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Ah, while I was writing my response you said the same thing a lot better. I think any alternative to ProductHunt still needs an editorial team of some sort. But

Ah, while I was writing my response you said the same thing a lot better. I think any alternative to ProductHunt still needs an editorial team of some sort. But the fix could be as simple as changing PH to include 'staff/influencer picks' and 'community picks', while requiring staff/influencers to disclose their relationship to the product.

minimaxir 11y ago
Obviously, any link aggregator would need full-time moderators, which is another consideration for this mysterious PH competitor. The notion that human curation is intrinsically better than algorithmic ranking is a Silicon Valley trend I don't feel is accurate, but that's a topic for another rant thread. (In general, I think the new semimanual approach Hacker News has been doing is an interesting idea)
- sillysaurus3 11y ago
  semimanual It's not semi. That's the core reason why Lamer News had no chance of success, even if their broken software had worked. It's odd that it's a controversial idea. The best Reddit communities are those that are heavily moderated. To admit this is to admit that some people have better taste than others. Maybe that's the controversial bit. But it's the cornerstone of any new successful community. You see it pervasively everywhere you look, from SO to Reddit to HN.
  - minimaxir 11y ago
    To clarify, I'm referring to the "second chance" mechanics implemented a few months ago, where an article which got few upvotes may hours later get a spot on the front page and maybe get some upvotes, or when you get an email asking for an invitation to repost. Both processes require a human to determine what is "good" and what is "not good."
    - sillysaurus3 11y ago
      Ah. Are you sure it's semimanual? It seems plausible that it could be a mechanical turk. The only automatic part seems to be the shape of a post's falloff curve. But the falloff shape is probably selected from a list of shapes by a person.
      - dang 11y ago
        What we've been doing is sort of a software sandwich with a human filling. Software does a first pass through all the stories to guess which ones might be good candidates (otherwise there are too many for humans to review). Then humans pick some candidates. Those go into a pool from which software randomly picks one every so often and randomly places it low on the front page. After that it's up to the community which ones are interesting. The ones that aren't fall off the front page relatively quickly. I've been meaning to write some code to collect data on how much frontpage time they get. That's the current state. We do still send repost invites occasionally, but mostly not, because users made it clear they don't like the duplicates. I don't think the human phase can be automated. Instead, our plan is to open it to the community, so it isn't just us and selected users picking stories. The challenge is to design a mechanism for that which doesn't just reduce to an upvoting system (since as the knight in Monty Python says about the grail, we've already got one it's very nice). We'll also probably publish the list of stories selected in this way, whether or not they end up getting traction, because if nothing else it's alternate reading material.

minimaxir 11y ago

Obviously, any link aggregator would need full-time moderators, which is another consideration for this mysterious PH competitor. The notion that human curation is intrinsically better than algorithmic ranking is a Silicon Valley trend I don't feel is accurate, but that's a topic for another rant thread. (In general, I think the new semimanual approach Hacker News has been doing is an interesting idea)

sillysaurus3 11y ago
semimanual It's not semi. That's the core reason why Lamer News had no chance of success, even if their broken software had worked. It's odd that it's a controversial idea. The best Reddit communities are those that are heavily moderated. To admit this is to admit that some people have better taste than others. Maybe that's the controversial bit. But it's the cornerstone of any new successful community. You see it pervasively everywhere you look, from SO to Reddit to HN.
- minimaxir 11y ago
  To clarify, I'm referring to the "second chance" mechanics implemented a few months ago, where an article which got few upvotes may hours later get a spot on the front page and maybe get some upvotes, or when you get an email asking for an invitation to repost. Both processes require a human to determine what is "good" and what is "not good."
  - sillysaurus3 11y ago
    Ah. Are you sure it's semimanual? It seems plausible that it could be a mechanical turk. The only automatic part seems to be the shape of a post's falloff curve. But the falloff shape is probably selected from a list of shapes by a person.
    - dang 11y ago
      What we've been doing is sort of a software sandwich with a human filling. Software does a first pass through all the stories to guess which ones might be good candidates (otherwise there are too many for humans to review). Then humans pick some candidates. Those go into a pool from which software randomly picks one every so often and randomly places it low on the front page. After that it's up to the community which ones are interesting. The ones that aren't fall off the front page relatively quickly. I've been meaning to write some code to collect data on how much frontpage time they get. That's the current state. We do still send repost invites occasionally, but mostly not, because users made it clear they don't like the duplicates. I don't think the human phase can be automated. Instead, our plan is to open it to the community, so it isn't just us and selected users picking stories. The challenge is to design a mechanism for that which doesn't just reduce to an upvoting system (since as the knight in Monty Python says about the grail, we've already got one it's very nice). We'll also probably publish the list of stories selected in this way, whether or not they end up getting traction, because if nothing else it's alternate reading material.