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This was an impressive HN experiment, at the very least. 14 comments now and only one person even glanced at the article.

by rory096 10y ago

kbenson 10y ago
Depending on what you think upvoting the submission means, you might interpret it anywhere from deplorable to perfectly normal. I myself sometimes upvote for the submission (after at least minimally reviewing it), and sometimes for the discussion (sometimes before viewing the submission), and sometimes for the concept which I think deserves eyes and hopefully a discussion, even if the submission itself is anemic. Rather than treat submission score as some proxy for article quality or importance, I try to think of it as what I think it actually maps most closely to, which is interest, and in the most broad reading of the word and what it applies to. Edit: Although, it's possible you meant experiment in the entirely literal sense in that it exposes behavior, and there is no implied judgement.
- tedunangst 10y ago
  He said comments, not score.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    Sure, but I had to make some assumptions about what was being implied and what might actually be meant, because how do we actually know how many people read the article? I'll admit, I was using the comment as a springboard to bring up something I wanted to talk about. It wasn't really meant to come across as chiding, which I thought it unfortunately read as after I posted it, which is why I posted the edit, which I'm not sure really helps. It establishes it as me calling out the parent comment, but them tries to offer a way to soften it, and I'm not sure the net result was worth it.
- threatofrain 10y ago
  Perhaps this is lazy, but I often read the Hacker News comments to decide if an article is worth reading. I'll upvote posts that I think promote my strategy of depending on Hacker News to filter for me. That posts like zwieback's post are easily found reaffirms my faith in this strategy. This is partly because I don't fully trust my ability to comprehensively generate or iterate through the most serious criticisms or strong points of a technical matter, but I trust that a sufficiently large Hacker News will capture all low hanging fruits. I want to know these low hanging fruits prior to even giving an article a chance. Another reason is because even when people have something interesting to share, they often pad it with unnecessary prose, maybe because that's the current blogging trend -- to make technical discussions seem more narrativey and personal.
firebones 10y ago
This thread illustrates the mechanics of the fake news phenomenon quite well. Post is literally fiction, and half the comments are responding to the story's title alone, as if it were headlining an opinion piece.

This was an impressive HN experiment, at the very least. 14 comments now and only one person even glanced at the article.

by rory096 10y ago

This was an impressive HN experiment, at the very least. 14 comments now and only one person even glanced at the article.

kbenson 10y ago

Depending on what you think upvoting the submission means, you might interpret it anywhere from deplorable to perfectly normal. I myself sometimes upvote for the submission (after at least minimally reviewing it), and sometimes for the discussion (sometimes before viewing the submission), and sometimes for the concept which I think deserves eyes and hopefully a discussion, even if the submission itself is anemic. Rather than treat submission score as some proxy for article quality or importance, I try to think of it as what I think it actually maps most closely to, which is interest, and in the most broad reading of the word and what it applies to. Edit: Although, it's possible you meant experiment in the entirely literal sense in that it exposes behavior, and there is no implied judgement.

tedunangst 10y ago
He said comments, not score.
- kbenson 10y ago
  Sure, but I had to make some assumptions about what was being implied and what might actually be meant, because how do we actually know how many people read the article? I'll admit, I was using the comment as a springboard to bring up something I wanted to talk about. It wasn't really meant to come across as chiding, which I thought it unfortunately read as after I posted it, which is why I posted the edit, which I'm not sure really helps. It establishes it as me calling out the parent comment, but them tries to offer a way to soften it, and I'm not sure the net result was worth it.
threatofrain 10y ago
Perhaps this is lazy, but I often read the Hacker News comments to decide if an article is worth reading. I'll upvote posts that I think promote my strategy of depending on Hacker News to filter for me. That posts like zwieback's post are easily found reaffirms my faith in this strategy. This is partly because I don't fully trust my ability to comprehensively generate or iterate through the most serious criticisms or strong points of a technical matter, but I trust that a sufficiently large Hacker News will capture all low hanging fruits. I want to know these low hanging fruits prior to even giving an article a chance. Another reason is because even when people have something interesting to share, they often pad it with unnecessary prose, maybe because that's the current blogging trend -- to make technical discussions seem more narrativey and personal.

firebones 10y ago

This thread illustrates the mechanics of the fake news phenomenon quite well. Post is literally fiction, and half the comments are responding to the story's title alone, as if it were headlining an opinion piece.