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I am not very sure about this for a few reasons: 1. There is possibly several ways to game the upvote system. HN community is not anonymous, and there are peop

by arihant 11y ago

I am not very sure about this for a few reasons: 1. There is possibly several ways to game the upvote system. HN community is not anonymous, and there are people who have more friends here than others. A lot of very good founders would probably not have enough friends here. That might create bias once an Apply HN post reaches first page vs. another. 2. Participating startups risk facing public bashing while hoping to get priceless feedback. This happens often here, even unintentionally sometimes. This also poses a risk that a lot of startups would not be 100% honest in one way or another to minimize bashing. This is commonplace on Reddit. But this is not Reddit and any founder cannot forever escape people here. This is an ecosystem forum which is extremely civil in Show HN (with a few exceptions) but might not be so when competing for a resource -- the 2 YCF spots. Maybe Reddit is the way it is because everyone is competing for points. 3. Publicly applying for funding might step on private financing laws of several states and nations? It might also be against some by-laws. Would this constitute a public offer? Maybe this could be helped better by doing one or more of these: 1. Apply HN posts should not make it to homepage and should be a separate section. 2. The heuristic should not be known publicly of what YC partners are looking for. 3. Companies should still be required to fill a YC app before posting. Then it's a public contest rather than a public offer to sell shares. This would be interesting for sure!

dang 11y ago
We've put a ton of work into HN's anti-gaming software. There's no piece of code we've worked harder on. We also have a ton of experience looking at voting data. That's one advantage of keeping this process close to how HN normally works: that software and experience will apply here. That's definitely not to say that there won't be new forms of gaming that we haven't seen before and don't know how to combat. It's a risk. We can mitigate that risk by emphasizing the quality of discussion in the threads. Experience has taught that genuine community interest is pretty recognizable. If a post gets lots of upvotes, but little community interest, or the interest doesn't seem genuine, HN users will notice, as will we. That should provide a measure of self-correction, and beyond that, we'll see what happens. If you think you notice fakery, hn@ycombinator.com is the place to let us know.
- ksou32 11y ago
  He's not talking about someone automating voting, rather imagine if founder A is a very popular guy in Twitter and YouTube. He makes a post saying 'Hey support my awesome startup '. Founder B might have a better idea, but not the followers. However, Founders A existing popularity may provide a nice userbase for startup, which would be a key element of success. Theirs no real way to make this 'fair'
  - dang 11y ago
    Ah, perhaps I misread the GP. But I agree that there's no way to control for all these factors. It would drive one mad to try and probably make consensus harder to arrive at.
    - ksou32 11y ago
      And even outside of just automation and authentic followers you have Amazon mechanical truk which would allow you to pay real people a quarter or whatever to vote for you.
    - nickpsecurity 11y ago
      It's worth trying to figure out something as it's a problem here enough people occasionally leave. It's basically mob or follow-the-leader mentality that results in reflexive downvotes on hot-topics when dissenting comments appear. I encountered this when I got into battles with tptacek not knowing he was No 1 or whatever here. I barely care about the popularity or politics as I focus on getting right info to right people. So, I didn't stop when every comment I had was being downvoted at once multiple times. (shrugs) Nonetheless, I still watched it with fascination in a group dynamics sense as any comment to him had this pattern: a single, nearly-instant downvote (him or biggest fan); a few more in a short period that grayed my post out; his own often going gray after a bit longer; mine ungraying; his ungraying hit and miss; stabilization at anywhere from like -2 to +4. Only happens with fan-favorite people (eg him), tech (eg Rust/C), or topics (eg anti-VC claims naturally) here as my other posts consistently get ignored, a few votes (good or bad), or major upvote for outliers. My net impression was that it represented mob voting by groups for and against those popular individuals as I was unestablished here at the time. I guess what I'm getting at is there's gotta be an overlap between the spikes, where they're showing up, and who makes them show up. If a negative surge registers as fan-driven pattern, rather than diverse, then points in the other direction might counter it. Some fraction of the total fan-driven votes while ignoring the other votes which were independent. This might stop tyranny of the majority from making dissenting, but otherwise informative, opinions from disappearing. Or it could be as simple as noticing the effect, capping number of negative votes that can come in on that comment/thread, and preventing gray out. Keeps the numbers honest while achieving same objective. So, those are just a few ideas to throw around based on what I've seen. The data also led me to counter the disinformation spread elsewhere that critiquing these hot people or topics will totally destroy your karma on HN. I've hit them all and consistently to the point that my account would've disappeared within 3-5 business days of beginning. ;) So, the mobs are there & have significant effect that can deter new or less aggressive commenters. Yet, the moderation & community culture keeps it minimal to point that a mix of supportive and neutral, informative comments brings in enough upvotes to easily counter it. Blocking their ability to disappear dissenting comments upon detecting fan-driven, vote surges might be all it takes.
giis 11y ago
> Apply HN posts should not make it to homepage and should be a separate section IHMO, Keeping it in a separate section, looks definitely the right approach.

