7 ms·

Yes, yes, HN is going to the dogs, it's not as good as it used to be, it's all because of the new users, and so on and so on. It's been like that since I joined

by swombat 16y ago

Yes, yes, HN is going to the dogs, it's not as good as it used to be, it's all because of the new users, and so on and so on. It's been like that since I joined two and a half years ago.

boredguy8 16y ago
I agree, it's a fairly constant theme. But... 1) It's been a while, so worth the reminder; and 2) It's actually a submission from someone whose been here a while. The last several were from people with < 200 day memberships. So: worth a little bit of +1 action, but I certainly hope it doesn't 'stay at the top for a while' as someone else said. Hoarding one of the 'above the fold' slots would be a bummer.
- RossM 16y ago
  We're supposed to ignore the fold now aren't we? :)
- j_baker 16y ago
  Yes, but I don't see this as being helpful. Be honest. Did you reread the guidelines? And more importantly, do you think the people that didn't read the guidelines the first time around will reread it because of a thread like this? All in all, I think this is less about helping newbies integrate into the site and more about giving "old-timers" a chance to vent.
DavidSJ 16y ago
I think the reality is more that it goes in cycles, and it does seem to be at one of its low points currently. A reminder of the guidelines seems in order.
- pg 16y ago
  What I find is that randomness produces the appearance of cycles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clustering_illusion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clustering_illusion The last couple days were particularly bad, with lots of articles about controversial but fundamentally boring topics. But I think it was a coincidence, as usual.
  - kscaldef 16y ago
    Do you collect any metrics on user behavior? For example, it seem to me like downvoting (and particularly the abuse of downvoting) is on the rise. But this is just a gut feeling based on my particular comment history.
    - pg 16y ago
      I don't think people are more apt to downvote than in the past. But there are a lot more voters. Plus I recently removed the -4 threshold on comment scores and instead merely never display a number lower than -4. So downvoted comments now cost more karma. (This was in response to people who would say asshole things, knowing they couldn't cost them more than 4 points.)
      - duairc 16y ago
        I don't know, I definitely think people a people a much more inclined to downvote for the wrong reasons. I've made a lot of posts in the last day, one of which was by far the longest post in a 200+ comment thread, none of which I think were in any way rude or anything like that, and despite that it's cost me around -10 karma overall (mostly because of one post in particular, which I don't think was that bad. A strong opinion, but no personal attacks or anything). I've also observed a lot of posts being modded into oblivion for saying things like "thanks" and stuff like that. People generally seem to downvote posts which they disagree with, regardless of how polite or well-reasoned they are.
        steveklabnik 16y ago
        While I (obviously) don't think you deserved it, it was a very short, controversial post, with nothing backing it up. [1] And the "thanks" posts don't get downvoted because of a personal disagreement, it's that a comment that just says "awesome, thanks!" doesn't add any value to the discussion. An upvote would suffice. 1: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1643726 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1643726
- elblanco 16y ago
  What's also interesting is how the appropriateness of this particular metadiscussion seems to also come in waves. Today this is top of the front page. Tomorrow the same post might be flagged or comments downvoted into oblivion.
DeusExMachina 16y ago
I think that reminding people to read the guidelines does not necessarily mean that HN is becoming bad. I incur sometimes in posts that do not follow the guidelines and get a lot of downvotes. Half the time they are from new users that maybe do not even know about those guidelines, so maybe they do not even understand why they are getting downvoted. Of course they can learn it the hard way, but reading the guidelines is a lot faster and wastes less of everybody's time. In the same way there are some posts that are not appropriate to this community. In the last days I did not find many interesting posts in the first page, but that's just my opinion and the community as a whole decides what goes up or not. Nonetheless some days ago I even found a link to thisisphotobomb.com (a websites of the cheesburger network, like the lolcats) and this is clearly against the guidelines. Again, there are the voting system and the flagging system, but it wastes less of everybody's time just to know the guidelines and it's better not to pollute the new posts section. In each of these cases I think "you should read the guidelines", but don't write it because it's against them. But the fact that lately I've been thinking it more often, means that a kind reminder is not totally out of place. Does this all mean that HN is becoming bad? I don't think so. It just means that we have guidelines we care about because they made HN a place we all like.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- andreyf 16y ago
  Does this all mean that HN is becoming bad? I don't think so. It just means that we have guidelines we care about because they made HN a place we all like. Exactly. I actually haven't noticed any egregious infractions in the comments or stories, just thought it might be a good idea to point them out for those who might not be aware the guidelines even exist.
