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IT seems like there is a cycle that social news sites go through. First they cater to an elite Then they grow Then the masses swarm in and make youtube comme

by mixmax 19y ago

IT seems like there is a cycle that social news sites go through. First they cater to an elite Then they grow Then the masses swarm in and make youtube comments look like they were written by Einstein. The only site that I know of that has seemed to steer clear of this is slashdot. The secret is in the voting algorithm, and it needs to be adjusted when the site starts to grow. I heard that there is a pretty smart guy who has written this site in a pretty smart language, and I am confident that he has both the intent and ability to keep it in line.

mnemonicsloth 19y ago
PG does a lot to maintain news.yc, but it's probably his reputation that does most of the work. My sense is that the people responsible for turning reddit from what it was into what it is see him as "elitist," and don't want to be associated with him. Which is fine with me...
- kajecounterhack 19y ago
  Paul is chill ;) I doubt YC becomes like reddit, main reason being that the community here is extremely good at downmodding arbitrary posts. Is it the goal of YC to become enormous or to provide a news sharing area for serious programmers?
timr 19y ago
I wouldn't say that Slashdot's secret is in the voting algorithm...it's in the voting allocation. Not every Joe Douchebag gets a vote on Slashdot. You need to have been around a while, and you need to have a reasonably good reputation to get mod points. IMO, the downfall of Digg, Reddit et al. is that they let everyone express their opinion by voting. I think it's a bad model.
- parbo 19y ago
  How about using "early" votes just to cater for individual taste, not for article points/karma/whatever? By "early" I mean before a user has acquired enough karma, or gravitas, or pompousness to actually be known to make a positive contribution.
Xichekolas 19y ago
Funny that you mentioned Slashdot as a paragon of intelligent community. I recently stopped going to /. all together because the signal-to-noise ratio got too low. You can't talk about anything there without getting past a bunch of 'first post' and GNAA comments, and once you find a decent thread of discussion, it is inevitably hijacked by some amateur Grammar Nazi pointing out the difference between its and it's (since the person who misused it obviously did it on purpose... definitely couldn't be a typo). You could say "just browse at 4 and higher," but then you miss a lot of good stuff that was downmodded for political reasons, or was too far down the page to ever get upmodded to begin with. This gives more weight to early comments than later ones, and hence everything must be hastily done, and hence there will be a typo which will bring out the Grammar Nazis, etc. Slashdot has a lot of problems. The only reason it hasn't become a Digg or Reddit is because human moderators actually screen the stuff that gets posted, rather than rely on the (lack of) wisdom of the crowds. Content-wise, Digg and Reddit tread a lot of the same territory as Fark nowdays, only on Fark the main point is writing a funny headline or photoshopping a funny image, not the story itself. I think YC News works because it is small, and I think it stays small because it is focused. So thank you all for keeping it focused.
- nkohari 19y ago
  If I could vote you up twice for this comment, I would. :)
  - raganwald 19y ago
    I'll lend a hand and upmod it.
- presty 19y ago
  how long is recently? these things that you describe have been unnoticed for ages (not gone, but quickly down-modded)
  - Xichekolas 19y ago
    I stopped reading /. in November. You're right, these problems have been around forever, but until lately I had no alternative. I have always been mostly interested in the stories they ran on software and renewable energy stuff, but have found several blogs and YC News (and now the Arc Forums) to be much more satisfying of my software reading needs. As for renewable energy, most of the /. stories just got so outlandish and pie in the sky that it just wasn't worth reading about. The problems I have described above were those that made me want to leave /. to begin with, but I couldn't really get out until I found an alternative of some sort. And like I said, I didn't read at a certain threshold, so I got to see the stuff even if it was downmodded (and got to see some good stuff too that was downmodded).
michaelneale 19y ago
Slashdot has had its ups and downs, I think its quite reasonable now. You often get really informative and in depth commentary there.

by mixmax 19y ago

mnemonicsloth 19y ago

PG does a lot to maintain news.yc, but it's probably his reputation that does most of the work. My sense is that the people responsible for turning reddit from what it was into what it is see him as "elitist," and don't want to be associated with him. Which is fine with me...

kajecounterhack 19y ago
Paul is chill ;) I doubt YC becomes like reddit, main reason being that the community here is extremely good at downmodding arbitrary posts. Is it the goal of YC to become enormous or to provide a news sharing area for serious programmers?

timr 19y ago

I wouldn't say that Slashdot's secret is in the voting algorithm...it's in the voting allocation. Not every Joe Douchebag gets a vote on Slashdot. You need to have been around a while, and you need to have a reasonably good reputation to get mod points. IMO, the downfall of Digg, Reddit et al. is that they let everyone express their opinion by voting. I think it's a bad model.

parbo 19y ago
How about using "early" votes just to cater for individual taste, not for article points/karma/whatever? By "early" I mean before a user has acquired enough karma, or gravitas, or pompousness to actually be known to make a positive contribution.

Xichekolas 19y ago

Funny that you mentioned Slashdot as a paragon of intelligent community. I recently stopped going to /. all together because the signal-to-noise ratio got too low. You can't talk about anything there without getting past a bunch of 'first post' and GNAA comments, and once you find a decent thread of discussion, it is inevitably hijacked by some amateur Grammar Nazi pointing out the difference between its and it's (since the person who misused it obviously did it on purpose... definitely couldn't be a typo). You could say "just browse at 4 and higher," but then you miss a lot of good stuff that was downmodded for political reasons, or was too far down the page to ever get upmodded to begin with. This gives more weight to early comments than later ones, and hence everything must be hastily done, and hence there will be a typo which will bring out the Grammar Nazis, etc. Slashdot has a lot of problems. The only reason it hasn't become a Digg or Reddit is because human moderators actually screen the stuff that gets posted, rather than rely on the (lack of) wisdom of the crowds. Content-wise, Digg and Reddit tread a lot of the same territory as Fark nowdays, only on Fark the main point is writing a funny headline or photoshopping a funny image, not the story itself. I think YC News works because it is small, and I think it stays small because it is focused. So thank you all for keeping it focused.

nkohari 19y ago
If I could vote you up twice for this comment, I would. :)
- raganwald 19y ago
  I'll lend a hand and upmod it.
presty 19y ago
how long is recently? these things that you describe have been unnoticed for ages (not gone, but quickly down-modded)
- Xichekolas 19y ago
  I stopped reading /. in November. You're right, these problems have been around forever, but until lately I had no alternative. I have always been mostly interested in the stories they ran on software and renewable energy stuff, but have found several blogs and YC News (and now the Arc Forums) to be much more satisfying of my software reading needs. As for renewable energy, most of the /. stories just got so outlandish and pie in the sky that it just wasn't worth reading about. The problems I have described above were those that made me want to leave /. to begin with, but I couldn't really get out until I found an alternative of some sort. And like I said, I didn't read at a certain threshold, so I got to see the stuff even if it was downmodded (and got to see some good stuff too that was downmodded).

michaelneale 19y ago

Slashdot has had its ups and downs, I think its quite reasonable now. You often get really informative and in depth commentary there.