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Indeed, though that would only fix it for the small percentage of users who are (a.) logged in, and (b.) vote things down. It wouldn't work on me, for example,

Indeed, though that would only fix it for the small percentage of users who are (a.) logged in, and (b.) vote things down. It wouldn't work on me, for example, because I hardly ever vote on anything here. In the 3 years I've been around I can't imagine I've actually voted down more than a half dozen times.

v21 16y ago
Unless you rated in whether or not you read the article/comments, in which case it might still work. And of course, if downmod meant more "hide this sort of thing from me" than "I don't think this should be on HN", maybe you'd downmod more... (But this starts showing the downside to such personalization - it's a lot more effort server-side, and it dilutes a single community)
tomjen3 16y ago
You don't have to be logged in - just give them a long-term cookie when they show up on your site and it still works. And if you aren't voting anything down, you wouldn't be the kind of person who would need such a website in the first place.
- jasonkester 16y ago
  And if you aren't voting anything down, you wouldn't be the kind of person who would need such a website in the first place. You lost me there. You're talking about this on a site that doesn't even allow its users to downvote stories. And you're talking to a power user of that site, who just told you he doesn't ever downvote things. HN is a culture of voting up things that are good, and, rarely, downvoting things that are distracting from the conversation. That's one of the reasons it's so good. As to cookies for non-logged in users, they don't really help anything. Sure, you could consider every clickthru as a 'vote' for personalization purposes, but it would likely just fill a user's feed with poorly titled things and clickbait. Probably more than half the articles I click through on get closed immediately without reading. I wouldn't want to optimize my view to include more of that.
  - tomjen3 16y ago
    Okay we try again. If he didn't wish he could downvote stuff, he hasn't got a need for a service that takes his downvote into account. The long term cookie isn't really that important for vote counting perspectives but to be able to find out whom to serve the personalized stuff to. It is essentially no different from hn which also sets a cookie when you login, except that if you erase the cookie, you can get it set again when you log in, which wouldn't happen in my example.
  - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
    >And you're talking to a power user of that site, who just told you he doesn't ever downvote things. As an aside, what makes you a "power user"?
    - jasonkester 16y ago
      Same thing that makes you one, brother. 1000 reputation points and the equivalent of $10k in otherwise billable hours squandered on this site.
      - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
        I'm going to be lording it over the hoi-poloi now, "I'm a power user".
jbellis 16y ago
It's quite possible to generate recommendations solely from upvotes.

v21 16y ago

Unless you rated in whether or not you read the article/comments, in which case it might still work. And of course, if downmod meant more "hide this sort of thing from me" than "I don't think this should be on HN", maybe you'd downmod more... (But this starts showing the downside to such personalization - it's a lot more effort server-side, and it dilutes a single community)

tomjen3 16y ago

You don't have to be logged in - just give them a long-term cookie when they show up on your site and it still works. And if you aren't voting anything down, you wouldn't be the kind of person who would need such a website in the first place.

jasonkester 16y ago
And if you aren't voting anything down, you wouldn't be the kind of person who would need such a website in the first place. You lost me there. You're talking about this on a site that doesn't even allow its users to downvote stories. And you're talking to a power user of that site, who just told you he doesn't ever downvote things. HN is a culture of voting up things that are good, and, rarely, downvoting things that are distracting from the conversation. That's one of the reasons it's so good. As to cookies for non-logged in users, they don't really help anything. Sure, you could consider every clickthru as a 'vote' for personalization purposes, but it would likely just fill a user's feed with poorly titled things and clickbait. Probably more than half the articles I click through on get closed immediately without reading. I wouldn't want to optimize my view to include more of that.
- tomjen3 16y ago
  Okay we try again. If he didn't wish he could downvote stuff, he hasn't got a need for a service that takes his downvote into account. The long term cookie isn't really that important for vote counting perspectives but to be able to find out whom to serve the personalized stuff to. It is essentially no different from hn which also sets a cookie when you login, except that if you erase the cookie, you can get it set again when you log in, which wouldn't happen in my example.
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  >And you're talking to a power user of that site, who just told you he doesn't ever downvote things. As an aside, what makes you a "power user"?
  - jasonkester 16y ago
    Same thing that makes you one, brother. 1000 reputation points and the equivalent of $10k in otherwise billable hours squandered on this site.
    - pbhjpbhj 16y ago
      I'm going to be lording it over the hoi-poloi now, "I'm a power user".

jbellis 16y ago

It's quite possible to generate recommendations solely from upvotes.