I do feel like its much more so the art of cooking than birdwatching (atleast imo)

Some people do want their food to be made by a chef sometimes even in front of them explaining them everything and the journey to them makes it worth it

For some people, it can be that the food that they buy from a shop nearby in front of them is good

For some, they want the cooking to be done out of their visible range and just want the food served

And the last categories probably the ones who will go to supermarkets to get some chips with 3 months expiry date created in a large factory

Hackernews to me feels like its 1 & 2 for me. What you describe as birdwatching is much rather only 1st category to me.

Like, in the 1st category people want to eat the special dish created by the trials of countless nights and passion

On the 2nd category, you are still witnessing a person but they are probably following a much more experience and in the start by say following tutorials or watching recipes. But they are much more democratized

I don't know, I don't go in hotels that much so I don't know the 1st part and how possible it is but I do go to 2nd category and I go around my local shops and see people make french fries and chat with them and ask how long have they been here and making french fries etc., they are willing to tell you everything.

I do feel like "AI slop" is kind of the 2nd category because like I am not only just interested in whether or not this recipe's entirely unique but I am rather interested in everything around it, what infrastructure choices they make and what coding tech stack they used & are they passionate about the project or what did they end up creating the prototype for.

the 3rd part is what I despise where think burger king or mcdonald etc. where the recipes come from franchise and everything comes and the person just serves you. All decisions are bland (think yet another nextjs app).

I don't think much of us want HN to be a supermarket or another macD but do we want this to be a cooking show where chefs build the whole recipes to serve us or do we want it to be a lot of neighbourly shops who have friendly people working who will chat with us and we can eat the french fries they make :)

(I love the french fries my neighbourhood makes, they are really spicy combine them with spring rolls and some drink or a good yogurt and it feels soo good lol, plus all of this costs less a 1$ or 2$ at most 3$ where I live, I can go and eat without worrying at all about the cost of eating outside usually if picked from the right shops)

Although I have never had the opportunity of seeing a chef cook his own dish in such sense but I can imagine that its great & I would like them as well but to me hackiness includes both, them hacking around with recipes to build something nice and the other hacking around with infrastructure like what logo and how close they are to me and even things like pricing imo.

I consider the latter to be like much more reachable than the former and to me I don't know how to explain but the idea of hackiness isn't just some clean final product, its also like just building something and gluing things and its messy too. And I love both of them both clean and messy hacking, I just want to know how much an human has been in the loop, where'd they get the idea and what they implemented in etc.

I don't know I live in a small city connected to a large city and I feel like I enjoy much more the messy aspects whereas people from large cities are much more likely to want to go to a large hotel for a dine or have a more artisanal taste.

So I have seen my fair share of people who want both.

Right now, I feel like it honestly depends on how large or small community you feel HN is.

If you consider HN to be too large aka you find it less likely to trust projects who get to here in the first place, you would want an artisanal person to build things for hand for you to enjoy

But if you consider HN to be small and there is just this idea of treating each person more individually and just this unwritten rule of law which generates more trust and faith in trying out new options even if they are hacky as long as I can sort of trust them decently and they are still involved in the loop and not completely 100% detached unlike say a large conglomerate franchise imo

Honestly I want HN to be a small place and not a large place but I feel like even HN is a large place for me but the problem with completely small places or building one's own is that you don't get visitors at all. We probably need something in between HN and no social media promotions (only via word of mouth) imo.

I have been trying to replace HN for quite a while now for something more nicher but still well connected place as well. Honestly have thought multiple times to create an HN alternative with the same UI and everything and same rules but just smaller and probably federated (ironically Gonna have it be vibe coded in single main.go golang :) hosting on a cheap recurring deal netcup server I got) but moderation of >0 people is hard and getting >0 people interested in a new website is hard as well which is precisely what the main post is about.