6 ms·

I wonder if this HN post will get torpedoed as fast as the one from yesterday[0]. 0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435440 https://news.ycombinator.com

I wonder if this HN post will get torpedoed as fast as the one from yesterday[0]. 0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435440 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435440

user_7832 2y ago
I really wish there was some simple calculations that could be shown on how posts are ranked. For eg post A has x upvotes, y comments, is z minutes old and therefore rank 2. Post B has these values, while C is here. Hence this post went down the front page quickly. It's not that I don't trust the mods explicitly, it's just that showing such numbers (if they exist) would be helpful for transparency.
- casefields 2y ago
  People always interested and fascinated by the algorithm whenever it comes up. Dang makes the (correct) assertion that people will much more easily game it if they know the intricacies. PG always churlishly jumps in to say there’s nothing interesting about it and any discussion of it is boring. Pretty asinine response but I work in Hollywood and each studio lot has public tours giving anyone that wants a glimpse behind the curtain. On my shows, we’ve even allowed those people to get off the studio golf cart to peek inside at our active set. Even answering questions they have about what they see which sometimes explains Hollywood trickery. I’m sure there’s tons of young programmers that would love to see and understand how such a long-lasting great community like this one persists.
  - serf 2y ago
    wait long enough and the other product will be able to expose the secrets. future gpt prompt : "Take 200000 random comments and threads from hacker news, look at how they rank over time and make assumptions about how the moderation staff may be affecting what you consume. Precisely consider the threads or comments which have risque topics regarding politics or society or projects that are closely related to Hacker News moderation staff or Y Combinator affiliates."
  - yojo 2y ago
    I dunno. This is standard practice for things like SEO algos to try to slow down spammers, or risk algos to slow down scammers. HN drives a boatload of traffic, so getting on the front page has economic value. That means there are 100% people out there who will abuse a published ranking system to spam us.
  - pvg 2y ago
    There's a public tour of HN stuff pretty much every day in the moderator comments. The story ranking and moderation gets covered frequently.
  - heavyset_go 2y ago
    > Dang makes the (correct) assertion that people will much more easily game it if they know the intricacies. Which is interesting, because it's sacrilege to insinuate that it's being gamed at all.
    - dang 2y ago
      It's not sacrilege, it's just that people rarely have any basis for saying this beyond just it kind of feels that way based on one or maybe two datapoints, and feeliness really doesn't count. We take real abuse seriously and I've personally put hundreds (feels like thousands) of hours into that problem over many years - but there has to be some sort of data to go on.
- loceng 2y ago
  IMHO HN data should be transparent. The innovation on detecting patterns would be incredible, and in reality I think would be best to evolve into allowing user-decided algorithms that they personally subscribe to.
  - dang 2y ago
    It's a common suggestion but I don't think it would work and have posted quite a few times about why: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderation%20log&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu....
    - loceng 2y ago
      Thanks for linking. I suppose my base argument would be why not let each individual decide for themselves - whether HN is a "low trust" or "high trust" source to them? Over enough time with enough data, certain macro patterns may emerge also that otherwise aren't easily observed by any individual - no matter how present they are, as I'm sure you've probably said countless times you're unable to see every link or thread posted to moderate, as there's just far too much activity. I would also suggest such conversation would need to be corralled into some sort of secondary HN forum branch, discussion on observations, insights, etc. In general it could be useful for people to also learn about observing patterns for their own sites they own or manage. I do understand it can facilitate a bit of a "weapons" race, in that if there are bad actors seeking to have many human looking bot accounts (or a single person orchestrating many accounts), then they now too would see how their fingerprints look compared to others as well. Ultimately I think Elon Musk is right though that to help dissuade spam and organizations-ideologues from shaping narratives and controlling what's allowed to be seen and discussed, that an actual $ cost is required. Perhaps HN could implement a $5/month (or even higher tiers)? For most on HN, if they are in the tech field, even $50/month for arguably a higher curated-"more moderated" forum, isn't much for the individual - and if a filter to only show posts and/or comments by those paying AND/OR better yet, filtering based on including only votes by those at different tiers - then that is affordable compared to say someone who maybe somehow is running 1,000 users; although unfortunately $50,000/month isn't much for organizations or nations with an agenda, if that's all it takes to keep certain truths suppressed as much and as quickly as possible.
- beepbooptheory 2y ago
