5 ms·

Snobbism-less way to save hacker-news from becoming another digg/reddit

• iamdave 19y ago
  Good question, as I've noticed a few posts completely irrelevant to everything that goes on normally here at Hacker News. It's a thin line to tread about removing karma and I'd love to hear some users thoughts about the issue.
• webframp 19y ago
  so remove the karma and there's no more motivation to gain some sort of social ranking cred? interesting idea.
  • echo419 19y ago
    I don't know that could go both ways: Those who post in order to spread information for information's sake may continue to do so, while those who spam may simply go away because there is no "reward/recognition" anymore. However those who spam may also feel that they now have nothing to lose and may post more worthless stories even more often.
• gaika 19y ago
  It is possible if you add proper trust metric, karma as it is right now is just a little bit too primitive for that.
  • rms 19y ago
    What do you mean by a proper trust metric? I see systems of karma on sites like these eventually evolving into reputational economies so I'm curious about any way of making karma more complex.
    • gaika 19y ago
      Trust and reputation are always in context, current karma system ignores it. But once you add context visualizing and interpreting karma becomes hard. Take a look of how we're trying to deal with this problem (link in my profile, sick of being accused of spamming, sorry).
      • rms 19y ago
        I have an account there but I'm unclear on what you're doing differently with reputation..
        • tim2 19y ago
          Utilizing reputations through clustering of voting histories in order to produce their recommendations is a pretty good description of what's going on there now. Next they're planning on giving you even more control by allowing you to control who you trust directly. This combined system should be the special sauce that really solves this problem, I think.
        • gaika 19y ago
          It is using machine learning approach to estimate what the impact of your feedback should be. That way it is depends on context (only topics / tags right now) and is gaming proof (i.e. you can give as much feedback as you want, that would only improve your reputation / predictions for you by the system).
• xlnt 19y ago
  remembering the name of everyone interesting works less and less well as the site gets bigger.
  • bootload 19y ago
    "... remembering the name of everyone interesting works less and less well as the site gets bigger. ..." I've noticed this as well. I keep a running tally of the frontpage with hacker, points, karma where I can sort the front page to read the top pages by person/karma. A quick scan of the front page shows me almost all are new names, most have karma of <700. Another check is the /news page compared to the leader board.
• eurokc98 19y ago
  The issue to me is between these two things: Alienate potential users versus allowing the mainstream crowd to alter the community. Digg and Reddit are prime examples of what eventually happens once sites become mainstream. To determine the best action we need to know what the long term goals of the site are, without knowing that its tough to generate any 'fix'. How about going the invitation only route? Or creating a series of basic coding/php type questions in order to sign up (think captcha)? I think either of those if implemented would cut down on the drive by comments that bring down discussion.
  • m0nty 19y ago
    Personally, I'd go the mefi route and charge $5. That seems to work there, and (since this site is primarily about YC's aims and its potential founders) I'm sure serious entrepreneurs wouldn't think even once about paying. Look at it this way: people will pay for the privilege of an intelligent conversation, but trolls feel so entitled that 99% of them will never pay.
    • staunch 19y ago
      It felt funny how different my reaction was to the idea of paying at Metafilter vs news.yc. I scoffed there, but I'd pay $5 here in a heartbeat. If that's all we have to do it seems a small price to pay. Maybe if it added up to enough there'd even be a YC company funded by it :-)
      • mechanical_fish 19y ago
        Oh, man -- your post made my math-addicted brain start estimating the financial cost of the time I spend here on news.YC. Now I need a drink, and it's only noon. Believe me, $5 would be nothing.
• slim 19y ago
  i think going social and "asymmetrical" is the way to go. think twitter. their subscription system does not obligate you to follow people following you. this is the key to good content filtering. of course we can keep a "public timeline" (for new users which don't know where to begin)
• yummyfajitas 19y ago
  One thing that might be useful is for users to be able to block other users. If I don't want to read any more posts/submissions by WakeUpSheeple or AlienFromPrisonPlanet, I can just block them. One could combine this with flagging accounts for possible deletion if they are blocked by too many people (as WakeUpSheeple probably would be). Deletion would occur only after editorial review. This wouldn't work for that other site, since trolls have critical mass. But it might work for us.