  - duck 16y ago
    It would be nice if a brief summary of the guidelines appeared on the "submit" page if your karma is below say 20 just so you have a more constant reminder.
lionhearted 16y ago
Indeed, though the worst trend I see is emotional comments getting voted up more. Maybe I'm seeing the past more warmly than it was, but it seems like clear, logical, consistent, coherent comments got voted up and emotional based comments stayed around 1 or got voted down. It seems like a lot of emotional reactions are getting voted up even when they're not coherent, consistent, and logical - which seems a bad trend.
- georgecmu 16y ago
  The worst trend I see is comments getting downvoted based on opinions expressed within, not on how poorly they are expressed. No matter how thoughtful a comment, if it goes against the groupthink, you can expect it to hurt your karma.
  - binspace 16y ago
    I like /.'s tagging of comments. It's good feedback on why something was up or down modded. It also forces a downvoter to justify why something is getting downvoted.
    - techiferous 16y ago
      Yes. I think a simple tweak of having two ways to vote could be an interesting new dynamic: agree/disagree and valuable/not valuable. That way you can express that you disagree with a comment but still upvote them for furthering the discussion. And you can hit the "not valuable" button for insults, trolls, fluff comments, etc.
    - xiongchiamiov 16y ago
      Now if they only allowed us to downvote stories, instead of relying upon tags such as "slashvertisement", "dupe", and whatever we tag those ridiculously-overhyped headlines...
  - tokenadult 16y ago
    Here is an example from 925 days ago of pg saying it is okay to downvote for disagreement. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 He is still thinking about tweaking the forum settings here to ensure good discussion. On my part, I'm a good bit more disappointed when a user asks a polite follow-up question (for example, "What would be a source I could check to confirm that fact?") and that kind of comment gets downvoted. Why do people disagree with trying to find out more information to enlighten the discussion?
edw519 16y ago
Right on, swombat. Last year, upon Iteration 27 of this same subject, I threw something like this together in jest: Quality of HN Comments Over Time | . . | . . q| . . . . u| . . . . . . a| . . . . . l| . . . . . i| . . . . . t| . . . you are here -->. . y| (that's all) |________________________________________________________ M J J A S O N D J F M A M J J A S O N D J F M A M J J A '09 '10 I must have been on to something because so many didn't realize it was a joke. What fun that was. All I have to do is shift the x axis every n months: some things never change. Original thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926604 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926604
- kaiserama 16y ago
  Sadly this is exactly what the CEO of a company (maybe all companies?) I worked for would do with his projected sales chart...and he still has his job. Now THAT's funny. Good work :)
- messel 16y ago
  Holy crap I remember that plot. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926806 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926806 Damn, we're always in the same spot, the years just keep flowing underneath us.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- jacquesm 16y ago
  This is the best way to measure change on HN I think: http://news.ycombinator.com/best http://news.ycombinator.com/best The ratio of HN vs non-HN items as observed by any individual is of course different.
- jurjenh 16y ago
  Wouldn't it be nice if we could actually keep track of the quality by some measure and thus validate your model? Things said in jest are often true, and I think you actually have a valid model. It would be interesting to have some live feedback on the current quality level, and see if that affects the response of the community, but this would require some sort of metrics on quality, which is quite a subjective field. I believe a while ago there was a submission about parsing text to see whether the author was male or female, and wonder if there is a similar algorithm to check whether a comment is positive or negative, technical or shallow and thus create some objective measure of quality.
lingrush 16y ago
What a coincidence, that's just like everywhere else too. It's like an eternal september or something.
lobo-tuerto 16y ago
It reminds me of the famous "Wear sunscreen" video :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=MX&v=0CVB8YSOLK4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=MX&v=0CVB8YSOLK4
- lobo-tuerto 16y ago
  Ugh, got decontextualized. I meant the video reminded me about the recurring ranting (or praising) cycle that takes place when looking life in hindsight. :) "... when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble ..."
sasare 16y ago
why? I love this , So does My boyfriend .he is almost 11year older than me .i met him via agegap love ``.c`o`m` a nice place for seeking age le ss love.which gives you a chance to make your life better and open opportunities for you to meet the attractive young girls and treat you like a king. Maybe you wanna check it out or tell your friends.. Just love it

by swombat 16y ago

Yes, yes, HN is going to the dogs, it's not as good as it used to be, it's all because of the new users, and so on and so on. It's been like that since I joined two and a half years ago.

