4 ms·

Must be a slow news day to recycle events that happened a month ago.

user00012-ab 4y ago
Seems like most "news" on HN has gone down hill in favor of a stream of constantly updating news. I've been thinking that HN should update their algorithm to punish people that post links that don't get comments; so you are incentivized to only post a link if you think it'll actually be interesting. Maybe just give -100 karma for every link you post, and then you get karma back based on the percentage of points in comments on the post. I've also notice the number of duplicate/triplicate+++ submissions seems to be increasing also. Guess no one has time to check if the story has already been added. This would also be fixed by giving an initial -100 points per post. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
- dogman144 4y ago
  As in incentivize users to post things that will engage best, which is known to be posts that incite outrage/anger? You’d turn HN into everything else that is bad about social media.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  I don't think your prescribed solution will work. I haven't done formal research (and actually, that might be a fun exercise for someone to do... Scrape HN and categorize keywords in low-comment articles vs. high-comment articles), but the interesting stuff seems to tend to be technical and generate low engagement (because the only people who could add to the technical content would be those with focused knowledge in the field), while the "TMZ but for Silicon Valley"-type stories tend to be high engagement (because everyone's got an opinion on Zuckerberg, or Bezos, or Pichai, and they're more than happy to share it). As any site becomes popular, regression to the mean is a predictable outcome.
- ziddoap 4y ago
  A site that is meant to foster discussion about interesting topics, and your solution is to punish the people who post things they found interesting? Yeah, no thanks from me. It takes less than a second for me to see a duplicate and ignore it. Many times a duplicate is actually my first encounter (I'm not on here 24/7, reading every single post). There's also a pattern of visibility problems with some posts, otherwise there wouldn't be a second-chance pool -- good quality posts that are posted at the wrong time or whatever -- and you want to punish those users? For having a good post that didn't get lucky enough or wasn't posted at the right time? I guess if you want to massively reduce the number of submissions (including many engaging and topical posts) this would be one way to do it... Not sure it'd bring the results you're after.
  - user00012-ab 4y ago
    it works exactly like the startup culture which I think is a big thing with Ycombinator? You don't create your startup for free; you pay money to get it running. You have to take a risk if you think your idea is worth it. No risk no payout (karma) Also, I'm running negative karma on this comment already because I posted what I thought was an interesting idea, and instead of just useful/interesting comments, ziddoap for example and the other people that replied, It just got voted down. So Based on that I'd say hacker news is already using this model for comments, they just need to move it to submissions. It's kind of weird, each downvote on this post, is actually a vote for this model.
    - ziddoap 4y ago
      >it works exactly like the startup culture which I think a big thing with Ycombinator? You don't create your startup for free; you pay money to get it running. You have to take a risk if you think your idea is worth it. No risk no payout (karma) The risk/reward balance is not the same as an actual startup, though. I spend money on a startup because I think that I will get multiple times returned. When I post on HN, I do so because I found something interesting and want to share that with others, not because I want karma. One of my favorite things about HN is finding some really niche/obscure post that I would never have come across. Many times those posts have low engagement because they are niche/obscure. Your proposal would be sure to eliminate many of these types of posts. >Also, I'm running negative karma on this comment already because I posted what I thought was an interesting idea, While very frustrating (I've had the same happen, low engagement in comments but lots of votes), I'm sure you posted the idea because you thought it would be helpful and/or to start a discussion about it, rather than posting it to increase your overall karma. So I think the startup comparison again falls a bit flat.
- glitchc 4y ago
  Conflating popular with good is an all too common error.

Seems like most "news" on HN has gone down hill in favor of a stream of constantly updating news. I've been thinking that HN should update their algorithm to punish people that post links that don't get comments; so you are incentivized to only post a link if you think it'll actually be interesting. Maybe just give -100 karma for every link you post, and then you get karma back based on the percentage of points in comments on the post. I've also notice the number of duplicate/triplicate+++ submissions seems to be increasing also. Guess no one has time to check if the story has already been added. This would also be fixed by giving an initial -100 points per post. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

dogman144 4y ago
As in incentivize users to post things that will engage best, which is known to be posts that incite outrage/anger? You’d turn HN into everything else that is bad about social media.
shadowgovt 4y ago
I don't think your prescribed solution will work. I haven't done formal research (and actually, that might be a fun exercise for someone to do... Scrape HN and categorize keywords in low-comment articles vs. high-comment articles), but the interesting stuff seems to tend to be technical and generate low engagement (because the only people who could add to the technical content would be those with focused knowledge in the field), while the "TMZ but for Silicon Valley"-type stories tend to be high engagement (because everyone's got an opinion on Zuckerberg, or Bezos, or Pichai, and they're more than happy to share it). As any site becomes popular, regression to the mean is a predictable outcome.
ziddoap 4y ago
A site that is meant to foster discussion about interesting topics, and your solution is to punish the people who post things they found interesting? Yeah, no thanks from me. It takes less than a second for me to see a duplicate and ignore it. Many times a duplicate is actually my first encounter (I'm not on here 24/7, reading every single post). There's also a pattern of visibility problems with some posts, otherwise there wouldn't be a second-chance pool -- good quality posts that are posted at the wrong time or whatever -- and you want to punish those users? For having a good post that didn't get lucky enough or wasn't posted at the right time? I guess if you want to massively reduce the number of submissions (including many engaging and topical posts) this would be one way to do it... Not sure it'd bring the results you're after.
- user00012-ab 4y ago
  it works exactly like the startup culture which I think is a big thing with Ycombinator? You don't create your startup for free; you pay money to get it running. You have to take a risk if you think your idea is worth it. No risk no payout (karma) Also, I'm running negative karma on this comment already because I posted what I thought was an interesting idea, and instead of just useful/interesting comments, ziddoap for example and the other people that replied, It just got voted down. So Based on that I'd say hacker news is already using this model for comments, they just need to move it to submissions. It's kind of weird, each downvote on this post, is actually a vote for this model.
  - ziddoap 4y ago
    >it works exactly like the startup culture which I think a big thing with Ycombinator? You don't create your startup for free; you pay money to get it running. You have to take a risk if you think your idea is worth it. No risk no payout (karma) The risk/reward balance is not the same as an actual startup, though. I spend money on a startup because I think that I will get multiple times returned. When I post on HN, I do so because I found something interesting and want to share that with others, not because I want karma. One of my favorite things about HN is finding some really niche/obscure post that I would never have come across. Many times those posts have low engagement because they are niche/obscure. Your proposal would be sure to eliminate many of these types of posts. >Also, I'm running negative karma on this comment already because I posted what I thought was an interesting idea, While very frustrating (I've had the same happen, low engagement in comments but lots of votes), I'm sure you posted the idea because you thought it would be helpful and/or to start a discussion about it, rather than posting it to increase your overall karma. So I think the startup comparison again falls a bit flat.
glitchc 4y ago
Conflating popular with good is an all too common error.