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The problem is that increasing costs for unpopular content doesn't necessarily mean that your content was bad, just that people weren't paying attention to it.

The problem is that increasing costs for unpopular content doesn't necessarily mean that your content was bad, just that people weren't paying attention to it. If you're ahead of a tech curve, that doesn't mean your contributions are bad per se. It means that other people didn't appreciate them at the time. So if you do implement a system like that you're basically codifying the herd mentality much more strictly than it probably should be.

bmelton 16y ago
Well, the hope would be to reduce the signal to noise ratio, so, in the event that something less popular comes up, it should have more time to be seen and appreciated. I would also venture that 'cutting edge' is HN's bailiwick, and therefore, it's really hard to get ahead of the tech curve here.
- knowtheory 16y ago
  Ha. Don't tell the guys at Lambda the Ultimate that ;) Incidentally, i submitted a link (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2386915 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2386915 ) about an hour ago, and after watching it depressingly fall off the first page of the new list, i think i'm giving up on ever submitting a link to HN again. What's so frustrating is that i can identify content that is good, and relevant (the link above is about open data, citizen access to data, and information management), which are obviously relevant to the hacker news community. But the only ways i can think to remedy this would be to either lobby my friends hard to vote up the link (something i'm loathe to do), or start pimping the links on other sites, in the hopes that people will try to submit it, see the existing link, and vote it up. There's just no way i can do better than a piece of content like this. Oh well. I guess i'll stick to commenting.
  - bmelton 16y ago
    I've had a number of submission woes that mirror yours. Just KNOWING that people would like it if they saw it (right or wrong,) but seeing how quickly things move from newest to gone is the big worry. The only cure I know for that is to lower the signal to noise ratio, and I don't know a better way to do it than to make submissions harder, or at least, more chancy for the shotgun-submission approach. If every submission is something that people care about, then I believe (again, right or wrong) that more people are going to be willing to hit the 'newest' page instead of waiting for things to hit the home page, and there should be far fewer submissions. Of course, this is all predicated on the assumption that auto-post bots are dumb, and that they'll lose you more karma if it's penalized than you gain, but that's an assumption I can't really stand behind, not having seen the numbers.
  - zargon 16y ago
    There are many submissions that I read on the new page that I like, but aren't something I want in my saved list forever. I don't know if many other people treat article upvotes as I do, but it might explain part of the difficulty.
  - RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
    > i submitted a link ... about an hour ago, and after > watching it depressingly fall off the first page of > the new list, i think i'm giving up on ever submitting > a link to HN again. > What's so frustrating is that i can identify content > that is good, and relevant (the link above is about > open data, citizen access to data, and information > management), which are obviously relevant to the > hacker news community. Maybe it's just me, but I submit that you are mistaken. For example, I saw it, and it is of zero interest to me. I write code for a living, I manage people who write code, I run two companies, one of which produces code, and I don't think it's of interest. That doesn't mean it's of zero interest to everyone. That doesn't mean it should be of zero interest to everyone. It does mean that you are mistaken in your belief that founders and hackers would be interested, if only they'd seen it.
    - knowtheory 16y ago
      I appreciate the POV. At the risk of litigating a separate issue, i think you're wrong. Aside from people who care about big data, information gathering and management by the government is a big deal for journalists, people who interact with the government, and ultimately tax payers. You're going to fall into at least one of those categories, and i think that hackers in particular are going to fall into multiple of those categories (that i happen to know from personal experience). But if you didn't think it was relevant, then i certainly don't think you're obligated to upvote. :)
      - RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
        I think you misunderstand me. What the Government does with your data, and what it doesn't do, is big news, of great interest, to everyone. And that's my point. It should be of interest to everyone, and it's got nothing specifically related to being a hacker, being a founder, running a project, or other technical issues that are the point, purpose and focus of this community. Or once were. And before someone trots out the "satisfies intellectual curiosity" line from the guidelines let me just say no, it doesn't, and if you think it does then you have a very different concept of "intellectual" from mine. So I'm not saying it's uninteresting in general, I'm saying it's uninteresting to this community as I understand it ought to be. And in consequence it's clear that you have a different understanding about with this community ought to be. Maybe I'm now out-of-date, and it's changed into something with which I don't share significant overlap.
  - erikpukinskis 16y ago
    Please keep submitting. Honestly, what does well on the HN is stuff that grabs people. There are two ways to do that: 1) Match peoples' interests 2) Write really really well So, you can either submit articles like "BubbleTwit (YC '08) gets $14B in funding, announces Natalie Portman is new CEO" or you can just keep writing and writing and writing until you get really good. I'm mostly suggesting this because it's what I wish I would do. I'm not that good yet. I peeked at your post... I think it is a fascinating subject, but your title and opening paragraph don't work that well. "Sustainable" doesn't mean anything without context. Your opening paragraph doesn't really create any kind of desperate need. What is the specific crash going to look like? Paint us a picture of destruction, and then lead us out of it. Great writing grabs people and holds their faces in front of something real. I don't doubt that you've got real things to show people, so just keep working on the craft, and you'll get there.
    - knowtheory 16y ago
      Erik, credit where credit's due, i didn't author the original piece, and there are several things i would change about it if i had. But yeah. i should blog more too :P But self promotion is frowned upon at HN.