• twak 19y ago
  use a pagerank-like karma assignment (high karma people give more karma). it's better than having a slashdotesque editor. (and the only thing our grahamist overlords would have to do is to kill someone's karma if they go off topic)
  • twak 19y ago
    all these ideas are a little experimental. how can we try them out without nuking this community?
• andreyf 19y ago
  > I just wish we will remain a small community This might be the problem? Simply the size?
• systems 19y ago
  Sorting, searching, filtering, tagging and personal preference should solve this problem Moral is, this site should add features that solve the problem instead of asking the users to ... just behave!
  • r7000 19y ago
    > Sorting, searching, filtering, tagging and personal preference should solve this problem and ruin the sense of community (baby + bath water)
• iamwil 19y ago
  I've also noticed a lack of interesting articles on the front page ever since pg's "troll" essay. The current general hubbub over zoo vs savanna comparisons takes up too many slots. I think there are a couple ways to go. One thing to try is to show points, but no upvoting on the front page, and allow voting on the 'new' section, but no point totals. That way, articles that that get upvoted are interesting articles from people browsing new articles. Without the influence of points tallys, people will be voting more or less independently. As it stands now, social news isn't a 'wisdom of the crowds' sort of thing, but more like a positive feedback system that relies on a catchy title and a chance on the front page. This probably makes it more of a hit-or-miss for good articles. Secondly, as any community gets bigger, the common ground between them gets smaller. There was some quote about television being stupid and inane, not because people that watch it are stupid and inane, but that the common interests we have are stupid, but our refined tastes are varied. I find myself upvoting very little on the front page now, and the I have to spend time scouring the 'new' section to find the interesting stuff. To be honest, I see no reason why we shouldn't fragment the top news. This isn't like a newspaper where we only have one page to print on. However, I don't mean, breaking it up into "subHNs" like reddit did. I mean, I should be able to alter the weighing of the front page. The simplest scheme would be to allow a user to follow certain people's submits. I regularly like nickb (other than his xkcd submits) and chaostheory's submits, but not as much edw519. A mere difference in taste. However, my own news snobbery shouldn't affect what goes on the front page. Everyone then has their own 'view' of the top news. That way, if Hacker News sucks ass for you, it's because you voted for "haha news" and followed submitters' articles that you don't actually find interesting. One of the arguments against this is that the articles would homogenize, because people would follow the same types of things. Though potentially computationally expensive, one might be able to characterize a user based on the articles submitted/voted in some parameter space, and then you can show a distance measure between this user vs you and all the people you follow.
• chomchom 19y ago
  I agree that the posts are getting more mundane as some try to get 'the top score' possible. I'm all for this place being incredibly pompous if keeps up the quality of the content. I question the purpose of a number based karma system. Couldn't we just have a thumbs up and thumbs down approach on individual posters and not their posts. This way if you personally recognise that someone has a higher quality of posts, then you will go to the effort of recommending that person. Then you may choose to look at those who are connected to them. This way people don't have the same motivations. I'm all for a subscription based scheme as well if it keeps the quality up. Maybe even charge for it.
• pg 19y ago
  The site has been diluted a bit. The TechCrunch post increased our traffic by 20% like a step function, and since then I've noticed slightly dumber stories getting slightly more votes. I don't think getting rid of karma would solve the problem, though. The problem is voting, not submission. I may finally try turning on some kind of vote weighting. But there is a more organic solution: Long-time users: please vote more. If people voted up good stuff more often, that would fix the problem. And I know there is a lot of room to do that, because we now get around 12k unique visitors a day, and yet top stories rarely have more than 100 votes.
  • davidw 19y ago
    One thing that I've been thinking is that... there just aren't that many really good HN worthy articles out there. Are more people likely to each post at a more or less constant rate? If so, that's going to dilute the site, if the number of "good articles" is constant in a given period. No idea how to fix that.
    • mechanical_fish 19y ago
      Write an HN-worthy article and submit it. Easier said than done, I admit. ;)
      • pchristensen 19y ago
        I've done a few in the last couple months. It's much easier to vote for the good ones than write your own.
        • bootload 19y ago
          "... It's much easier to vote for the good ones than write your own. ..." More to the point you are rewarded more to post articles on a regular basis. Writing your own articles requires a far greater energy input. This is exposing a flaw in the system in a way. Maybe HN user submitted stories should get recognition in the submission process? Maybe a start at 2 points instead of one?
