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Why? I haven't read a good argument against bots. Your article doesn't present an argument that HN is harmed. I haven't read a good argument that anyone is harm

Why? I haven't read a good argument against bots. Your article doesn't present an argument that HN is harmed. I haven't read a good argument that anyone is harmed. If a bot had its own novelty account, say "ragnawald_speaks" that submitted everything I wrote, what would be the harm to HN? People keep talking about "spam." How is it spam if a bot submits an article that has an excellent chance of making it to the top ten? That's the opposite of spam, it's all signal and very little noise. If people think that a bot auto-submitting a feed with excellent signal is spam, then I have something very serious to tell them: humans are pattern-matching machines too.

lwhi 16y ago
The quality of HN would be harmed. We'd end up with a very tedious site. People often behave like sheep - the fact that a lot of articles are voted up isn't a reflection of quality, it's a reflection of familiarity and unthinking, sycophantic behaviour. A large majority of these articles aren't actually discussing anything interesting - and it seems that their main purpose is to generate buzz and self-promote.
- raganwald 16y ago
  People often behave like sheep - the fact that a lot of articles are voted up isn't a reflection of quality, it's a reflection of familiarity and unthinking, sycophantic behaviour. If this is true, then the problem is with the users of the site, not with bots that correctly submit stories garnering upvotes. Remember, this post is not about bots that submit spamvertising for Rolex knock-off watches, it's about bots that accumulate karma by submitting stories that consistently hit the top of the page. Why are we trying to game the behaviour of HN readers by artificially throttling the submission of stories they find interesting? Far better to take a step back and ask whether HN is in danger of experiencing its Eternal September. If the behaviour of HN is such that posts can hit #1 while still being undesirable for some reason--like the 47th straight article slamming an overfunded startup--then there is an issue, but surely it isn't the bot's fault any more than it would be a person's fault if they submitted it by hand.
  - mquander 16y ago
    Wait a second, it is completely that person's fault, don't you think? People have a responsibility to submit well-considered, high-quality links. Granted, a lot of people completely abdicate that responsibility and submit whatever strikes their fancy, but it doesn't mean the responsibility went away; with whom else would it lie? The guy submitting that 47th article is being a dick.
  - lwhi 16y ago
    "If this is true, then the problem is with the users of the site, not with bots that correctly submit stories garnering upvotes. " But bots do the bidding of humans ;) As well as sheep-like behaviour, we're often also egotistical and care deeply about the tokens that are used to pass judgement on our place in the world; tokens such as karma. I think that there's a lot of content on HN that isn't about interesting ideas; there's a lot of mediocre content that is created to self-promote, because some authors' find it gratifying to see their posts do well within the community. Imo, this kind of behaviour is dull. Perhaps the solution would be to allow people to vote-down articles they deem uninteresting.
    - raganwald 16y ago
      As well as sheep-like behaviour, we're often also egotistical and care deeply about the tokens that are used to pass judgement on our place in the world; tokens such as karma. I think you're right, but don't forget the irresistable temptation of playing the game. Imagine you build a box with an LED display that shows a number, let's say 42. On the box are various switches, sliders, levers, knobs, &c. You place the box in a public area, suitably hardened against vandalism. Inevitably some bored person decides it is not a bomb and flicks a switch. The number goes to 50. He plays with the controls and the number rises and/or falls. I put it to you that people will treat it as a puzzle where the goal is to display the biggest number, even if you don't say so. Some folks will try to display the smallest number, a little like trying for the low hand in hi-low poker. As I said, I think you're right, but I wouldn't discount the number of people who simply treat karma as a game simply because... It's a number they can influence through the knobs and switches of submissions and comments.
jschuur 16y ago
The argument against bots would be that it makes it more difficult to go through the 'new' section and find quality posts to up vote if everyone did this. In fact, I seem to recall Digg is going to/already has pulled back it's feature where you can register an RSS feed to post all your content for this very reason.
- raganwald 16y ago
  The argument against bots would be that it makes it more difficult to go through the 'new' section and find quality posts to up vote if everyone did this. If everyone wrote bots that auto-submitted feeds from authors who consistently get upvotes from HN readers? How is that a problem? If the problem is submitting articles that HN readers don't find interesting--spam, not ham--banning bots is unlikely to help. How do you stop me from submitting every article I write? There is a huge amount of content out there loosely relevant to HN readers. Bits overwhelming the new page are a symptom, not a disease. The disease is that the new page doesn't scale well to handle a large volume of submissions. As HN grows, the number of submission si going to grow as well, with or without bots. Behind the scenes, there must be some changes to accomodate this, such as algorithmically showing users new stories they are most likely to find interesting, or showing users a random selection fo new stories from the last hour. Bots merely accelerate the decline of the new page's usefulness. Banning bots that auto-submit high quality feeds isn't going to work if we allow HN to grow at its current rate.

