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I used to be a big contributor to this site, but for the last months I've found that my interest in the site has waned. I've thought a lot about why, since I u

by mixmax 16y ago

I used to be a big contributor to this site, but for the last months I've found that my interest in the site has waned. I've thought a lot about why, since I used to really enjoy HN - now it's just one of a few newssites I visit every day. It's hard to quantify but here are my reasons and my take at the decline: 1) The obvious one: Signal to noise ratio in the comments is way down. The problem is twofold - there are both more bad comments, and the ones that are good aren't necessarily voted to the top. This makes it harder for me to find the nuggets that would be shown at the top of every comments page a year or two ago. As others have pointed out it sound easy but is in fact a very hard problem to solve. 2) The interaction in the comments is less interesting. I used to have great arguments in the comments. Sometimes I would convince someone of my point of view sometimes it was the other way around, sometimes there just wasn't agreement to be found. But it was always interesting and civil, and I very often learned something new. Engaging in, and watching others have interesting discussions was for me one of the main things I loved about HN. It's like when you go to a dinner party and get to sit next to this incredily interesting guy that is exceptionally insightful and has some really interesting things to say. The conversation leaves a mark on you. 3) I often find that the comments I make that I personally find insightful or interesting don't get a lot of upvotes, while the ones that state something obvious or funny get more upvotes. This isn't encouraging me to interact with people here on an intellectually interesting level. If others do this as well, which I suspect they will, then it's extremely degrading to the discourse in the comments. I often find that I don't bother to write up a response to something because I know won't get a lot of attention. Sometimes my points are totally missed. 4) Maybe I've outgrown the site. Many concepts that were new to me when I joined HN are now familiar, and many discussions have already been had. RiderofGiraffes describes it well in the linked comment. I owe a lot to HN, and I really want it to succeed, so I stick around and hope that things will change. But for now it's from a less engaged position.