• mechanical_fish 19y ago
  I'm not convinced that this "less interesting" problem is real. For one thing, talking about the "quality" of news.yc posts is like talking about the weather. It's partially random, and it fluctuates. Sometimes it's grey and drizzly! Sometimes it's sunny! Sometimes you have Hurricane Katrina! There certainly are lots of people complaining about the quality of posts, but that in itself isn't evidence of anything. People constantly talk about the weather, too. It's a safe topic, it's a shared experience that connects you with your audience ("Did you get wet yesterday? Yeah, I got wet, too!"), and it changes a lot, which guarantees that there will always be something to say. Any community larger than five will never agree on the definition of an "on topic" submission. One person's sensationalist linkbait is another's clever marketing hook. One person's banal retread is another's timeless classic. Finally, I don't think we need another system. We have a system: PG edits the site using whatever tools that come to hand. (Yes, the karma system is there, too, but it's kind of lightweight -- karma does not convey ultimate power, it's subtle in its influence, and it mostly serves as a way to send small-scale social signals.) Ultimately, I don't trust systems to build readable sites: I trust editors. I'm confident that, if the site starts to suck, PG will start arbitrarily pruning and transplanting and reworking the rules until it doesn't suck anymore. I certainly trust him more than I'll ever trust any mindless, gameable, automatic system, or any silver-bullet gimmick.
  • Flemlord 19y ago
    Believe me, it's real. I've been on reddit for a long time and I've seen it go from a great site with quality links to kitten pictures and "Vote Up If You H@te Hillary" posts. It's not as bad as most people say, but it's certainly a different site than it was a year ago. I'm not sure how to prevent it here, other than manually editing the system and deleting certain users.
    • mechanical_fish 19y ago
      Perhaps I should clarify that I'm not convinced that it's real on news.yc. Not yet, anyway. Yeah, reddit and Digg are disaster areas. I don't know why, and your guess is as good as mine. My impression is that, in Digg's case, they tended to play up the gaming aspect early on -- e.g. they put up huge banners trumpeting the number of diggs for each article -- and built their audience out of people who think that competing to push articles up the leaderboard is a fun sport. Now they've reaped the whirlwind. Reddit, I'm not so sure I could even guess. I didn't stick around to analyze the phenomenon; I just left. I do agree, however, that the only proven solution involves manually editing the system to some degree.
• jamespitts 19y ago
  How about this approach: the earlier a member signed up, the more their votes count in the rankings.
• ambition 19y ago
  How about imposing a small karma penalty to post a new story? Then, set a minimum karma requirement for posters. The karma requirement could be positive or negative. It would eliminate spammers and reduce bad stories in one fell swoop. I noticed a couple users tend to post a large number of stories which generate no discussion and earn no points, but there's no loss to the user and no prevention mechanism.
• edw519 19y ago
  I would seriously consider changing the appearance of the colored header bar. There are 9 items on this bar, but they are not all the same kind of item. The first 4 (Hacker News, new, threads, and comments) are different views of the same data, so they should be tabs. Leaders, jobs, and <login id> should be links (blue underlined) because they take you to another page, not another view. Submit and logout should be buttons. I would change "Hacker News" to "Popular" and I would put the "New" tab first, because the Popular view is the default. I still get confused by the "threads" and "comments" tabs (now what are these, again?) Why do I make these suggestions? Because we are all so used to the site, it's almost impossible for us to visualize how noobies see it. We really need to think about how to better direct people to the new page more often and more easily, without making it the default page. I think the biggest problem is that too many good stories never gain enough traction to graduate to the popular page. If a good story falls to 31st on the new page without an upvote, we'll probably never see it again. This happens often because new posts come in faster than people get to vote for them. I often read a story that I think is fascinating and wonder how people here will react to it, so I submit it, only to find it disappearing without any upvotes or comments. On the other hand, sometimes my submission takes off to the top of the front page. I realize that I probably think a little differently that a lot of people, but not THAT MUCH differently. Sometimes, I think, it's just timing. Thus, the "It fell off the new page too fast" hypothesis. Just a thought. Of course, if the data suggests otherwise, then never mind.
• dpapathanasiou 19y ago
  I just wish we will remain a small community with common interests It's interesting to see the comments in this thread while others are talking about optimal company size (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=144969 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=144969) and why large companies can be dysfunctional (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=144904 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=144904).