5 ms·

Usually it's not a problem, because people only vote up the first version of a story. And when a dup does get upvoted, mods can just kill it. The Airbnb situat

by pg 15y ago

Usually it's not a problem, because people only vote up the first version of a story. And when a dup does get upvoted, mods can just kill it. The Airbnb situation is unique because (a) an angry mob is upvoting any story to do with this and (b) we have to err on the side of not killing stories critical of YC or companies we've funded, or we get accused of censorship. Fortunately the combination only occurs occasionally, so it's probably not something that needs a structural fix.

pak 15y ago
I appreciate your candor on this, but I'm curious if you are implying two things: 1) you think that people interested in reading about Airbnb are behaving irrationally, and 2) people rarely get angry at YC companies? I find the interaction between HN and YCombinator rather fascinating, because you obviously have a financial interest in many things posted on the site, but you also clearly feel some responsibility to play the neutral host. I wonder this responsibility comes from HN's value to YC as a barometer of trending ideas (requiring you to retain the faith of your userbase), or from some higher sense of "journalistic" obligations.
- emmett 15y ago
  Not to put words in Paul's mouth, but I believe his statement was: 1. It's relatively rare to get an angry mob 2. It's even more rare for that angry mob to target YC companies because YC companies are a small % of total companies 3. Therefore this situation is not common enough to optimize for
  - pak 15y ago
    None of your points rule out my first implication, and I don't believe the logic for your second point was part of Paul's statement. Despite YC companies being a small part of the world economy (or whatever), they are disproportionately mentioned on HN for obvious reasons.
- dspillett 15y ago
  > 1) you think that people interested in reading about Airbnb are behaving irrationally Every angry mob is irrational, even if there is a perfectly rational reason for their anger. While concern about what has happened, is happening, should be happening (in various peoples opinions), and so forth is definitely rational as is an interest in watching it all play out (even if you don't care for airbnb at all specifically, this could possibly have implications elsewhere too). People posting the same thing that others have already posted (or something so similar it makes no difference) and other people voting everything up whether it is a duplicate or not is irrational. It bends the system here potentially making the site less useful/interesting to others, it isn't going to change the situation, and the confusion of partial discussions spread over threads is going to put people off that might have otherwise cared about the situation (they'll stop reading any post about it, no matter how high up pages 1 it is, as they'll start to assume it is the same as last time). lt;dr: the interest/concern is not irrational but some of the behaviour seeming steming from that is, so suggesting some people are behaving irrationally is not incorrect (IMO).
ketralnis 15y ago
Then don't be bothered by the scare word and just do what's best for the site. People (especially internet commenters) don't really understand what "censorship" means and only really use it to whinge about not getting their way. reddit's /r/politics mods recently decided to start moderating away the "does anything else think this thing that we all think? vote me up!" and all of the comments on that announcement were accusations of censorship. Nobody is trying to censor anyone, they just want to improve the content, but the people making the self-posts (or in the case of HN the anger porn) want their attention and think it's censorship when they aren't given it.
- brlewis 15y ago
  Taking away opportunities to whinge is what's best for the site. I'd rather see the duplicates and not see the "censorship" posts.
  - frossie 15y ago
    Also, I think there are two kinds of links, "original story" links, and "what are people saying" links. For example if you are for some reason genuinely interested in AirBnB as a business, both the original story AND what tech crunch are saying about it is potentially of interest, if you believe techcrunch is an influential source that can affect AirBnB's prospects. As to the OP, I wish for what some of the open source bugzillas do - when you submit a bug on, say, cups printing with foo driver, the system does a search on those keywords and presents you with bugs that may be duplicate. I don't think that "forces" the user to do research, but assuming a well meaning user, which most of us are, it allows them to realize there is an ongoing discussion and join that. The problem I haven't figured out is how you would implement this with the bookmarklet - the main site submission would be straighforward.
  - ketralnis 15y ago
    Clearly giving the whiners whatever they ask to make them shut up isn't good for the community. You teach them that whining gives them what they want, which will just make the whining worse because it becomes a successful tool.
petercooper 15y ago
That seems to be true with the "blitz" of stories like the Airbnb ones, but at a more general level, a lot of duplicates seem to be occurring because there are lots of different subgroups now using HN at different times of the day. For example, these are the same story but did well with similar karma and similar discussions, a week apart from each other: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2778219 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2778219 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2801263 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2801263 I certainly visit HN far too much but I notice "repeat" stories like these frequently. MetaFilter (which is certainly pretty resistant to change) ended up implementing an automatic search feature at the posting stage to highlight potential conflicts like these. It seems to work well (it's not enforced - it just makes users think first). Edit: Realized I should add I don't necessarily think this is a good idea for HN. Personally I'd prefer to see the per-page # of items go up a bit. A 50 item front page would better cope with the higher levels of FP items.
