5 ms·
What mechanisms are in place here to punish noise and reward signal?
by esja 18y ago
What mechanisms are in place here to punish noise and reward signal?
- jcl 18y agoI think it's just karma (and admin policing).
- rabble 18y agoBut karma is very linear, and it's a point system so it encourages gaming. What we want is a system where the genuine participant can contribute with value and not be drown out. Hacker News is small enough that i can contribute and by merits of my post alone, maybe hit the front page. That doesn't happen on reddit, digg, or yahoo buzz.
- jcl 18y agoGiles Bowkett had a post a month or so ago pointing out the same thing. PG's response was basically that admin policing should cut off people trying to game the system with irrelevant content: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=196751 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=196751 Presumably, he's hoping that by limiting the scope of the content, he can limit the number of interested participants and therefore the scale of the site.
- EastSmith 18y agoPerhaps, start using plain text for links, instead of <a> tags.
- pg 18y agoThere are quite a lot, ranging from code to autokill spam submissions to graphic tweaks to prevent mob downvoting. In fact, most of the time I've spent hacking news.yc recently I've spent working on this class of features.
- icey 18y agoI would say HN has maintained a remarkably high signal to noise ratio thus far.
- esja 18y agoI agree. "Thus far" is what I'm worried about. This is a valuable community and at some point will need defending from the hordes. There are lots of ways to do that, hence my question.