hugh3 16y ago
I just got back from a two-month (well, 85000 minute) noprocrast-enforced HN break, and while I've been browsing the front page for the last few days I haven't felt motivated to comment on anything. I think there's been a drop in the quality of stories as well as comments. Now, maybe it's just me, but I used to like the science-type stories, or other stories that taught me something interesting and novel from some branch of human knowledge. But I just checked the first 90 stories and there's nothing matching that description. Instead there seem to be an awful lot of "gossip" and "personality" type stories. Tesla vs Top Gear! Tech CEO shoots elephant! Trollish "What I hate about facebook" stories! The interminable "Is it a bubble?" discussion! On the other hand, it might just be my opinion... obviously somebody is interested in the current front-page stories or else they wouldn't have been voted up. Do other folks think that the interestingness of the stories has declined?
- makeramen 16y ago
  Definitely. I used to see many stories that had long, in-depth analysis or insight into problems; stories that wouldn't find it onto the front page of any other site but HN. I remember being able to check HN front page once every morning and fill my instapaper queue with about 5 lengthy but interesting stories I could read throughout the day. Not so much anymore...
- kunley 16y ago
  Somebody may be interested in gossip, "IT celebrities" and cheap-prediction stuff, but why they started it here? There are lots of sites offering exactly that. For me the only solution is to allow down-voting submissions by top contributors - because the lack of good comments is a byproduct of the lack of good submissions..
  - phlux 16y ago
    I have said this at least a few times and I will say it again -- a story and comment moderation model based on the way it is done at reddit truly would help. I find it really odd that you cant downvote until 500 karma, and it appears you can never? downvote stories? And then there are comments in this thread that say "its a really hard problem to figure out" -- no it isn't, you just need to have faith that moderation power will be used appropriately by the site's audience and give them the appropriate ability to do so. Just like on quora, they seem to have blinders on to systems that work because they want to believe that only their design team could possibly come up with something novel and in that novelty find the best solution.
    - bmelton 16y ago
      I think that a part of the reason nobody's receptive to that idea is because we've seen the community quality at Reddit. Without trying to insult them, I know that it is a very close-knit and strong community, but the intellectual barrier is very low. The comment quality is very low. The notion that there is anything there that can help us is likely being spurned because, right or wrong, that's not what we're striving for. While I was a little shocked to hear PG clarify that HN is a place for hackers and not startup founders (I kind of expected the opposite,) I think we can all agree that this isn't meant to be a site for the lowest common denominator. I personally believe that quality control starts with the submissions. The higher quality submissions, the higher quality comments they'll attract. But that's just me, apparently.
jseliger 16y ago
"1) The obvious one: Signal to noise ratio in the comments is way down." One possible solution: depend more on credentials, and give people who have useful things to say / special background knowledge priority. Weigh their votes more and give them karma bonuses. Someone from a YC startup might be given more weight than someone who opines on large-scale, amorphous social problems from a generic position ("outsourcing: economic doom or natural phenomenon? Let's flame!"). I think the big thing, more than anything else, is the learning aspect. We tend to learn more from people who know a lot of stuff and have unusual experiences or abilities. Those people tend to cluster, then less smart people cluster around them, eventually leading toward decline. One way to counter that: identify those people and give them a louder voice. I don't think there's a technical way to do this that won't be gamed, unfortunately, which leads to a major scaling problem. I mostly try to follow this rule: I mostly comment on areas related to schools / teaching / universities (I'm a grad student in English lit at the University of Arizona), books, or literature. I try to make comments that are as rooted as fact in possible; for example, when someone a while ago said there were no laptops with IPS screens anymore, I left a link to an Anandtech review of one and didn't say much else. Problem is, I don't have any good way of systematizing that or rewarding it except on an individual level.
- Goladus 16y ago
  I disagree that credentials are the answer. Weighing with credentials doesn't scale broadly, which is what is needed here, and in fact may aggravate the problem when the expert has a bad day or their authority is applied to inappropriate subjects. A better solution than "giving the smarter people a louder voice" would be to "give the louder people a smarter voice." My suggestion below is to add a good way to discreetly provide feedback. Encourage people to send messages to you about what they think of your post, with the goal of encouraging everyone to improve the quality of their posting, and also to be more thoughtful about up/down voting.
EwanG 16y ago
What's interesting is that we all KNOW what the answer to the problem is, but no one is going to go out on a limb and say it. So let me do so - HN needs a paid, full time, editor who will go through the submissions not to approve of what he/she likes (though you could go with a council of three if you're really worried about that), but to make sure they are real links to real articles - and that have the time to do the research to insure that the article is what it claims it is about, and hasn't been posted 20 times in the last week under slightly different names. I always found the boards I enjoyed best back when I ran a C-64 BBS (yes, that was a BBS running ON a C-64 with a 1200 baud modem and two floppy drives) were the ones with appropriately benevolent "dictators" who used a light touch to keep things real and on track. I can't say I've seen anything on the internet to convince me that there's been a notable improvement on such.
- trafficlight 16y ago
  What's interesting is that we all KNOW what the answer to the problem is, but no one is going to go out on a limb and say it. So let me do so - HN needs a paid, full time, editor who will go through the submissions not to approve of what he/she likes (though you could go with a council of three if you're really worried about that), but to make sure they are real links to real articles - and that have the time to do the research to insure that the article is what it claims it is about, and hasn't been posted 20 times in the last week under slightly different names. Isn't this the role of Slashdot's editors? Or do they choose the stories as well? Either way, Slashdot has almost no interesting stories these days.
  - robryan 16y ago
    That could simply be what they are chosen to look for isn't what you would consider interesting. If you had an editor here you could define what they are looking for.
- crasshopper 16y ago
  EwanG, this seems contrary to the democratic spirit of community news sites. Who is to say what's good and bad? I don't trust a dictator (editor).
waynecolvin 16y ago
mixmax' point 3) reminds me of State the Obvious. Maybe saying something in known agreement promotes consensus (with the speaker). Also anything past the first page won't get as many eyeballs so what's there will get more upvotes still.
kj12345 16y ago
As a relatively new user I'm genuinely interested: which 3 or 4 types of comments and posts do you find interesting or representative of the old HN? I'm willing to change what I comment on or just move on, but I'm just not clear what the old HN did consist of? For an example of my confusion, I find current HN threads can mistake disagreement for originality, so "I disagree" comments are much more respected than "I agree, and also" comments. But then I read complaints about HN and it seems some users actually want more of an always-disagree culture and not less.
- kajecounterhack 16y ago
  Hmm, when I first joined, being a silly high school kid who wasn't really good at being mature online, I learned how to interact in the community via trial-and-error. It was really just that. One specific instance was when I submitted an XKCD shortly after joining. I eventually realized it wasn't really what people here were looking for. When elections rolled around, I submitted a Wapo editorial that was really off-base, and the reaction I got in response was deservedly negative. However, in this process of learning to be a more civil and well-reasoned person (which I do credit a lot of to the good folks here on HN), I've always found a measure of grace. I don't think the reactions I've gotten for anything I've submitted or commented with have ever been really mean. Criticism has always been positive. This is the main aspect of HN, besides being intellectually stimulating, that I've come to appreciate most. It has really helped me to grow (I'm a college sophomore now and I really am grateful to the kind people here who've taught me so much since high school). I agree with pg's general observation that things seem to have become a bit meaner and less constructive. I'm not sure how to fix the front page, but the type of comments I find representative of the old HN are informative, well-reasoned, and forgiving comments. I entirely agree with your bit about "I disagree" comments, though I don't think it would be as much of a problem if it were done a little more nicely. It's okay to disagree with an article, but the tone that some people take, mehh. That said, I almost always read the comments prior to reading the article, because I count on the contrarians to shed some light that I might otherwise be ignorant to. I think everything would be okay if everyone just reminded themselves to be civil and not to use downvotes to disagree.
- pg 16y ago

