Veteran opinions would help drastically. It is clear there are a lot of young designers here with very little experience on what it is like to make a living as a designer.

I feel like 1. is a problem that's reflective of the UI design community as a whole. I've always felt that UI designers are kind of stuck in this bubble compared to the other big fields that seem to be more interconnected to both each other and other fields of work.

Isn't it odd that we're all user interface designers here, yet at the same time we've also been so disconnected to the architecture and industrial design community, whom also has to think about interaction and some of the same principles as us.

Or if you look at some (high quality) graphic design sites, they also tend to also look at artists and musicians in connection to design. Unlike UI design, they also don't demonize aesthetics. While I agree that UIs should be intuitive, at the same time we have to acknowledge that we're (most of the time) working in a visual space. It seems to me that many UI/UX designers seem to confuse good aesthetics as "unnecessary visuals," whereas it really means good communication trough a visual medium. In discounting the value of aesthetics and its importance we've in place created the idea of blindly following design trends to communicate ideas.

When I read a few classic industrial and graphic design books, I was surprised that they thought so differently compared to UI designers. For instance, in Thoughts on Design, by Paul Rand, Rand consistently discusses "aesthetics" in such a way to think about how to communicate.

The problem I found, however, is that there aren't many too many good design sites of the above mentioned design fields in the first place. In graphic design, most of the blogs have the same crap content that UI design blogs have, only in place of thoughtless marketing they have thoughtless visuals, that too, follow trends. In architecture, I found only one good critical blog, Failed Architecture. (Note: I'm not affiliated with that blog in any way.)

I say what I think regardless. I'm not hyper-sensitive and I don't post while caring if others are. If you're publically posting on a "social network" then you're asking for opinions and you'll get them (at least from me).

Very well put Mike. Echoes my feelings exactly. When I first heard about Designernews I always had hopes of a thriving community of discussions and dialogue around design. Principles, methods, problems, systems tips and tricks - knowledge sharing basically. But I always felt from the start that Designernews has always largely been ruled by very junior designers posting portfolio links, no depth all fluff. I'm 32 myself and I've always wanted a place to share experiences, even work in progress and have fruitful critical / non-critical discussion about my work, but to me Designernews just isn't that. I echo the comment about Hackernews being much more active and somehow more grown up and reflected. I for one really feel that what Designernews is now really doesn't benefit the design community as a whole, especially when you compare it to the discussions happening on Hackernews, as it sort of reaffirms this superficial impression that people can have about design as a practice. I would absolutely love to log onto Designernews one day and see a big emphasised post / thread discussing in detail (or even semi-detail) why someone has made this or that choice.

Response to 4) How much value do you feel young designers provide?

I also want to hear designers opinions on current events

please no.