7 ms·

Hmm, I should add protections against this phenomenon. Should be straightforward.

by pg 16y ago

perokreco 16y ago
Why protection, isn't the fact that people are submitting the story actually a powerful indicator it is a good one?
- RossM 16y ago
  Agreed, if anything I think submitting a pre-existing story should actually be worth more score than upvoting it. The problem lies if people give out submit links pre-loaded with the submission URL/title (if that's possible?).
- hotmind 16y ago
  But if you form a cabal to make front page of HN - whether your clique be Twitter followers or a "group of friends" on this site - it's gaming the system. Essentially, that is what the article advocated (oh, and write interesting content - duh).
  - ryanwaggoner 16y ago
    A "cabal" typically refers to a group secretly united to promote their own interests. I'm not sure that tweeting a link to a blog post meets that criteria.
    - lhnz 16y ago
      A cabal of voters could easily be setup on HN. That is problematic.
staunch 16y ago
Easy fix: submitting a duplicate URL should not cause an automatic upvote. This has always seemed a bit off to me.
- blasdel 16y ago
  A thousand times no! That's the only way any non-groupthink content gets to the front page, and most of the time it fails anyway because a dozen submission-upvotes were spread out over a day or two. If anything more weight should be applied to it to counteract aging.
jasonkester 16y ago
You could look at the referrer for "Vote this up/submit this" URLs. If they didn't come from the story itself or from within ycombinator.com, you can simply ignore them for voting purposes and route the traffic to the comment page or to the story itself. Let the user actually read the story, then come back to vote on it if they like. It's probably also worth making a note when a user clicks through to a story so that later on you can verify that he's read it before counting his vote for it. (Naturally, you'd also need to note referrals from the story itself to make this work.)
- ryanwaggoner 16y ago
  Jason, just to be clear, all my tweets link to the original post on my blog, so any votes or submits from my twitter followers who clicked on the link it my tweet would come from the story itself. I'm definitely not sending out tweets with links to the HN story or to the HN submit link.
ryanwaggoner 16y ago
Just to be clear, I'm not asking for people on Twitter to vote for my stories, ever. My purpose in tweeting them has always been to notify my Twitter followers of my new content. I only noticed the effect on HN a couple days ago. I understand why you'd want to "protect against this phenomenon", because I agree that it's probably negative in the long run, but I think something needs to be done about the new page, because a lot of good stories are being missed. People talked about this here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1720742 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1720742 All that said, I'd like to hear more about your feeling on this; I'd be disappointed if you felt I was intentionally spamming HN or gaming the system to the detriment of the community. EDIT: Oh, and one more thing: my tweets always link to the original content on my blog, not to the post on HN (or even worse, never to the submit URL on HN).
- hugh3 16y ago
  Just to be clear, I'm not asking for people to vote for my stories, ever. Why then, when I looked at your site, did it pop up a little pseudo-window saying "Hello HN reader, if you like this I would really appreciate an upvote"?
  - ryanwaggoner 16y ago
    I'm not sure...when I click on the link above to go to my site, I see the popup asking me if I want to subscribe to the RSS feed: http://img.skitch.com/20100929-xq3tsubtd9dkgj9uxbjdechmik.png http://img.skitch.com/20100929-xq3tsubtd9dkgj9uxbjdechmik.pn... I installed WP Greet Box, which displays different messages to different people depending on their referrer, but I didn't think it was working for HN. Maybe it's because we're on different browsers (I'm on Safari 5)? Also, this message would only appear if you were coming from the story on HN, not from a link on Twitter, so I'm not sure it's relevant here anyway. EDIT: Yep, I see the message now in Firefox and Chrome. Should I disable? I'm not sure I see the problem with reminding people who came to the post from HN to vote for the story if they think it's worthwhile, but what do others think?
    - hugh3 16y ago
ableal 16y ago
You might care to read the 'sanitybit' contributions here: http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/djxhq/gaming_the_reddit_voting_system_twitter_is_just/ http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/djxhq/gaming_the... (I suppose yesterday I mislinked this submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1737079 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1737079 )
Jd 16y ago
It is a natural byproduct of the speed of submissions and necessity to hit a certain number of points before "making" it.

