In my view, the main thing to change about this community over the last 5 years is that it's simply gotten bigger. As a result, the range of individuals you see is more diverse and the more there are a greater range of interests represented.
There is a nostalgia associated with when the community was smaller and more intimate and I think that's what drives people to make claims about how things are declining. And I can relate to that. But, the fact is that there have always been "negative" people here, as there are in any community, and there always will be. But there are also a lot of people who have a lot of positive feedback to contribute. I know that it is increasingly difficult to get your ideas heard by those who are willing to provide feedback, but that's to be expected as a community grows.
This site remains, for me, the go-to source for intelligent, thoughtful, informed discussion on tech/hacking-related issues.
An interesting aspect of HN, I think slightly different from some other communities I've been in, is how this sense of decline has been there pretty much since the beginning. Here's a discussion thread from HN's first year worrying about the decline: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=60767
I suspect part of it is that it's been a very meta/self-aware experiment from the start, whereas many communities sprout up accidentally for various reasons, and only later get more self-conscious about it.
I've been here 5 years as well, and there's always been an element of knee-jerk negativity, but if anything I've noticed less of it lately. The community has always valued intellegent discussion over mindlessly cheerleading eachother. I do see unconstructive negativity here and there, but it tends to fall to the bottom pretty quickly.
I think the difference now is, the negativity was dealt with by the community pretty severely. I lurked for a long time, then joined and now I rarely participate, in total I have probably been reading HN for over 5 years, and actively commenting for over 3. To me it seems like the community policing itself, and the individuals that helped have been overrun by a larger community that is apathetic to the negativity.
There is a nostalgia associated with when the community was smaller and more intimate and I think that's what drives people to make claims about how things are declining. And I can relate to that. But, the fact is that there have always been "negative" people here, as there are in any community, and there always will be. But there are also a lot of people who have a lot of positive feedback to contribute. I know that it is increasingly difficult to get your ideas heard by those who are willing to provide feedback, but that's to be expected as a community grows.
This site remains, for me, the go-to source for intelligent, thoughtful, informed discussion on tech/hacking-related issues.