boredguy8 16y ago

I agree, it's a fairly constant theme. But... 1) It's been a while, so worth the reminder; and 2) It's actually a submission from someone whose been here a while. The last several were from people with < 200 day memberships. So: worth a little bit of +1 action, but I certainly hope it doesn't 'stay at the top for a while' as someone else said. Hoarding one of the 'above the fold' slots would be a bummer.

RossM 16y ago
We're supposed to ignore the fold now aren't we? :)
j_baker 16y ago
Yes, but I don't see this as being helpful. Be honest. Did you reread the guidelines? And more importantly, do you think the people that didn't read the guidelines the first time around will reread it because of a thread like this? All in all, I think this is less about helping newbies integrate into the site and more about giving "old-timers" a chance to vent.

DavidSJ 16y ago

I think the reality is more that it goes in cycles, and it does seem to be at one of its low points currently. A reminder of the guidelines seems in order.

pg 16y ago
What I find is that randomness produces the appearance of cycles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clustering_illusion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clustering_illusion The last couple days were particularly bad, with lots of articles about controversial but fundamentally boring topics. But I think it was a coincidence, as usual.
- kscaldef 16y ago
  Do you collect any metrics on user behavior? For example, it seem to me like downvoting (and particularly the abuse of downvoting) is on the rise. But this is just a gut feeling based on my particular comment history.
  - pg 16y ago
    I don't think people are more apt to downvote than in the past. But there are a lot more voters. Plus I recently removed the -4 threshold on comment scores and instead merely never display a number lower than -4. So downvoted comments now cost more karma. (This was in response to people who would say asshole things, knowing they couldn't cost them more than 4 points.)
    - duairc 16y ago
      I don't know, I definitely think people a people a much more inclined to downvote for the wrong reasons. I've made a lot of posts in the last day, one of which was by far the longest post in a 200+ comment thread, none of which I think were in any way rude or anything like that, and despite that it's cost me around -10 karma overall (mostly because of one post in particular, which I don't think was that bad. A strong opinion, but no personal attacks or anything). I've also observed a lot of posts being modded into oblivion for saying things like "thanks" and stuff like that. People generally seem to downvote posts which they disagree with, regardless of how polite or well-reasoned they are.
      - steveklabnik 16y ago
        While I (obviously) don't think you deserved it, it was a very short, controversial post, with nothing backing it up. [1] And the "thanks" posts don't get downvoted because of a personal disagreement, it's that a comment that just says "awesome, thanks!" doesn't add any value to the discussion. An upvote would suffice. 1: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1643726 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1643726
elblanco 16y ago
What's also interesting is how the appropriateness of this particular metadiscussion seems to also come in waves. Today this is top of the front page. Tomorrow the same post might be flagged or comments downvoted into oblivion.

DeusExMachina 16y ago

I think that reminding people to read the guidelines does not necessarily mean that HN is becoming bad. I incur sometimes in posts that do not follow the guidelines and get a lot of downvotes. Half the time they are from new users that maybe do not even know about those guidelines, so maybe they do not even understand why they are getting downvoted. Of course they can learn it the hard way, but reading the guidelines is a lot faster and wastes less of everybody's time. In the same way there are some posts that are not appropriate to this community. In the last days I did not find many interesting posts in the first page, but that's just my opinion and the community as a whole decides what goes up or not. Nonetheless some days ago I even found a link to thisisphotobomb.com (a websites of the cheesburger network, like the lolcats) and this is clearly against the guidelines. Again, there are the voting system and the flagging system, but it wastes less of everybody's time just to know the guidelines and it's better not to pollute the new posts section. In each of these cases I think "you should read the guidelines", but don't write it because it's against them. But the fact that lately I've been thinking it more often, means that a kind reminder is not totally out of place. Does this all mean that HN is becoming bad? I don't think so. It just means that we have guidelines we care about because they made HN a place we all like.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
andreyf 16y ago
Does this all mean that HN is becoming bad? I don't think so. It just means that we have guidelines we care about because they made HN a place we all like. Exactly. I actually haven't noticed any egregious infractions in the comments or stories, just thought it might be a good idea to point them out for those who might not be aware the guidelines even exist.
- duck 16y ago
  It would be nice if a brief summary of the guidelines appeared on the "submit" page if your karma is below say 20 just so you have a more constant reminder.