  I really don't care about the "algorithm" here. I think this place is distinguished nicely by the fact that I almost never know how much karma a post or user has. If it was in fact a total dictatorship of a few, posing as some democratic reddit thing, who cares? I'm OK as it is, and these things don't last forever anyway. All you can really do on the internet is ride the waves of synchronicity where the community and moderation is at harmony, and jump ship when it isnt! Any other conceit that some algorithm or innovation or particular transparency will be this cure all to <whatever it is we want> feels like it never pans out, the boring truth is that we are all soft squishy people. Show me a message board that is ultimately more harmonious and diverse and big as this one!
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    >I think this place is distinguished nicely by the fact that I almost never know how much karma a post or user has. Did you know that people who have been involved with Y Combinator who make an account on HN can see everyone else who has been a part of Y Combinator? Their usernames are highlighted a different color. It's a literal secret club that they rarely acknowledge.
    - beepbooptheory 2y ago
      Sure ok! What is at stake with this? In my experience, founders need all the help they can get making friends, I'm glad they have a little club!
- mvdtnz 2y ago
  The main component of the HN ranking algorithm is sentiment divided by YC holdings in the company in question. We've all seen it.
- r721 2y ago
  This post and discussion from 2013 might interest you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799854
nwoli 2y ago
They’re definitely doing this on comments too. I’ve had negative towards altman comments at the top dropped to below the negative voted ones in the past
- suroot 2y ago
  Wait til you hear what happened to Michael O’Church.
  - 8372049 2y ago
    This or something else? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9593177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9593177
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - ayewo 2y ago
    Not sure what you are trying to get across. This is the final comment [1] that got Michael’s account banned. You can see dang’s reply [2] directly underneath his which says: > We've banned this account. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10017538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10017538 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10019003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10019003
    - suroot 2y ago
      [flagged]
  - swingline 2y ago
    [dead]
- dang 2y ago
  It's standard moderation on HN to downweight subthreads where the root comment is snarky, unsubstantive, or predictable. Most especially when it is unsubstantive + indignant. This is the most important thing we've figured out about improving thread quality in the last 10 years. But it doesn't vary based on specific persons (not Sam or anyone else). Substantive criticism is fine, but predictable one-liners and that sort of thing are not what we want here—especially since they evoke even worse from others. The idea of HN is to have an internet forum—to the extent possible—where discussion remains intellectually interesting. The kind of comments we're talking about tend to choke all of that out, so downweighting them is very much in HN's critical path. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jsnell 2y ago
That post was, as far as I can tell, basically an opinion piece repeating/summarizing stories that had been on the HN frontpage dozens of times. This post is investigative journalism with significant new information. It should not be surprising that the outcomes are different.
treme 2y ago
PG is Altman's godfather more or less. I am disappoint of these OpenAI news as of late. 5. Sam Altman I was told I shouldn't mention founders of YC-funded companies in this list. But Sam Altman can't be stopped by such flimsy rules. If he wants to be on this list, he's going to be. Honestly, Sam is, along with Steve Jobs, the founder I refer to most when I'm advising startups. On questions of design, I ask "What would Steve do?" but on questions of strategy or ambition I ask "What would Sama do?" What I learned from meeting Sama is that the doctrine of the elect applies to startups. It applies way less than most people think: startup investing does not consist of trying to pick winners the way you might in a horse race. But there are a few people with such force of will that they're going to get whatever they want. https://paulgraham.com/5founders.html https://paulgraham.com/5founders.html
dang 2y ago
I didn't see that comment but I did post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40437018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40437018 elsewhere in that thread, which addresses the same concerns. If anyone reads that and still has a concern, I'd be happy to take a crack at answering further. The short version is that users flagged that one plus it set off the flamewar detector, and we didn't turn the penalties off because the post didn't contain significant new information (SNI), which is the test we apply (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22significant%20new%20information%22%20by%3Adang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). Current post does contain SNI so it's still high on HN's front page. Why do we do it this way? Not to protect any organization (including YC itself, and certainly including OpenAI or any other BigCo), but simply to avoid repetition. Repetition is the opposite of intellectual curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20repetition%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...), which is what we're hoping to optimize for (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). I hesitate to say "it's as simple as that" because HN is a complicated beast and there are always other factors, but...it's kind of as simple as that.
tgv 2y ago
And today: a post about Johansson's voice was on the front page with quite a high score, and then disappeared. This is not the place to discuss OpenAI.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

