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Actually reading the whole article takes time, while reading the title and posting a knee-jerk reaction takes only a moment. One of the curses of a hotness-orie

Actually reading the whole article takes time, while reading the title and posting a knee-jerk reaction takes only a moment. One of the curses of a hotness-oriented system like HN is that earlier comments receive the bulk of the upvotes and responses, so it becomes less interesting to comment as time goes on. There are lots of little rules in place to minimize the damage of this (like no memes, jokes, pics, etc.; HN actively discourages clickbait), but it can't force people to actually read the articles before responding. And, one doesn't have to read the articles to vote, either (again, HN mitigates that problem somewhat by requiring a minimum level of upvotes before being able to vote, etc.). It's hard to have a substantive conversation online when so many of the incentives are for responding quickly (and probably without going too far against popular opinion within whatever community you're in).

deleted 9y ago
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krapp 9y ago
> but it can't force people to actually read the articles before responding They could hash the title for a minimum time, or until at least three comments are posted. That would at least force people to click the link to find out what's there, and filter out commenters too lazy to do even that.
- throwaway413 9y ago
  Or just force the user to click the link before the comment box is enabled for that posting.
  - mgkimsal 9y ago
    then waiting X minutes before enabling the comment box too, to avoid just clicking and posting?
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  Hashing the title when first posted would likely lead to more quality problems. The first stage of QC is New. Nothing makes it to the front page without a little time on New. So, I think that hashing titles would make it so that the worst (by some definition, but one that probably matches HN's definition) clickbaity stuff would rise to the front page faster and more often. This would happen because people could no longer make any decisions about what to click on New by it's title, and so the short articles that confirm common tropes, the funny pictures, etc. would get people coming back faster to click the upvote, while the longer articles would be more slow to get upvotes. Same problem we have already, only moreso. At least now, we have a stage where we can see the title in New and the interesting things might get upvotes sooner...you have a little more knowledge going in. i.e., I might not read the whole article about something I find really interesting, but I might click over to it, see that it's by someone I trust or seems to be well done and free of fluff, and upvote it before finishing reading. I dunno. I could see blocking commenting for a time after a post. But, hashing titles seems to just take away valuable information people use to make upvote decisions during the vital New phase of a post. Also, there's no way I'm clicking on every link on New. New is a goddamned wasteland; 50+% garbage, sometimes.
smichel17 9y ago
I wonder if there are other mitigation techniques that would be effective. For example, hiding all comments for the first N hours of a post's life, then showing all comments at once. This way, the incentive is towards writing the best comment you can, quickly _enough_.
Pica_soO 9y ago
one could make a sort of article captcha..
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  That'd be a fun AI project that would be reasonably easy with off-the-shelf components: A summarizer and test generator. It'd probably generate a lot of false negatives, though. Even humans make bad comprehension tests sometimes.
BurningFrog 9y ago
You can make people answer a simple question about the content before allowing a post. Easiest implementation is that the article poster gets to define the question and answer. In the future, an AI could take over.
nurettin 9y ago
Actually, the article makes some far-fetched assertions which may not even correspond to reality and may not even be worth discussing at all. OO (in this case the author means C++) is less related to a programmer's understanding of reality compared to C because... programmers of the 90s make more errors that are harder to fix in C++. Yeah. Right.
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  It does seem popular partly because of an anti-OO bias that bubbles under the surface here at HN. But, it is reasonably hard data, and data has value, even if the interpretation is up for debate. I think if everyone had read the article, that'd be the more common theme of the discussion here: Are the conclusions valid based on the data seen, and either way, is it useful to know...is there something actionable in this data?

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

krapp 9y ago

> but it can't force people to actually read the articles before responding They could hash the title for a minimum time, or until at least three comments are posted. That would at least force people to click the link to find out what's there, and filter out commenters too lazy to do even that.

throwaway413 9y ago
Or just force the user to click the link before the comment box is enabled for that posting.
- mgkimsal 9y ago
  then waiting X minutes before enabling the comment box too, to avoid just clicking and posting?
SwellJoe 9y ago
Hashing the title when first posted would likely lead to more quality problems. The first stage of QC is New. Nothing makes it to the front page without a little time on New. So, I think that hashing titles would make it so that the worst (by some definition, but one that probably matches HN's definition) clickbaity stuff would rise to the front page faster and more often. This would happen because people could no longer make any decisions about what to click on New by it's title, and so the short articles that confirm common tropes, the funny pictures, etc. would get people coming back faster to click the upvote, while the longer articles would be more slow to get upvotes. Same problem we have already, only moreso. At least now, we have a stage where we can see the title in New and the interesting things might get upvotes sooner...you have a little more knowledge going in. i.e., I might not read the whole article about something I find really interesting, but I might click over to it, see that it's by someone I trust or seems to be well done and free of fluff, and upvote it before finishing reading. I dunno. I could see blocking commenting for a time after a post. But, hashing titles seems to just take away valuable information people use to make upvote decisions during the vital New phase of a post. Also, there's no way I'm clicking on every link on New. New is a goddamned wasteland; 50+% garbage, sometimes.

smichel17 9y ago

I wonder if there are other mitigation techniques that would be effective. For example, hiding all comments for the first N hours of a post's life, then showing all comments at once. This way, the incentive is towards writing the best comment you can, quickly _enough_.

Pica_soO 9y ago

one could make a sort of article captcha..

SwellJoe 9y ago
That'd be a fun AI project that would be reasonably easy with off-the-shelf components: A summarizer and test generator. It'd probably generate a lot of false negatives, though. Even humans make bad comprehension tests sometimes.

BurningFrog 9y ago

You can make people answer a simple question about the content before allowing a post. Easiest implementation is that the article poster gets to define the question and answer. In the future, an AI could take over.

nurettin 9y ago

Actually, the article makes some far-fetched assertions which may not even correspond to reality and may not even be worth discussing at all. OO (in this case the author means C++) is less related to a programmer's understanding of reality compared to C because... programmers of the 90s make more errors that are harder to fix in C++. Yeah. Right.

SwellJoe 9y ago
It does seem popular partly because of an anti-OO bias that bubbles under the surface here at HN. But, it is reasonably hard data, and data has value, even if the interpretation is up for debate. I think if everyone had read the article, that'd be the more common theme of the discussion here: Are the conclusions valid based on the data seen, and either way, is it useful to know...is there something actionable in this data?