@Caleb Kraft

I see what you are saying about the grown user base. But lets not forget this is “hack a day”… If you forget your roots, people will forget you.

Caleb: Ok, so then you believe the niche of this site is “to be helpful” and not to provide a hack-a-day.

And because I want to view the site in the literal view of the name, I have to click a category to filter out the junk. How great!

Sorry about my misreading of your bad english.

Hi all,

I usually don’t keep on reading comments when they turn into flame wars, but this time I’m glad I did.
It made me realise that I felt obliged to react at least once on the whole new direction HAD is moving in. Not to point fingers, not to insult people, just to give my opinion. As long as people can express their opinion and the site owners listen to their readers, it’s up to them to act on it. Whatever happens afterwards, I have at least taken the time to react and (maybe) give a possibly usefull option.

I really appreciate this site and have been reading it for a couple of years now. Being someone with no background in electronics I found a lot of things here which filled me with a feeling like “wow… How can they even think about doing something like this? How can anyone be capable of even starting something like this project”. A feeling of awe and respect. And along the line, some bits stuck or inspired me to start reading and learning about things myself. The site has been a one-stop-shop those days that I didn’t feel like visiting 5+ sites to see what was new. If there was only one site to check, HAD would be it. One way or another, most things worth reading about would end up on the site sooner or later.
The posts that were too complicated to understand would just be read (and, most often, be admired) for reference and out of interest.

So, in a way, I have a lot to thank HAD for, and the site has earned more than my respect. For whatever that’s worth ;)

Lately I’ve seen changes to the site, which is normal I guess… Apparently everything in life changes, so no point in complaining about that – even though sometimes things take some time to get used to.

Still… I really can’t say I’m happy about the direction the site is headed to (or “in”? Sorry, as you’ve noticed I’m not a native English speaker). HAD was -to me, and apparentely to quite a lot of people- a unique concept that filled a gap no other site did. Like I explained, if there was something worth mentioning it would end up on the site some day. And there was no need to filter through a dozen of posts to find something interesting. Most post were worth the read, even if they where way out of my league, or even when they where about things I didn’t know anything about. The basic thing was just that they where all of a high enough level to be interesting. So if I didn’t get it, I might one day.
It was a sort of reference. If it was on there, it was “cool”. Or interesting. Or clever. Or…

If that meant that there wouldn’t be posts every 6 hours, no problem. If there were, great then! Same feeling “teh haterbot” has, I guess.

But lately I find myself “shifting” (if that’s the correct term) through post that simply don’t meet up to the level once retained by HAD, and this leaves a bitter feeling, apparentely shared by a lot of fellow readers.

Most HAD readers seem to share a sort of respect and commitment to the site not accomplished by many other sites. It however seems this commitment is being traded in because of a feeling of irritation with a fair share of those readers. Where checking the site used to be a daily ritual for me, I more and more often find myself thinking “I’ll wait another day and sift out the good articles from the rest not worth reading tomorrow”. The respect is slowly fading. This article (about the SSD upgrade) was just one step too far for me. This wouldn’t even be funny if it would have meant to be.

True, it is probably usefull to some people, as a lot of articles have proven to be for me. It just feels wrong to find them on HAD.

Instead of complaining, I would like to share some ideas on how the site might work for everyone (or at least more people). And although these are just my opinions and I’m certainly not the only one who came up with these, maybe they might be worth expressing. I understand that the site won’t stay the way it has been, so I can only share my opinion on possible changes that seem ok to me…

* Why not start a thread in which people can propose possible future scenarios for the site? Maybe followed by a voting? Let people get things of their chest and see what comes up. Maybe usefull ideas will show up.
I’m not sure how much Caleb and the other writers want to decide everything by themselves and be the “lord and master” of the site, but since the site has mostly become as important as it is thanks to the readers that have honoured it for the last few years, I think they should get more room for discussion than there is currently available.

* Caleb, so there is a category “classic hacks” in which the readers can still find the original type of posts. That would be a solution, I guess. But it gives the impression even more that those posts that made HAD big and respected are now less important, more exception then the rule.

* If this is the system that will be used, why not give the readers an option of logging in and seeing only those posts on the front page that are in their selected categories?
Or even better, a rating system for the amount of “cleverness”. I could chose not to see posts which are too easy/simple/… Or browse just occasionally through them. That way at least I could select not to be bothered with a post like the “Mac user swaps HDD for SSD” one.
Maybe that would be a system that *could* work for everyone. Everyone gets to see only the posts that are in those categories/grades of ingenuity that they choose to see….

* Or maybe two different sites? If there’s a new crowd you’re trying to reach, why not on a new platform? The old one seems to have worked quite fine for a long time, and some “recent” additions like Ian’s posts on certain IC’s made the site even better.
I actually liked the fact that there wasn’t a whole bunch of settings, scripts, filters, and other mish-mash like the way they redesigned sites like lifehacker. Simple is nice sometimes… So keep the site simple and start another one for the new type of posts?

So… We’ll see what happens in the next few months. Maybe HAD will find a way of doing their new things while still keeping the “old crowd” happy. I truly hope so and hope to keep on checking the site often to find new things to be amazed with. If not, let’s hope some new site turns up that serves what we’ve been enjoying on HAD all these years.

Thanks.