- estel 15y ago
  Genuine question: are these repeats a bad thing? When the articles appear simultaneously it's obviously a pain to have discussion fragmented, but if they're appearing distinctly, is it such a bad thing if people are discovering something new?
  - petercooper 15y ago
    I think that's quite subjective. It may not be a bad thing! I just think it indicates fragmentation of the readership in a way that didn't used to occur. Perhaps this is a natural part of a community growing beyond a certain size. That said, there was once a time when any new front page link was something I was sure not to have seen before. Now? Unless it's up to date news, I've seen perhaps 1 in 5 links on Twitter, Reddit, or even my own newsletters already. People are getting 3 week old JRuby release notes on the front page nowadays fer chrissakes..
  - atakan_gurkan 15y ago
    I am fine with repeats, but I think a mechanism that detects "related" articles and providing links to previous/later discussions would be useful. I certainly would like to hear more of what people say if a topic or a specific article interests me. I am not necessarily advocating that this should be a built-in feature; on the contrary, I think it would be more elegant as external feature and I think in that form it would be more useful, since this sounds like one of those problems where the general solution is easier than a particular solution
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
IgorPartola 15y ago
It also happens with every Apple or Google press release though.
- rubergly 15y ago
  Yeah, I don't see how Paul can say "usually it's not a problem" when it happens extremely frequently with every major press release.
ColinWright 15y ago
How do you account for the same story about IE users having a low IQ having been submitted at least 5 times so far? Yes, most are sinking without trace, but it's still really annoying to see the same thing over and over again.
ErrantX 15y ago
On the one hand (a) is probably right. On the other hand it is a story of technical interest to those of use who are not part of the "angry mob". For me I have voted up some of the stories because they contrast interestingly - the way, for example, the TC stories have contrasted to EJ's accounts are interesting. And as an example of how "damage limitation" can bite you (fairly or otherwise) there are a lot of lessons here. End of the day; this is a big story in this community and there are some key lessons here. I'd definitely vote up someone who could blog about it critically from a "things you could learn for your business" position.
andrewljohnson 15y ago
I don't see the respondents as an angry mob. Are you lumping edw519 in with those people? You aren't applying Occam's razor. The simple explanation is that this is the most relevant HN story in recent memory. It involves a startup, it involves a YC company, it's one of the most valuable startups in the site owner's portfolio, it's an international print news story, it involves tragedy, and the outcome will make us all think about what it means to be a successful start up. That's why the stories all have traction. It's a fantasy to think it's an irrational mob. Edit: I should say I see neither the respondents nor the upvoters as an angry mob.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- pg 15y ago
  If you take a look at the front page of reddit you may change your mind about what Occam's Razor implies in this case. There is nothing more common than to find people reflexively upvoting stories about something they're agitated about. You can see that's happening here from e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2821399 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2821399 which has no less than 275 points (so far), despite being a completely derivative article that adds no new information. People aren't upvoting it because of something they learned in it that engaged their intellectual curiosity.
  - ColinWright 15y ago
    Indeed - and frequently when I point out that a submission is of a derivative article that adds no new information I get down-modded. As of today, I'm giving up, especially in the light of this poll. I've learned something new and disquieting about the current HN - and I'm fairly sure this has changed. I seem to remember seeing an earlier poll on this, and I'll go look for it later when I'm more awake.
  - jeandenis 15y ago
    Although it's correct that the article itself is completely derivative, the simple fact that the story is in the FT provides new information. The fact that this narrative can go mainstream is itself fascinating and new, and worth discussing.
blahedo 15y ago
> Usually it's not a problem, because people only vote up the first version of a story. I'm not sure if this is actually false (i.e. people vote for multiple versions of the same story) or just practically false (i.e. people vote for the first version that they notice, and so multiple different ones bounce around the front page). But either way, it's pretty usual that there are dups of at least one story on the front page at any given time. Or, that today's front page has a dup of yesterday's front page story (rather than continuing discussion on the same submission).

