in 1998, allowed controlled text formatting in forums and influenced modern tools like the Godot game engine.
- Forums lost popularity to social media due to novelty, scalability issues, and the appeal of newer platforms like Digg and Reddit.
Show HN: I measured the half-life of 41,301 Show HN launches. It's 7 hours
3 days ago
- The median Show HN launch gets 2 points and 0 comments, with 61.7% receiving no comments and 78.9% getting one or none.
- The half-life of a launch's comment thread is 7.2 hours; half of all comments arrive before the first workday ends.
- Success in terms of points or comments does not extend the half-life; even top launches decay within similar timeframes.
- By hour 48, 4.2% of comments remain for median launches, with 71% of launches nearly finished; traffic drops faster.
- Launch spikes are brief, so distribution plans should focus on long-term engagement beyond the initial 48-hour window.
- Shipyard is being built as an alternative to HN's ephemeral attention, offering sustained review collection post-launch.
Odin, Wikipedia and Engagement Farming
2 days ago
- The Wikipedia article on the Odin programming language was deleted due to lack of notability and reliable sources, sparking controversy.
- GingerBill, Odin's creator, initially dismissed Wikipedia as an ideological playground gatekept by activists, but later expressed concern about its guidelines for programming languages.
- Casey Muratori argued that Wikipedia's sourcing rules are unfair to modern programming knowledge, which often lacks traditional academic coverage.
- Wikipedia's policies emphasize verifiability, reliable sources, and notability, with guidelines designed to maintain objectivity and avoid indiscriminate inclusion.
- GingerBill's contradictory behavior—claiming indifference while engaging extensively—suggests engagement farming and alignment with right-wing provocateurs he follows on Twitter.
- Analysis of Wikipedia editors involved in the deletion shows no evidence of ideological bias against Odin; they appear focused on general content moderation.
- The author criticizes GingerBill and Casey's clique for fostering a toxic, reactionary culture that prioritizes ego and spite over constructive discourse and software quality.

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#online communities

Bring back crappy forums

Show HN: I measured the half-life of 41,301 Show HN launches. It's 7 hours

Odin, Wikipedia and Engagement Farming