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Muhaha (looking at the results so far). It's way too late. I pretty much got on board the moment it started to go downhill - same time the reddit crown (me incl

Muhaha (looking at the results so far). It's way too late. I pretty much got on board the moment it started to go downhill - same time the reddit crown (me included) came here. Communities like this have two big problems to solve when they grow up: 1. "The crowd" comes in, and dwarfes by sheer numbers the original community, pretty much diluting the original values to a fraction. 2. Same community, same members, same ideas - after a while you get stuck in a loop, and it's hard to bring truly original content. Unfortunately these two problems don't solve each other, but rather make things worse. The crowd will assimilate only the most superficial and more repetitive values, while the true target for original content is lost pretty fast. What I'm saying is things are pretty much doomed, and I'm not talking only about HN. Believe it or not, there was a time when digg was better then HN is now. As for solutions, I have none. But do like the idea of invitation only... maybe with a twist. You still need to be able to get new members directly, not through aquintances. So how about having "full members" and "regular members". Regulars can't post stories, and their comments are somewhat at a disadvantage (graphically or by initial points. I's suggest both). Their comments have "invite" buttons visible to the full members, possibly with a window showing comment history in between. Full members have a number of invites logarithmically proportional to their karma. To the HN today it's both too late and impractical to apply this, but a clone could be worth it. Maybe starting with the users with the most karma as of one year ago.

unalone 18y ago
I joined later than you, and when I did it was incredible. It stayed so until the middle of October, as the election picked up steam. I actually think that it's begun to recover in terms of the stories that hit the front; the comments are getting worse, and the hivemind is acting up (I disagree with you, but I voted you up because you made a comment that invited discussion), and I think that's the big problem on HN right now. I think that as far as the system goes, HN works better than both Digg and Reddit. Digg was killed by its emphasis on the "Digg" button, by its claim to be a bookmarking site early on, and by its poor comment system. (That, and the formula for displaying all posts that reached a certain level of popularity and only those posts.) Reddit's system was far more flexible, but its community got far too one-sided, to a pretty awful degree. Hacker News discourages that stuff in part by forcing karma gaps before you have access to features. I think that if anything, the karma requirements should be increased again. Require higher karma for downvoting comments and upvoting submissions, require some karma for submitting stories. That way, the people who have the most control over the system are the longer-time users, who have contributed more and who have much less of an impulsive reaction towards things. That's the most important thing to keep in mind: impulse kills civilized community. I think HN can be saved, but only time can tell. I think that it will have to be tweaked to balance things out.
- kajecounterhack 18y ago
  Saved? I'm not really sure it needs "saving." I've been around since about a year after its inception, and like Paul said, people have always complained that quality was going down. But honestly, it has stayed about the same. Sure, once in a while some trollish post gets to the front page, but the mods tackle it or people flag it or upvote other things within a day. The signal to noise ratio is just really high, and unless that's going down drastically, I don't see a problem. Come back the day HN becomes Digg, because I don't think it'll happen...for a long long time at any rate. Growth is good. It's only bad if you have people who fundamentally misunderstand this site, and by far I think most of the people who join News.YC understand what it is about. I mean, if they didn't understand, why would they even join or hear about it to begin with?

unalone 18y ago

I joined later than you, and when I did it was incredible. It stayed so until the middle of October, as the election picked up steam. I actually think that it's begun to recover in terms of the stories that hit the front; the comments are getting worse, and the hivemind is acting up (I disagree with you, but I voted you up because you made a comment that invited discussion), and I think that's the big problem on HN right now. I think that as far as the system goes, HN works better than both Digg and Reddit. Digg was killed by its emphasis on the "Digg" button, by its claim to be a bookmarking site early on, and by its poor comment system. (That, and the formula for displaying all posts that reached a certain level of popularity and only those posts.) Reddit's system was far more flexible, but its community got far too one-sided, to a pretty awful degree. Hacker News discourages that stuff in part by forcing karma gaps before you have access to features. I think that if anything, the karma requirements should be increased again. Require higher karma for downvoting comments and upvoting submissions, require some karma for submitting stories. That way, the people who have the most control over the system are the longer-time users, who have contributed more and who have much less of an impulsive reaction towards things. That's the most important thing to keep in mind: impulse kills civilized community. I think HN can be saved, but only time can tell. I think that it will have to be tweaked to balance things out.

kajecounterhack 18y ago
Saved? I'm not really sure it needs "saving." I've been around since about a year after its inception, and like Paul said, people have always complained that quality was going down. But honestly, it has stayed about the same. Sure, once in a while some trollish post gets to the front page, but the mods tackle it or people flag it or upvote other things within a day. The signal to noise ratio is just really high, and unless that's going down drastically, I don't see a problem. Come back the day HN becomes Digg, because I don't think it'll happen...for a long long time at any rate. Growth is good. It's only bad if you have people who fundamentally misunderstand this site, and by far I think most of the people who join News.YC understand what it is about. I mean, if they didn't understand, why would they even join or hear about it to begin with?