by pg 15y ago

pak 15y ago

I appreciate your candor on this, but I'm curious if you are implying two things: 1) you think that people interested in reading about Airbnb are behaving irrationally, and 2) people rarely get angry at YC companies? I find the interaction between HN and YCombinator rather fascinating, because you obviously have a financial interest in many things posted on the site, but you also clearly feel some responsibility to play the neutral host. I wonder this responsibility comes from HN's value to YC as a barometer of trending ideas (requiring you to retain the faith of your userbase), or from some higher sense of "journalistic" obligations.

emmett 15y ago
Not to put words in Paul's mouth, but I believe his statement was: 1. It's relatively rare to get an angry mob 2. It's even more rare for that angry mob to target YC companies because YC companies are a small % of total companies 3. Therefore this situation is not common enough to optimize for
- pak 15y ago
  None of your points rule out my first implication, and I don't believe the logic for your second point was part of Paul's statement. Despite YC companies being a small part of the world economy (or whatever), they are disproportionately mentioned on HN for obvious reasons.
dspillett 15y ago
> 1) you think that people interested in reading about Airbnb are behaving irrationally Every angry mob is irrational, even if there is a perfectly rational reason for their anger. While concern about what has happened, is happening, should be happening (in various peoples opinions), and so forth is definitely rational as is an interest in watching it all play out (even if you don't care for airbnb at all specifically, this could possibly have implications elsewhere too). People posting the same thing that others have already posted (or something so similar it makes no difference) and other people voting everything up whether it is a duplicate or not is irrational. It bends the system here potentially making the site less useful/interesting to others, it isn't going to change the situation, and the confusion of partial discussions spread over threads is going to put people off that might have otherwise cared about the situation (they'll stop reading any post about it, no matter how high up pages 1 it is, as they'll start to assume it is the same as last time). lt;dr: the interest/concern is not irrational but some of the behaviour seeming steming from that is, so suggesting some people are behaving irrationally is not incorrect (IMO).

ketralnis 15y ago

Then don't be bothered by the scare word and just do what's best for the site. People (especially internet commenters) don't really understand what "censorship" means and only really use it to whinge about not getting their way. reddit's /r/politics mods recently decided to start moderating away the "does anything else think this thing that we all think? vote me up!" and all of the comments on that announcement were accusations of censorship. Nobody is trying to censor anyone, they just want to improve the content, but the people making the self-posts (or in the case of HN the anger porn) want their attention and think it's censorship when they aren't given it.

brlewis 15y ago
Taking away opportunities to whinge is what's best for the site. I'd rather see the duplicates and not see the "censorship" posts.
- frossie 15y ago
  Also, I think there are two kinds of links, "original story" links, and "what are people saying" links. For example if you are for some reason genuinely interested in AirBnB as a business, both the original story AND what tech crunch are saying about it is potentially of interest, if you believe techcrunch is an influential source that can affect AirBnB's prospects. As to the OP, I wish for what some of the open source bugzillas do - when you submit a bug on, say, cups printing with foo driver, the system does a search on those keywords and presents you with bugs that may be duplicate. I don't think that "forces" the user to do research, but assuming a well meaning user, which most of us are, it allows them to realize there is an ongoing discussion and join that. The problem I haven't figured out is how you would implement this with the bookmarklet - the main site submission would be straighforward.
- ketralnis 15y ago
  Clearly giving the whiners whatever they ask to make them shut up isn't good for the community. You teach them that whining gives them what they want, which will just make the whining worse because it becomes a successful tool.

petercooper 15y ago

That seems to be true with the "blitz" of stories like the Airbnb ones, but at a more general level, a lot of duplicates seem to be occurring because there are lots of different subgroups now using HN at different times of the day. For example, these are the same story but did well with similar karma and similar discussions, a week apart from each other: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2778219 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2778219 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2801263 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2801263 I certainly visit HN far too much but I notice "repeat" stories like these frequently. MetaFilter (which is certainly pretty resistant to change) ended up implementing an automatic search feature at the posting stage to highlight potential conflicts like these. It seems to work well (it's not enforced - it just makes users think first). Edit: Realized I should add I don't necessarily think this is a good idea for HN. Personally I'd prefer to see the per-page # of items go up a bit. A 50 item front page would better cope with the higher levels of FP items.

