3 ms·

90% of hacker news is crap, too.

by adamc 6y ago

ecf 6y ago
Why yes, everything would include Hacker News as well.
- fny 6y ago
  Actually, 99% of HN is crap. 90% of the front page is crap.
  - maerF0x0 6y ago
    but does that 90% cluster on a particular user set, or is it 90% of each user's submissions are crap?
  - TrainedMonkey 6y ago
    I was going to say the same thing, there is insane amount of pre-filtering before we even see anything. So real proportion of crap things is somewhere above 99%.
  - nix23 6y ago
    Wow that's actually true, but our comment are too ;)
mhh__ 6y ago
I guestimate that the ratio to my eye is a bit better for HN on technology, but I'd also argue that anything outside business, science, and engineering the ratio is often worse - Political threads seem to really show off a lot of overstretching, both in issues of political economy and in often pretty blatantly tribal lack of due diligence that wouldn't fly if the thread were about (say) something just as easily google-able but technology (HN I love you, but you're bringing me down, and all that).
kuroguro 6y ago
And 90% of the comments too! :)
dredmorbius 6y ago
At Internet scale, crap is well above six sigma. Facebook sees about 5 billion items posted daily. The typical person likely sees between 10--100 items, and closer the lower end than you might think. At a ratio of 10 : 5 billion, the non-bullshit fraction is about 0.00000002%. Or 99.99999998% of everything is bullshit in terms of relevance. (This also means that any rating or selection system itself is operating very nearly randomly.) If 10 items seems to few, remember that the average person uses social media for about an hour pervday --- interaction per item is 60 minutes/n, where n is the number of items viewed or interacted. Even skilled content moderators have an upper bound in practice of about 700--800 items/day, sustained.
scsilver 6y ago
Yup, crap is inextricable from greatness. A diamond only forms in the rough, it doesnt form inside other diamonds, it doesnt have the right conditions.

90% of hacker news is crap, too.

by adamc 6y ago

90% of hacker news is crap, too.

ecf 6y ago

Why yes, everything would include Hacker News as well.

fny 6y ago
Actually, 99% of HN is crap. 90% of the front page is crap.
- maerF0x0 6y ago
  but does that 90% cluster on a particular user set, or is it 90% of each user's submissions are crap?
- TrainedMonkey 6y ago
  I was going to say the same thing, there is insane amount of pre-filtering before we even see anything. So real proportion of crap things is somewhere above 99%.
- nix23 6y ago
  Wow that's actually true, but our comment are too ;)

mhh__ 6y ago

I guestimate that the ratio to my eye is a bit better for HN on technology, but I'd also argue that anything outside business, science, and engineering the ratio is often worse - Political threads seem to really show off a lot of overstretching, both in issues of political economy and in often pretty blatantly tribal lack of due diligence that wouldn't fly if the thread were about (say) something just as easily google-able but technology (HN I love you, but you're bringing me down, and all that).

kuroguro 6y ago

And 90% of the comments too! :)

dredmorbius 6y ago

At Internet scale, crap is well above six sigma. Facebook sees about 5 billion items posted daily. The typical person likely sees between 10--100 items, and closer the lower end than you might think. At a ratio of 10 : 5 billion, the non-bullshit fraction is about 0.00000002%. Or 99.99999998% of everything is bullshit in terms of relevance. (This also means that any rating or selection system itself is operating very nearly randomly.) If 10 items seems to few, remember that the average person uses social media for about an hour pervday --- interaction per item is 60 minutes/n, where n is the number of items viewed or interacted. Even skilled content moderators have an upper bound in practice of about 700--800 items/day, sustained.

scsilver 6y ago

Yup, crap is inextricable from greatness. A diamond only forms in the rough, it doesnt form inside other diamonds, it doesnt have the right conditions.