I'm relatively new, so it's difficult for me to see any major change that's happened since I first joined. My personal opinion is that there has been little change since I arrived, but much talk about how much has changed.
That said, I think an article about economics or politics can be more profound and deep than a lightweight article about technology and be better for the tone of the site. My personal preference is for news here to be technical, but an article being technical is not enough for it to be interesting. Overall, however, I want articles with meat; that dig a little deeper than "Head First SQL" or "How I made a blog engine with Erlang" (or "I am Phillip Greenspun and I don't like people in Northern California").
While I love beautifully designed languages as much as the next guy, I've seen probably 50 blog articles posted here about "Why language design matters" or "Why language design doesn't matter" or "Why there can never be a better Lisp". While these may be technical in nature, they're often very shallow and redundant.
As far as I know, it would be an impressive feat to determine depth automatically, but I think it would give you a better picture of how the tone is changing over time in a relevant way. And maybe it would be a good filter for submitted articles.
That said, I think an article about economics or politics can be more profound and deep than a lightweight article about technology and be better for the tone of the site. My personal preference is for news here to be technical, but an article being technical is not enough for it to be interesting. Overall, however, I want articles with meat; that dig a little deeper than "Head First SQL" or "How I made a blog engine with Erlang" (or "I am Phillip Greenspun and I don't like people in Northern California").
While I love beautifully designed languages as much as the next guy, I've seen probably 50 blog articles posted here about "Why language design matters" or "Why language design doesn't matter" or "Why there can never be a better Lisp". While these may be technical in nature, they're often very shallow and redundant.
As far as I know, it would be an impressive feat to determine depth automatically, but I think it would give you a better picture of how the tone is changing over time in a relevant way. And maybe it would be a good filter for submitted articles.