estel 15y ago
Genuine question: are these repeats a bad thing? When the articles appear simultaneously it's obviously a pain to have discussion fragmented, but if they're appearing distinctly, is it such a bad thing if people are discovering something new?
- petercooper 15y ago
  I think that's quite subjective. It may not be a bad thing! I just think it indicates fragmentation of the readership in a way that didn't used to occur. Perhaps this is a natural part of a community growing beyond a certain size. That said, there was once a time when any new front page link was something I was sure not to have seen before. Now? Unless it's up to date news, I've seen perhaps 1 in 5 links on Twitter, Reddit, or even my own newsletters already. People are getting 3 week old JRuby release notes on the front page nowadays fer chrissakes..
- atakan_gurkan 15y ago
  I am fine with repeats, but I think a mechanism that detects "related" articles and providing links to previous/later discussions would be useful. I certainly would like to hear more of what people say if a topic or a specific article interests me. I am not necessarily advocating that this should be a built-in feature; on the contrary, I think it would be more elegant as external feature and I think in that form it would be more useful, since this sounds like one of those problems where the general solution is easier than a particular solution

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

IgorPartola 15y ago

It also happens with every Apple or Google press release though.

rubergly 15y ago
Yeah, I don't see how Paul can say "usually it's not a problem" when it happens extremely frequently with every major press release.

ColinWright 15y ago

How do you account for the same story about IE users having a low IQ having been submitted at least 5 times so far? Yes, most are sinking without trace, but it's still really annoying to see the same thing over and over again.

ErrantX 15y ago

On the one hand (a) is probably right. On the other hand it is a story of technical interest to those of use who are not part of the "angry mob". For me I have voted up some of the stories because they contrast interestingly - the way, for example, the TC stories have contrasted to EJ's accounts are interesting. And as an example of how "damage limitation" can bite you (fairly or otherwise) there are a lot of lessons here. End of the day; this is a big story in this community and there are some key lessons here. I'd definitely vote up someone who could blog about it critically from a "things you could learn for your business" position.

andrewljohnson 15y ago

I don't see the respondents as an angry mob. Are you lumping edw519 in with those people? You aren't applying Occam's razor. The simple explanation is that this is the most relevant HN story in recent memory. It involves a startup, it involves a YC company, it's one of the most valuable startups in the site owner's portfolio, it's an international print news story, it involves tragedy, and the outcome will make us all think about what it means to be a successful start up. That's why the stories all have traction. It's a fantasy to think it's an irrational mob. Edit: I should say I see neither the respondents nor the upvoters as an angry mob.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
pg 15y ago
If you take a look at the front page of reddit you may change your mind about what Occam's Razor implies in this case. There is nothing more common than to find people reflexively upvoting stories about something they're agitated about. You can see that's happening here from e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2821399 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2821399 which has no less than 275 points (so far), despite being a completely derivative article that adds no new information. People aren't upvoting it because of something they learned in it that engaged their intellectual curiosity.
- ColinWright 15y ago
  Indeed - and frequently when I point out that a submission is of a derivative article that adds no new information I get down-modded. As of today, I'm giving up, especially in the light of this poll. I've learned something new and disquieting about the current HN - and I'm fairly sure this has changed. I seem to remember seeing an earlier poll on this, and I'll go look for it later when I'm more awake.
- jeandenis 15y ago
  Although it's correct that the article itself is completely derivative, the simple fact that the story is in the FT provides new information. The fact that this narrative can go mainstream is itself fascinating and new, and worth discussing.

blahedo 15y ago

> Usually it's not a problem, because people only vote up the first version of a story. I'm not sure if this is actually false (i.e. people vote for multiple versions of the same story) or just practically false (i.e. people vote for the first version that they notice, and so multiple different ones bounce around the front page). But either way, it's pretty usual that there are dups of at least one story on the front page at any given time. Or, that today's front page has a dup of yesterday's front page story (rather than continuing discussion on the same submission).