by mixmax 16y ago

hugh3 16y ago

I just got back from a two-month (well, 85000 minute) noprocrast-enforced HN break, and while I've been browsing the front page for the last few days I haven't felt motivated to comment on anything. I think there's been a drop in the quality of stories as well as comments. Now, maybe it's just me, but I used to like the science-type stories, or other stories that taught me something interesting and novel from some branch of human knowledge. But I just checked the first 90 stories and there's nothing matching that description. Instead there seem to be an awful lot of "gossip" and "personality" type stories. Tesla vs Top Gear! Tech CEO shoots elephant! Trollish "What I hate about facebook" stories! The interminable "Is it a bubble?" discussion! On the other hand, it might just be my opinion... obviously somebody is interested in the current front-page stories or else they wouldn't have been voted up. Do other folks think that the interestingness of the stories has declined?

makeramen 16y ago
Definitely. I used to see many stories that had long, in-depth analysis or insight into problems; stories that wouldn't find it onto the front page of any other site but HN. I remember being able to check HN front page once every morning and fill my instapaper queue with about 5 lengthy but interesting stories I could read throughout the day. Not so much anymore...
kunley 16y ago
Somebody may be interested in gossip, "IT celebrities" and cheap-prediction stuff, but why they started it here? There are lots of sites offering exactly that. For me the only solution is to allow down-voting submissions by top contributors - because the lack of good comments is a byproduct of the lack of good submissions..
- phlux 16y ago
  I have said this at least a few times and I will say it again -- a story and comment moderation model based on the way it is done at reddit truly would help. I find it really odd that you cant downvote until 500 karma, and it appears you can never? downvote stories? And then there are comments in this thread that say "its a really hard problem to figure out" -- no it isn't, you just need to have faith that moderation power will be used appropriately by the site's audience and give them the appropriate ability to do so. Just like on quora, they seem to have blinders on to systems that work because they want to believe that only their design team could possibly come up with something novel and in that novelty find the best solution.
  - bmelton 16y ago
    I think that a part of the reason nobody's receptive to that idea is because we've seen the community quality at Reddit. Without trying to insult them, I know that it is a very close-knit and strong community, but the intellectual barrier is very low. The comment quality is very low. The notion that there is anything there that can help us is likely being spurned because, right or wrong, that's not what we're striving for. While I was a little shocked to hear PG clarify that HN is a place for hackers and not startup founders (I kind of expected the opposite,) I think we can all agree that this isn't meant to be a site for the lowest common denominator. I personally believe that quality control starts with the submissions. The higher quality submissions, the higher quality comments they'll attract. But that's just me, apparently.

jseliger 16y ago

"1) The obvious one: Signal to noise ratio in the comments is way down." One possible solution: depend more on credentials, and give people who have useful things to say / special background knowledge priority. Weigh their votes more and give them karma bonuses. Someone from a YC startup might be given more weight than someone who opines on large-scale, amorphous social problems from a generic position ("outsourcing: economic doom or natural phenomenon? Let's flame!"). I think the big thing, more than anything else, is the learning aspect. We tend to learn more from people who know a lot of stuff and have unusual experiences or abilities. Those people tend to cluster, then less smart people cluster around them, eventually leading toward decline. One way to counter that: identify those people and give them a louder voice. I don't think there's a technical way to do this that won't be gamed, unfortunately, which leads to a major scaling problem. I mostly try to follow this rule: I mostly comment on areas related to schools / teaching / universities (I'm a grad student in English lit at the University of Arizona), books, or literature. I try to make comments that are as rooted as fact in possible; for example, when someone a while ago said there were no laptops with IPS screens anymore, I left a link to an Anandtech review of one and didn't say much else. Problem is, I don't have any good way of systematizing that or rewarding it except on an individual level.