I wonder if this HN post will get torpedoed as fast as the one from yesterday[0]. 0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435440 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40435440

user_7832 2y ago

I really wish there was some simple calculations that could be shown on how posts are ranked. For eg post A has x upvotes, y comments, is z minutes old and therefore rank 2. Post B has these values, while C is here. Hence this post went down the front page quickly. It's not that I don't trust the mods explicitly, it's just that showing such numbers (if they exist) would be helpful for transparency.

casefields 2y ago
People always interested and fascinated by the algorithm whenever it comes up. Dang makes the (correct) assertion that people will much more easily game it if they know the intricacies. PG always churlishly jumps in to say there’s nothing interesting about it and any discussion of it is boring. Pretty asinine response but I work in Hollywood and each studio lot has public tours giving anyone that wants a glimpse behind the curtain. On my shows, we’ve even allowed those people to get off the studio golf cart to peek inside at our active set. Even answering questions they have about what they see which sometimes explains Hollywood trickery. I’m sure there’s tons of young programmers that would love to see and understand how such a long-lasting great community like this one persists.
- serf 2y ago
  wait long enough and the other product will be able to expose the secrets. future gpt prompt : "Take 200000 random comments and threads from hacker news, look at how they rank over time and make assumptions about how the moderation staff may be affecting what you consume. Precisely consider the threads or comments which have risque topics regarding politics or society or projects that are closely related to Hacker News moderation staff or Y Combinator affiliates."
- yojo 2y ago
  I dunno. This is standard practice for things like SEO algos to try to slow down spammers, or risk algos to slow down scammers. HN drives a boatload of traffic, so getting on the front page has economic value. That means there are 100% people out there who will abuse a published ranking system to spam us.
- pvg 2y ago
  There's a public tour of HN stuff pretty much every day in the moderator comments. The story ranking and moderation gets covered frequently.
- heavyset_go 2y ago
  > Dang makes the (correct) assertion that people will much more easily game it if they know the intricacies. Which is interesting, because it's sacrilege to insinuate that it's being gamed at all.
  - dang 2y ago
    It's not sacrilege, it's just that people rarely have any basis for saying this beyond just it kind of feels that way based on one or maybe two datapoints, and feeliness really doesn't count. We take real abuse seriously and I've personally put hundreds (feels like thousands) of hours into that problem over many years - but there has to be some sort of data to go on.
loceng 2y ago
IMHO HN data should be transparent. The innovation on detecting patterns would be incredible, and in reality I think would be best to evolve into allowing user-decided algorithms that they personally subscribe to.
- dang 2y ago
  It's a common suggestion but I don't think it would work and have posted quite a few times about why: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderation%20log&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu....
  - loceng 2y ago
    Thanks for linking. I suppose my base argument would be why not let each individual decide for themselves - whether HN is a "low trust" or "high trust" source to them? Over enough time with enough data, certain macro patterns may emerge also that otherwise aren't easily observed by any individual - no matter how present they are, as I'm sure you've probably said countless times you're unable to see every link or thread posted to moderate, as there's just far too much activity. I would also suggest such conversation would need to be corralled into some sort of secondary HN forum branch, discussion on observations, insights, etc. In general it could be useful for people to also learn about observing patterns for their own sites they own or manage. I do understand it can facilitate a bit of a "weapons" race, in that if there are bad actors seeking to have many human looking bot accounts (or a single person orchestrating many accounts), then they now too would see how their fingerprints look compared to others as well. Ultimately I think Elon Musk is right though that to help dissuade spam and organizations-ideologues from shaping narratives and controlling what's allowed to be seen and discussed, that an actual $ cost is required. Perhaps HN could implement a $5/month (or even higher tiers)? For most on HN, if they are in the tech field, even $50/month for arguably a higher curated-"more moderated" forum, isn't much for the individual - and if a filter to only show posts and/or comments by those paying AND/OR better yet, filtering based on including only votes by those at different tiers - then that is affordable compared to say someone who maybe somehow is running 1,000 users; although unfortunately $50,000/month isn't much for organizations or nations with an agenda, if that's all it takes to keep certain truths suppressed as much and as quickly as possible.
beepbooptheory 2y ago
I really don't care about the "algorithm" here. I think this place is distinguished nicely by the fact that I almost never know how much karma a post or user has. If it was in fact a total dictatorship of a few, posing as some democratic reddit thing, who cares? I'm OK as it is, and these things don't last forever anyway. All you can really do on the internet is ride the waves of synchronicity where the community and moderation is at harmony, and jump ship when it isnt! Any other conceit that some algorithm or innovation or particular transparency will be this cure all to <whatever it is we want> feels like it never pans out, the boring truth is that we are all soft squishy people. Show me a message board that is ultimately more harmonious and diverse and big as this one!
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  >I think this place is distinguished nicely by the fact that I almost never know how much karma a post or user has. Did you know that people who have been involved with Y Combinator who make an account on HN can see everyone else who has been a part of Y Combinator? Their usernames are highlighted a different color. It's a literal secret club that they rarely acknowledge.
  - beepbooptheory 2y ago
    Sure ok! What is at stake with this? In my experience, founders need all the help they can get making friends, I'm glad they have a little club!
mvdtnz 2y ago
The main component of the HN ranking algorithm is sentiment divided by YC holdings in the company in question. We've all seen it.
r721 2y ago
This post and discussion from 2013 might interest you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799854

