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I frequently see people describe HN and Reddit as 'fickle' or 'hypocritical'. But the underlying pattern seems to be a nasty consequence of point-based ordering
by Bartweiss 9y ago
I frequently see people describe HN and Reddit as 'fickle' or 'hypocritical'. But the underlying pattern seems to be a nasty consequence of point-based ordering: whatever comes first does best.
There are some great breakdowns of Reddit comment karma by time after post. The direction is obvious - earlier comments score better - but the exponential falloff is still a sight to behold. Any view that isn't outrageous enough to downvote heavily can win just by arriving first, being seen most, and being upvoted by commenters trying to increase their own engagement. (HN removes 'downvote' when people reply to you. I wonder if it should discount upvotes on comments you reply to?)
It's a less-trolled system than the open queue of a messageboard, and more conversational than the obscure branching pattern of Twitter or Tumblr. But it's not much good for comprehensive, noninflammatory discussion.
- smallnamespace 9y agoThat is somewhat negated by the fact that dissenting users from a post with a 'skewed' comment section can often go make their own post in response. This happens rather more frequently on Reddit than here since HN discourages duplicate posting on a topic.
- j_s 9y ago>HN discourages duplicate posting on a topic I would grudgingly agree, but found it funny that the following example sat on the front page the same day as your comment, and the second post exceeded the original's points & comments! It is possible to detect and block Chrome headless | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16175646 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16175646 (currently 146 points, 105 comments) 9 hours later: It is not possible to detect and block Chrome headless | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16179181 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16179181 (currently 341 points, 158 comments)