7 ms·
The voting ring detector is in need of a serious upgrade. There are so many cases of vote solicitation by people with meaningful social media following and thei
by ploggingdev 9y ago
The voting ring detector is in need of a serious upgrade. There are so many cases of vote solicitation by people with meaningful social media following and their posts even make the front page. It's mostly the Product Hunt style "Hey we launched on HN, check us out" which is code for "upvote my post". People have stopped directly linking to the post submission for fear of tripping the voting ring detector, but they either just say "We launched on HN" or link to /newest. Seeing such posts make the front page makes me question the effectiveness of the voting ring detector beyond catching the obvious ones.
A shoutout to `minimaxir for being one of the only people constantly calling out others for such bs. As you can imagine, people get offended for being called out and I remember at least 2 instances of him being treated rudely for doing so on twitter.
If anyone comes across such submissions, please report them to the mods by sending them an email. I'll admit I have not been doing what I suggested, but going forward I will.
- mnglkhn2 9y agoThe "voting ring" is an essential tool when you need to promote links from certain media orgs (most of them paywalled). How else can you ensure the front page placement for links that you are getting paid (or have an interest in) to promote. The question is: should these deals be disclosed upfront, something along the lines of: "this is a paid submission" ?!
- krapp 9y ago>How else can you ensure the front page placement for links that you are getting paid (or have an interest in) to promote. You're not supposed to be able to ensure front page placement. Your content is supposed to rise and fall based solely on its merit, as determined by (unpaid and unaffiliated) users and the moderators.
- mnglkhn2 9y agoNot when the party wanting to ensure it is YC and HN.
- krapp 9y agoIt should be the same even for YC companies. Maybe it isn't, but it should be. And it shouldn't matter. Appearing on the front page of a web forum shouldn't be make or break, especially for a YC company.
- megaman22 9y agoThere are always "XYZ startup in some godforsaken place in California is hiring" posts that I have to go through and hide.
- stephengillie 9y agoI honestly wish we could comment and discuss the merits of the job, the company, and the location.
- nothrabannosir 9y agoI think people are missing the intended irony in this post.
- rdiddly 9y agoThe final question makes it murky though. Sounds like an earnest attempt at mitigation. If it's irony, that part makes it too subtle for me!
- yorwba 9y agoPaid submissions are already disclosed by the inability to vote or leave comments. They also tend to be by one of a few companies looking for developers.
- mnglkhn2 9y agoMy comment is prompted by the realization that recently (for the past year or so) a lot of general interest NYTimes articles shoot straight up to HN front page. There are two explanations: either the HN crowd is turning into a general interest one or YC/HN has a deal with NYTimes to help the later increase their memberships. Based on how the (down)votes go, I would give it a fair chance to the HN crowd turning into a "general interest" one.
- minimaxir 9y agoA better argument against is that the NYTimes consistently produces good journalism.
- mnglkhn2 9y agoYou will notice that I did not comment on the quality of NYTimes' articles. And it was a convenient example as it is an easy one to spot (at this moment there are 2 articles from NYTimes on HN front page). The question stands: should cross promotion deals be disclosed?
- grzm 9y agoAbove you posit the behavior you observe is due to a change in HN membership taste or some kind of deal between HN and NYT. I think the former is the easier to support: people often comment on changes on site membership. You appear to be giving more credence to the latter without evidence, which amounts to accusations of shillage. If you've got something firm, by all means, present it. If not, please abide by the guidelines which ask us not to engage in unsubstantiated accusations: generally this is applied with respect to other organizations, but I think HN should be given the benefit of the doubt here as well.
- tptacek 9y agoThere are no paid submissions to HN, nor is there an elaborate conspiracy between HN and "certain media orgs" to get paywalled links onto the front page. This is the sort of nonsense tangent crud that the mods would normally zap to the bottom of the thread as "off topic". But they probably won't here, because it concerns their own moderation, and they're generally loathe to intervene --- even to clean up the threads --- when the optics of doing so are complicated. So, if you're interested in helping them keep threads clear of conspiracies between HN and the NYT, it's helpful to know that the "flag" button for comments is revealed when you click the timestamp on the comment.
- mnglkhn2 9y agoYou seem quite sure! Are you part of the HN executive group?
- tptacek 9y agoYou figured me out! I'm the Executive Vice Chairman In Charge Of User Acquisition Metrics. Ewige Blumenkraft!
- mnglkhn2 9y agoNot sure if you're answering in good faith or if it is just a put down. I'll take it as a valid one. Good for you!
- reitanqild 9y agoDon’t take him to seriously on posts like this. Tptacek is obviously very smart but IMO can be quite mean at times in his political posts.
- krapp 9y agoHe's got six digits of karma. He's obviously a Big Deal.
- 9y ago
- ballenf 9y agoI have zero problem with someone announcing on social media that they launched on HN. If they have a following it's because they have (or had) something interesting to say there. If that's the case and they have launched something, then there's a >0 chance that it is also interesting. If nothing else, it's interesting solely for the purpose of being more plugged in to what the masses think is or should be popular, even if I disagree. At the risk of being hypocritical, I do have a problem with the opposite: coded messages to followers to flag en masse a post for basically any reason. The effects of flagging en masse vs. voting en masse are exaggerated as the data in the article illustrates. An optional email to moderators expressing the concern plus one personal flag is the appropriate response there, imo.
- tptacek 9y agoThen, to be straightforward about it, you have zero problem with people who have large Twitter followings controlling the front page of the site, because that's what you'd get if Twitter canvassing wasn't heavily penalized.
- ballenf 9y agoNo, but I'd rather have sophisticated vote ring detection instead of mods having to police the verbiage used in a social media post on another platform. Or having to worry myself about being too excited about my product's launch. The policing of verbiage is so hard. If I posted the exact same thing to my followers that some paid influencer did, the effect would me markedly different. I would likely get 0-2 votes from my post, because I have real world friends as followers few of whom have accounts here. My point is that the same words used by different people can have very different implied meaning and outcomes. It just doesn't make sense to me to judge a post on the words used(1) instead of looking at the voting patterns. For example, what if someone not involved with the project just loves it and spontaneously posts about it? Should the project creators be punished for that independent act? I'd say, yes, but only if it looks like a vote ring. (1) You could make an exception for blatant vote begging, but even that would be caught by a good vote ring algorithm.
- 9y ago
- minimaxir 9y agoOne of the reasons I call out voting manipulation is that people do it on HN unintentionally, mostly due to Product Hunt normalizing it. (atleast people aren’t taking out Twitter ads advertising HN submissions)
- dang 9y ago> many cases of vote solicitation [...] and their posts even make the front page That last bit is the critical one. Vote solicitation that doesn't go anywhere is an annoyance, but fake upvotes getting otherwise lame content on the front page is a threat. If you (or anyone) see cases of this, I wish you would send them to hn@ycombinator.com. We investigate, and can usually figure something out one way or the other. From my perspective—but of course we don't see everything—HN's anti-voting-ring software is now so strict that the main thing we have to do is turn it off when a submission is good enough. It's not uncommon for there to be a high-quality project that someone has put months or years into, and then naively tries to promote on HN (edit: I mean by asking friends to upvote). Often people think that's what they're supposed to do. (If you think the opposite should be obvious, try communicating anything to a large-enough audience. The vast majority never get the message.) If we didn't override the voting ring detector in such cases, some really good work would be lost to the audience here, which wouldn't benefit HN. Of course this is rare enough; most ring-voted submissions aren't very good. But years of working on this problem have taught me that the best voting ring detector would not be one that penalizes submissions; it would just turn all ring-votes into no-ops.