lwhi 16y ago

The quality of HN would be harmed. We'd end up with a very tedious site. People often behave like sheep - the fact that a lot of articles are voted up isn't a reflection of quality, it's a reflection of familiarity and unthinking, sycophantic behaviour. A large majority of these articles aren't actually discussing anything interesting - and it seems that their main purpose is to generate buzz and self-promote.

raganwald 16y ago
People often behave like sheep - the fact that a lot of articles are voted up isn't a reflection of quality, it's a reflection of familiarity and unthinking, sycophantic behaviour. If this is true, then the problem is with the users of the site, not with bots that correctly submit stories garnering upvotes. Remember, this post is not about bots that submit spamvertising for Rolex knock-off watches, it's about bots that accumulate karma by submitting stories that consistently hit the top of the page. Why are we trying to game the behaviour of HN readers by artificially throttling the submission of stories they find interesting? Far better to take a step back and ask whether HN is in danger of experiencing its Eternal September. If the behaviour of HN is such that posts can hit #1 while still being undesirable for some reason--like the 47th straight article slamming an overfunded startup--then there is an issue, but surely it isn't the bot's fault any more than it would be a person's fault if they submitted it by hand.
- mquander 16y ago
  Wait a second, it is completely that person's fault, don't you think? People have a responsibility to submit well-considered, high-quality links. Granted, a lot of people completely abdicate that responsibility and submit whatever strikes their fancy, but it doesn't mean the responsibility went away; with whom else would it lie? The guy submitting that 47th article is being a dick.
- lwhi 16y ago
  "If this is true, then the problem is with the users of the site, not with bots that correctly submit stories garnering upvotes. " But bots do the bidding of humans ;) As well as sheep-like behaviour, we're often also egotistical and care deeply about the tokens that are used to pass judgement on our place in the world; tokens such as karma. I think that there's a lot of content on HN that isn't about interesting ideas; there's a lot of mediocre content that is created to self-promote, because some authors' find it gratifying to see their posts do well within the community. Imo, this kind of behaviour is dull. Perhaps the solution would be to allow people to vote-down articles they deem uninteresting.
  - raganwald 16y ago
    As well as sheep-like behaviour, we're often also egotistical and care deeply about the tokens that are used to pass judgement on our place in the world; tokens such as karma. I think you're right, but don't forget the irresistable temptation of playing the game. Imagine you build a box with an LED display that shows a number, let's say 42. On the box are various switches, sliders, levers, knobs, &c. You place the box in a public area, suitably hardened against vandalism. Inevitably some bored person decides it is not a bomb and flicks a switch. The number goes to 50. He plays with the controls and the number rises and/or falls. I put it to you that people will treat it as a puzzle where the goal is to display the biggest number, even if you don't say so. Some folks will try to display the smallest number, a little like trying for the low hand in hi-low poker. As I said, I think you're right, but I wouldn't discount the number of people who simply treat karma as a game simply because... It's a number they can influence through the knobs and switches of submissions and comments.

jschuur 16y ago

The argument against bots would be that it makes it more difficult to go through the 'new' section and find quality posts to up vote if everyone did this. In fact, I seem to recall Digg is going to/already has pulled back it's feature where you can register an RSS feed to post all your content for this very reason.

raganwald 16y ago
The argument against bots would be that it makes it more difficult to go through the 'new' section and find quality posts to up vote if everyone did this. If everyone wrote bots that auto-submitted feeds from authors who consistently get upvotes from HN readers? How is that a problem? If the problem is submitting articles that HN readers don't find interesting--spam, not ham--banning bots is unlikely to help. How do you stop me from submitting every article I write? There is a huge amount of content out there loosely relevant to HN readers. Bits overwhelming the new page are a symptom, not a disease. The disease is that the new page doesn't scale well to handle a large volume of submissions. As HN grows, the number of submission si going to grow as well, with or without bots. Behind the scenes, there must be some changes to accomodate this, such as algorithmically showing users new stories they are most likely to find interesting, or showing users a random selection fo new stories from the last hour. Bots merely accelerate the decline of the new page's usefulness. Banning bots that auto-submit high quality feeds isn't going to work if we allow HN to grow at its current rate.