4 ms·
Over time the readership and topics covered of HN has grown and maybe the quality has gone down. Perhaps one way of solving this problem is to find a way to pr
by jefffoster 15y ago
Over time the readership and topics covered of HN has grown and maybe the quality has gone down. Perhaps one way of solving this problem is to find a way to present a smaller subset of data to different groups so that they can focus on the areas they like?
My favourite kind of posts are big data, web app architecture and functional programming. If my view of HN was skewed by my interests, then my perception of the quality of HN would improve. Chances are that other people would fit into my interest groups and hopefully that would promote tighter, smaller groups and perhaps the quality would increase.
Stackoverflow's tag system seems to work well, but assigning tags would introduce extra burden on people (and another area for disagreement). I like the idea of a machine learning approach where I see articles based on the content on previous articles I enjoyed (via voting). The same could work for comments. Going further, perhaps this could even suggest people with similar interests to yours.
- ColinWright 15y agoThat would deprive you of what I see as one of the greatest benefits of HN - exposure to ideas outside, but related to, your specific area of interest. I've found many interesting items that I would never have sought or subscribed to.
- jefffoster 15y agoThat's true and I guess that's the biggest challenge of implementing such an idea. Given that I like X,Y,Z would I also be interested A,B and C?
- dailo10 15y agoThis sounds like Reddit's approach of creating sub-reddit's for different topics (e.g. proggit). This works very well in terms of filtering content. It doesn't solve the quality of discussion issue, but it does filter the audience which offers some improvement. The quality of discussion varies highly on Reddit -- popular posts are inundated with juvenile comments, while highly focused posts occasionally have decent discussion.
- jefffoster 15y agoYou could apply the same techniques to comments. Voting up comments I enjoy reading would promote comments I like (and hopefully drown out the ones I don't). Whether this would look at the contents of the comments or just increase the weight of the commentator is up for discussion.
- swombat 15y agoThat's really interesting. Can DirectedEdge's engine be applied to the HN front page? Could lead to some interesting consequences...