nwoli 2y ago

They’re definitely doing this on comments too. I’ve had negative towards altman comments at the top dropped to below the negative voted ones in the past

suroot 2y ago
Wait til you hear what happened to Michael O’Church.
- 8372049 2y ago
  This or something else? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9593177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9593177
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ayewo 2y ago
  Not sure what you are trying to get across. This is the final comment [1] that got Michael’s account banned. You can see dang’s reply [2] directly underneath his which says: > We've banned this account. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10017538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10017538 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10019003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10019003
  - suroot 2y ago
    [flagged]
- swingline 2y ago
  [dead]
dang 2y ago
It's standard moderation on HN to downweight subthreads where the root comment is snarky, unsubstantive, or predictable. Most especially when it is unsubstantive + indignant. This is the most important thing we've figured out about improving thread quality in the last 10 years. But it doesn't vary based on specific persons (not Sam or anyone else). Substantive criticism is fine, but predictable one-liners and that sort of thing are not what we want here—especially since they evoke even worse from others. The idea of HN is to have an internet forum—to the extent possible—where discussion remains intellectually interesting. The kind of comments we're talking about tend to choke all of that out, so downweighting them is very much in HN's critical path. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

jsnell 2y ago

That post was, as far as I can tell, basically an opinion piece repeating/summarizing stories that had been on the HN frontpage dozens of times. This post is investigative journalism with significant new information. It should not be surprising that the outcomes are different.

treme 2y ago

PG is Altman's godfather more or less. I am disappoint of these OpenAI news as of late. 5. Sam Altman I was told I shouldn't mention founders of YC-funded companies in this list. But Sam Altman can't be stopped by such flimsy rules. If he wants to be on this list, he's going to be. Honestly, Sam is, along with Steve Jobs, the founder I refer to most when I'm advising startups. On questions of design, I ask "What would Steve do?" but on questions of strategy or ambition I ask "What would Sama do?" What I learned from meeting Sama is that the doctrine of the elect applies to startups. It applies way less than most people think: startup investing does not consist of trying to pick winners the way you might in a horse race. But there are a few people with such force of will that they're going to get whatever they want. https://paulgraham.com/5founders.html https://paulgraham.com/5founders.html

dang 2y ago

I didn't see that comment but I did post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40437018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40437018 elsewhere in that thread, which addresses the same concerns. If anyone reads that and still has a concern, I'd be happy to take a crack at answering further. The short version is that users flagged that one plus it set off the flamewar detector, and we didn't turn the penalties off because the post didn't contain significant new information (SNI), which is the test we apply (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22significant%20new%20information%22%20by%3Adang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). Current post does contain SNI so it's still high on HN's front page. Why do we do it this way? Not to protect any organization (including YC itself, and certainly including OpenAI or any other BigCo), but simply to avoid repetition. Repetition is the opposite of intellectual curiosity (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20repetition%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...), which is what we're hoping to optimize for (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=curiosity%20optimiz%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). I hesitate to say "it's as simple as that" because HN is a complicated beast and there are always other factors, but...it's kind of as simple as that.

tgv 2y ago

And today: a post about Johansson's voice was on the front page with quite a high score, and then disappeared. This is not the place to discuss OpenAI.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]