lionhearted 16y ago

Indeed, though the worst trend I see is emotional comments getting voted up more. Maybe I'm seeing the past more warmly than it was, but it seems like clear, logical, consistent, coherent comments got voted up and emotional based comments stayed around 1 or got voted down. It seems like a lot of emotional reactions are getting voted up even when they're not coherent, consistent, and logical - which seems a bad trend.

georgecmu 16y ago
The worst trend I see is comments getting downvoted based on opinions expressed within, not on how poorly they are expressed. No matter how thoughtful a comment, if it goes against the groupthink, you can expect it to hurt your karma.
- binspace 16y ago
  I like /.'s tagging of comments. It's good feedback on why something was up or down modded. It also forces a downvoter to justify why something is getting downvoted.
  - techiferous 16y ago
    Yes. I think a simple tweak of having two ways to vote could be an interesting new dynamic: agree/disagree and valuable/not valuable. That way you can express that you disagree with a comment but still upvote them for furthering the discussion. And you can hit the "not valuable" button for insults, trolls, fluff comments, etc.
  - xiongchiamiov 16y ago
    Now if they only allowed us to downvote stories, instead of relying upon tags such as "slashvertisement", "dupe", and whatever we tag those ridiculously-overhyped headlines...
- tokenadult 16y ago
  Here is an example from 925 days ago of pg saying it is okay to downvote for disagreement. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 He is still thinking about tweaking the forum settings here to ensure good discussion. On my part, I'm a good bit more disappointed when a user asks a polite follow-up question (for example, "What would be a source I could check to confirm that fact?") and that kind of comment gets downvoted. Why do people disagree with trying to find out more information to enlighten the discussion?

edw519 16y ago

Right on, swombat. Last year, upon Iteration 27 of this same subject, I threw something like this together in jest: Quality of HN Comments Over Time | . . | . . q| . . . . u| . . . . . . a| . . . . . l| . . . . . i| . . . . . t| . . . you are here -->. . y| (that's all) |________________________________________________________ M J J A S O N D J F M A M J J A S O N D J F M A M J J A '09 '10 I must have been on to something because so many didn't realize it was a joke. What fun that was. All I have to do is shift the x axis every n months: some things never change. Original thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926604 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926604

kaiserama 16y ago
Sadly this is exactly what the CEO of a company (maybe all companies?) I worked for would do with his projected sales chart...and he still has his job. Now THAT's funny. Good work :)
messel 16y ago
Holy crap I remember that plot. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926806 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926806 Damn, we're always in the same spot, the years just keep flowing underneath us.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
jacquesm 16y ago
This is the best way to measure change on HN I think: http://news.ycombinator.com/best http://news.ycombinator.com/best The ratio of HN vs non-HN items as observed by any individual is of course different.
jurjenh 16y ago
Wouldn't it be nice if we could actually keep track of the quality by some measure and thus validate your model? Things said in jest are often true, and I think you actually have a valid model. It would be interesting to have some live feedback on the current quality level, and see if that affects the response of the community, but this would require some sort of metrics on quality, which is quite a subjective field. I believe a while ago there was a submission about parsing text to see whether the author was male or female, and wonder if there is a similar algorithm to check whether a comment is positive or negative, technical or shallow and thus create some objective measure of quality.

lingrush 16y ago

What a coincidence, that's just like everywhere else too. It's like an eternal september or something.

lobo-tuerto 16y ago

It reminds me of the famous "Wear sunscreen" video :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=MX&v=0CVB8YSOLK4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=MX&v=0CVB8YSOLK4

lobo-tuerto 16y ago
Ugh, got decontextualized. I meant the video reminded me about the recurring ranting (or praising) cycle that takes place when looking life in hindsight. :) "... when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble ..."

sasare 16y ago

why? I love this , So does My boyfriend .he is almost 11year older than me .i met him via agegap love ``.c`o`m` a nice place for seeking age le ss love.which gives you a chance to make your life better and open opportunities for you to meet the attractive young girls and treat you like a king. Maybe you wanna check it out or tell your friends.. Just love it