Goladus 16y ago
I disagree that credentials are the answer. Weighing with credentials doesn't scale broadly, which is what is needed here, and in fact may aggravate the problem when the expert has a bad day or their authority is applied to inappropriate subjects. A better solution than "giving the smarter people a louder voice" would be to "give the louder people a smarter voice." My suggestion below is to add a good way to discreetly provide feedback. Encourage people to send messages to you about what they think of your post, with the goal of encouraging everyone to improve the quality of their posting, and also to be more thoughtful about up/down voting.

EwanG 16y ago

What's interesting is that we all KNOW what the answer to the problem is, but no one is going to go out on a limb and say it. So let me do so - HN needs a paid, full time, editor who will go through the submissions not to approve of what he/she likes (though you could go with a council of three if you're really worried about that), but to make sure they are real links to real articles - and that have the time to do the research to insure that the article is what it claims it is about, and hasn't been posted 20 times in the last week under slightly different names. I always found the boards I enjoyed best back when I ran a C-64 BBS (yes, that was a BBS running ON a C-64 with a 1200 baud modem and two floppy drives) were the ones with appropriately benevolent "dictators" who used a light touch to keep things real and on track. I can't say I've seen anything on the internet to convince me that there's been a notable improvement on such.

trafficlight 16y ago
What's interesting is that we all KNOW what the answer to the problem is, but no one is going to go out on a limb and say it. So let me do so - HN needs a paid, full time, editor who will go through the submissions not to approve of what he/she likes (though you could go with a council of three if you're really worried about that), but to make sure they are real links to real articles - and that have the time to do the research to insure that the article is what it claims it is about, and hasn't been posted 20 times in the last week under slightly different names. Isn't this the role of Slashdot's editors? Or do they choose the stories as well? Either way, Slashdot has almost no interesting stories these days.
- robryan 16y ago
  That could simply be what they are chosen to look for isn't what you would consider interesting. If you had an editor here you could define what they are looking for.
crasshopper 16y ago
EwanG, this seems contrary to the democratic spirit of community news sites. Who is to say what's good and bad? I don't trust a dictator (editor).

waynecolvin 16y ago

mixmax' point 3) reminds me of State the Obvious. Maybe saying something in known agreement promotes consensus (with the speaker). Also anything past the first page won't get as many eyeballs so what's there will get more upvotes still.

kj12345 16y ago

As a relatively new user I'm genuinely interested: which 3 or 4 types of comments and posts do you find interesting or representative of the old HN? I'm willing to change what I comment on or just move on, but I'm just not clear what the old HN did consist of? For an example of my confusion, I find current HN threads can mistake disagreement for originality, so "I disagree" comments are much more respected than "I agree, and also" comments. But then I read complaints about HN and it seems some users actually want more of an always-disagree culture and not less.

kajecounterhack 16y ago
Hmm, when I first joined, being a silly high school kid who wasn't really good at being mature online, I learned how to interact in the community via trial-and-error. It was really just that. One specific instance was when I submitted an XKCD shortly after joining. I eventually realized it wasn't really what people here were looking for. When elections rolled around, I submitted a Wapo editorial that was really off-base, and the reaction I got in response was deservedly negative. However, in this process of learning to be a more civil and well-reasoned person (which I do credit a lot of to the good folks here on HN), I've always found a measure of grace. I don't think the reactions I've gotten for anything I've submitted or commented with have ever been really mean. Criticism has always been positive. This is the main aspect of HN, besides being intellectually stimulating, that I've come to appreciate most. It has really helped me to grow (I'm a college sophomore now and I really am grateful to the kind people here who've taught me so much since high school). I agree with pg's general observation that things seem to have become a bit meaner and less constructive. I'm not sure how to fix the front page, but the type of comments I find representative of the old HN are informative, well-reasoned, and forgiving comments. I entirely agree with your bit about "I disagree" comments, though I don't think it would be as much of a problem if it were done a little more nicely. It's okay to disagree with an article, but the tone that some people take, mehh. That said, I almost always read the comments prior to reading the article, because I count on the contrarians to shed some light that I might otherwise be ignorant to. I think everything would be okay if everyone just reminded themselves to be civil and not to use downvotes to disagree.
pg 16y ago