by arihant 11y ago

dang 11y ago

We've put a ton of work into HN's anti-gaming software. There's no piece of code we've worked harder on. We also have a ton of experience looking at voting data. That's one advantage of keeping this process close to how HN normally works: that software and experience will apply here. That's definitely not to say that there won't be new forms of gaming that we haven't seen before and don't know how to combat. It's a risk. We can mitigate that risk by emphasizing the quality of discussion in the threads. Experience has taught that genuine community interest is pretty recognizable. If a post gets lots of upvotes, but little community interest, or the interest doesn't seem genuine, HN users will notice, as will we. That should provide a measure of self-correction, and beyond that, we'll see what happens. If you think you notice fakery, hn@ycombinator.com is the place to let us know.

ksou32 11y ago
He's not talking about someone automating voting, rather imagine if founder A is a very popular guy in Twitter and YouTube. He makes a post saying 'Hey support my awesome startup '. Founder B might have a better idea, but not the followers. However, Founders A existing popularity may provide a nice userbase for startup, which would be a key element of success. Theirs no real way to make this 'fair'
- dang 11y ago
  Ah, perhaps I misread the GP. But I agree that there's no way to control for all these factors. It would drive one mad to try and probably make consensus harder to arrive at.
  - ksou32 11y ago
    And even outside of just automation and authentic followers you have Amazon mechanical truk which would allow you to pay real people a quarter or whatever to vote for you.
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    It's worth trying to figure out something as it's a problem here enough people occasionally leave. It's basically mob or follow-the-leader mentality that results in reflexive downvotes on hot-topics when dissenting comments appear. I encountered this when I got into battles with tptacek not knowing he was No 1 or whatever here. I barely care about the popularity or politics as I focus on getting right info to right people. So, I didn't stop when every comment I had was being downvoted at once multiple times. (shrugs) Nonetheless, I still watched it with fascination in a group dynamics sense as any comment to him had this pattern: a single, nearly-instant downvote (him or biggest fan); a few more in a short period that grayed my post out; his own often going gray after a bit longer; mine ungraying; his ungraying hit and miss; stabilization at anywhere from like -2 to +4. Only happens with fan-favorite people (eg him), tech (eg Rust/C), or topics (eg anti-VC claims naturally) here as my other posts consistently get ignored, a few votes (good or bad), or major upvote for outliers. My net impression was that it represented mob voting by groups for and against those popular individuals as I was unestablished here at the time. I guess what I'm getting at is there's gotta be an overlap between the spikes, where they're showing up, and who makes them show up. If a negative surge registers as fan-driven pattern, rather than diverse, then points in the other direction might counter it. Some fraction of the total fan-driven votes while ignoring the other votes which were independent. This might stop tyranny of the majority from making dissenting, but otherwise informative, opinions from disappearing. Or it could be as simple as noticing the effect, capping number of negative votes that can come in on that comment/thread, and preventing gray out. Keeps the numbers honest while achieving same objective. So, those are just a few ideas to throw around based on what I've seen. The data also led me to counter the disinformation spread elsewhere that critiquing these hot people or topics will totally destroy your karma on HN. I've hit them all and consistently to the point that my account would've disappeared within 3-5 business days of beginning. ;) So, the mobs are there & have significant effect that can deter new or less aggressive commenters. Yet, the moderation & community culture keeps it minimal to point that a mix of supportive and neutral, informative comments brings in enough upvotes to easily counter it. Blocking their ability to disappear dissenting comments upon detecting fan-driven, vote surges might be all it takes.

giis 11y ago

> Apply HN posts should not make it to homepage and should be a separate section IHMO, Keeping it in a separate section, looks definitely the right approach.