Hmm, I should add protections against this phenomenon. Should be straightforward.

by pg 16y ago

Hmm, I should add protections against this phenomenon. Should be straightforward.

perokreco 16y ago

Why protection, isn't the fact that people are submitting the story actually a powerful indicator it is a good one?

RossM 16y ago
Agreed, if anything I think submitting a pre-existing story should actually be worth more score than upvoting it. The problem lies if people give out submit links pre-loaded with the submission URL/title (if that's possible?).
hotmind 16y ago
But if you form a cabal to make front page of HN - whether your clique be Twitter followers or a "group of friends" on this site - it's gaming the system. Essentially, that is what the article advocated (oh, and write interesting content - duh).
- ryanwaggoner 16y ago
  A "cabal" typically refers to a group secretly united to promote their own interests. I'm not sure that tweeting a link to a blog post meets that criteria.
  - lhnz 16y ago
    A cabal of voters could easily be setup on HN. That is problematic.

staunch 16y ago

Easy fix: submitting a duplicate URL should not cause an automatic upvote. This has always seemed a bit off to me.

blasdel 16y ago
A thousand times no! That's the only way any non-groupthink content gets to the front page, and most of the time it fails anyway because a dozen submission-upvotes were spread out over a day or two. If anything more weight should be applied to it to counteract aging.

jasonkester 16y ago

You could look at the referrer for "Vote this up/submit this" URLs. If they didn't come from the story itself or from within ycombinator.com, you can simply ignore them for voting purposes and route the traffic to the comment page or to the story itself. Let the user actually read the story, then come back to vote on it if they like. It's probably also worth making a note when a user clicks through to a story so that later on you can verify that he's read it before counting his vote for it. (Naturally, you'd also need to note referrals from the story itself to make this work.)

ryanwaggoner 16y ago
Jason, just to be clear, all my tweets link to the original post on my blog, so any votes or submits from my twitter followers who clicked on the link it my tweet would come from the story itself. I'm definitely not sending out tweets with links to the HN story or to the HN submit link.

ryanwaggoner 16y ago

Just to be clear, I'm not asking for people on Twitter to vote for my stories, ever. My purpose in tweeting them has always been to notify my Twitter followers of my new content. I only noticed the effect on HN a couple days ago. I understand why you'd want to "protect against this phenomenon", because I agree that it's probably negative in the long run, but I think something needs to be done about the new page, because a lot of good stories are being missed. People talked about this here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1720742 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1720742 All that said, I'd like to hear more about your feeling on this; I'd be disappointed if you felt I was intentionally spamming HN or gaming the system to the detriment of the community. EDIT: Oh, and one more thing: my tweets always link to the original content on my blog, not to the post on HN (or even worse, never to the submit URL on HN).

hugh3 16y ago
Just to be clear, I'm not asking for people to vote for my stories, ever. Why then, when I looked at your site, did it pop up a little pseudo-window saying "Hello HN reader, if you like this I would really appreciate an upvote"?
- ryanwaggoner 16y ago
  I'm not sure...when I click on the link above to go to my site, I see the popup asking me if I want to subscribe to the RSS feed: http://img.skitch.com/20100929-xq3tsubtd9dkgj9uxbjdechmik.png http://img.skitch.com/20100929-xq3tsubtd9dkgj9uxbjdechmik.pn... I installed WP Greet Box, which displays different messages to different people depending on their referrer, but I didn't think it was working for HN. Maybe it's because we're on different browsers (I'm on Safari 5)? Also, this message would only appear if you were coming from the story on HN, not from a link on Twitter, so I'm not sure it's relevant here anyway. EDIT: Yep, I see the message now in Firefox and Chrome. Should I disable? I'm not sure I see the problem with reminding people who came to the post from HN to vote for the story if they think it's worthwhile, but what do others think?
  - hugh3 16y ago

ableal 16y ago

You might care to read the 'sanitybit' contributions here: http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/djxhq/gaming_the_reddit_voting_system_twitter_is_just/ http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/djxhq/gaming_the... (I suppose yesterday I mislinked this submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1737079 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1737079 )

Jd 16y ago

It is a natural byproduct of the speed of submissions and necessity to hit a certain number of points before "making" it.