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What you've just told me is the community is broken, not the system.

by wdewind 16y ago

Sakes 16y ago
No, what he is saying is that the system that worked for a small community of like minded individuals does not work for a large diverse community. The upvote system used to work because it consisted of a lot of similar people saying, this is a good point, or I like this. Today's community is much more diverse, which is inevitable when you have a quality service/product/community/yadda yadda. >> In total, Hacker News now sees about 90,000 unique visitors per day. http://newsgrange.com/ycombinators-hacker-news-reaches-1-million-pageviews-per-day/ http://newsgrange.com/ycombinators-hacker-news-reaches-1-mil... The old system just doesn't mean what it used to. People are looking for new strats to preserve the original culture as best they can.
- wdewind 16y ago
  I don't really disagree with your premises, but please explain how removing upvotes fixed the problem.
  - billswift 16y ago
    I think it has made the problem worse, sharply worse.
  - Sakes 16y ago
    I could see it going a couple of different ways. 1) It actually has improved comment rankings. 2) or I am just experiencing a placebo affect. - 1: If it actually fixed the problem, this would mean that quality comments will appear higher on the page, not cluttered by mediocre comments that enjoy the group bump. I pull this assumption based upon the way I use the upvote system. So of course, I could be wrong. - 2: Maybe the site just feels better to me, because I don't have to see comments get high upvotes that I believe are poorly thought out, or based highly on emotion/fanboyism/or other non logical motivations. I could see it going either way, but my money is on the first possibility. All I know for sure is that I now rarely find myself thinking.."Whaat? People think that was a good comment? People thought that added value? People think this guy knows what he's talking about?"
ericd 16y ago
It's just not as self-selecting as it used to be. What worked for the community in the past doesn't necessarily work now or going forward. At least a bit of regression to the mean in the community is inevitable if it grows (which it has, by a lot).
deleted 16y ago
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What you've just told me is the community is broken, not the system.

by wdewind 16y ago

What you've just told me is the community is broken, not the system.

Sakes 16y ago

No, what he is saying is that the system that worked for a small community of like minded individuals does not work for a large diverse community. The upvote system used to work because it consisted of a lot of similar people saying, this is a good point, or I like this. Today's community is much more diverse, which is inevitable when you have a quality service/product/community/yadda yadda. >> In total, Hacker News now sees about 90,000 unique visitors per day. http://newsgrange.com/ycombinators-hacker-news-reaches-1-million-pageviews-per-day/ http://newsgrange.com/ycombinators-hacker-news-reaches-1-mil... The old system just doesn't mean what it used to. People are looking for new strats to preserve the original culture as best they can.

wdewind 16y ago
I don't really disagree with your premises, but please explain how removing upvotes fixed the problem.
- billswift 16y ago
  I think it has made the problem worse, sharply worse.
- Sakes 16y ago
  I could see it going a couple of different ways. 1) It actually has improved comment rankings. 2) or I am just experiencing a placebo affect. - 1: If it actually fixed the problem, this would mean that quality comments will appear higher on the page, not cluttered by mediocre comments that enjoy the group bump. I pull this assumption based upon the way I use the upvote system. So of course, I could be wrong. - 2: Maybe the site just feels better to me, because I don't have to see comments get high upvotes that I believe are poorly thought out, or based highly on emotion/fanboyism/or other non logical motivations. I could see it going either way, but my money is on the first possibility. All I know for sure is that I now rarely find myself thinking.."Whaat? People think that was a good comment? People thought that added value? People think this guy knows what he's talking about?"

ericd 16y ago

It's just not as self-selecting as it used to be. What worked for the community in the past doesn't necessarily work now or going forward. At least a bit of regression to the mean in the community is inevitable if it grows (which it has, by a lot).

deleted 16y ago

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