bmelton 16y ago

Well, the hope would be to reduce the signal to noise ratio, so, in the event that something less popular comes up, it should have more time to be seen and appreciated. I would also venture that 'cutting edge' is HN's bailiwick, and therefore, it's really hard to get ahead of the tech curve here.

knowtheory 16y ago
Ha. Don't tell the guys at Lambda the Ultimate that ;) Incidentally, i submitted a link (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2386915 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2386915 ) about an hour ago, and after watching it depressingly fall off the first page of the new list, i think i'm giving up on ever submitting a link to HN again. What's so frustrating is that i can identify content that is good, and relevant (the link above is about open data, citizen access to data, and information management), which are obviously relevant to the hacker news community. But the only ways i can think to remedy this would be to either lobby my friends hard to vote up the link (something i'm loathe to do), or start pimping the links on other sites, in the hopes that people will try to submit it, see the existing link, and vote it up. There's just no way i can do better than a piece of content like this. Oh well. I guess i'll stick to commenting.
- bmelton 16y ago
  I've had a number of submission woes that mirror yours. Just KNOWING that people would like it if they saw it (right or wrong,) but seeing how quickly things move from newest to gone is the big worry. The only cure I know for that is to lower the signal to noise ratio, and I don't know a better way to do it than to make submissions harder, or at least, more chancy for the shotgun-submission approach. If every submission is something that people care about, then I believe (again, right or wrong) that more people are going to be willing to hit the 'newest' page instead of waiting for things to hit the home page, and there should be far fewer submissions. Of course, this is all predicated on the assumption that auto-post bots are dumb, and that they'll lose you more karma if it's penalized than you gain, but that's an assumption I can't really stand behind, not having seen the numbers.
- zargon 16y ago
  There are many submissions that I read on the new page that I like, but aren't something I want in my saved list forever. I don't know if many other people treat article upvotes as I do, but it might explain part of the difficulty.
- RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
  > i submitted a link ... about an hour ago, and after > watching it depressingly fall off the first page of > the new list, i think i'm giving up on ever submitting > a link to HN again. > What's so frustrating is that i can identify content > that is good, and relevant (the link above is about > open data, citizen access to data, and information > management), which are obviously relevant to the > hacker news community. Maybe it's just me, but I submit that you are mistaken. For example, I saw it, and it is of zero interest to me. I write code for a living, I manage people who write code, I run two companies, one of which produces code, and I don't think it's of interest. That doesn't mean it's of zero interest to everyone. That doesn't mean it should be of zero interest to everyone. It does mean that you are mistaken in your belief that founders and hackers would be interested, if only they'd seen it.
  - knowtheory 16y ago
    I appreciate the POV. At the risk of litigating a separate issue, i think you're wrong. Aside from people who care about big data, information gathering and management by the government is a big deal for journalists, people who interact with the government, and ultimately tax payers. You're going to fall into at least one of those categories, and i think that hackers in particular are going to fall into multiple of those categories (that i happen to know from personal experience). But if you didn't think it was relevant, then i certainly don't think you're obligated to upvote. :)
    - RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
      I think you misunderstand me. What the Government does with your data, and what it doesn't do, is big news, of great interest, to everyone. And that's my point. It should be of interest to everyone, and it's got nothing specifically related to being a hacker, being a founder, running a project, or other technical issues that are the point, purpose and focus of this community. Or once were. And before someone trots out the "satisfies intellectual curiosity" line from the guidelines let me just say no, it doesn't, and if you think it does then you have a very different concept of "intellectual" from mine. So I'm not saying it's uninteresting in general, I'm saying it's uninteresting to this community as I understand it ought to be. And in consequence it's clear that you have a different understanding about with this community ought to be. Maybe I'm now out-of-date, and it's changed into something with which I don't share significant overlap.
- erikpukinskis 16y ago
  Please keep submitting. Honestly, what does well on the HN is stuff that grabs people. There are two ways to do that: 1) Match peoples' interests 2) Write really really well So, you can either submit articles like "BubbleTwit (YC '08) gets $14B in funding, announces Natalie Portman is new CEO" or you can just keep writing and writing and writing until you get really good. I'm mostly suggesting this because it's what I wish I would do. I'm not that good yet. I peeked at your post... I think it is a fascinating subject, but your title and opening paragraph don't work that well. "Sustainable" doesn't mean anything without context. Your opening paragraph doesn't really create any kind of desperate need. What is the specific crash going to look like? Paint us a picture of destruction, and then lead us out of it. Great writing grabs people and holds their faces in front of something real. I don't doubt that you've got real things to show people, so just keep working on the craft, and you'll get there.
  - knowtheory 16y ago
    Erik, credit where credit's due, i didn't author the original piece, and there are several things i would change about it if i had. But yeah. i should blog more too :P But self promotion is frowned upon at HN.