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pg (or possibly another admin these days) will remove the create-account functionality if HN suddenly becomes very popular, as with the LinkedIn thread. I'm try

pg (or possibly another admin these days) will remove the create-account functionality if HN suddenly becomes very popular, as with the LinkedIn thread. I'm trying to find one of his comments where he mentions this, but there are 8,511 to wade through, and the obvious searches haven't found it yet. edit: I may have misremembered; the first reference I've found was http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3481174 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3481174, but I'm still looking. edit: Gave up looking. I probably don't know what I'm talking about.

Monotoko 14y ago
I remember this too... pretty sure it had something to do with reddit.
nostromo 14y ago
It was the day of the SOPA blackout IIRC. Redditors were bored and looking for their hit of lolcats.
- RegEx 14y ago
  Bashing Reddit on HN? SO BRAVE
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - ivv 14y ago
    Does graying out a downvoted comment attract less or more attention to it?
    - RegEx 14y ago
      Probably more. I'm looking at -40 from that comment alone, hah.
      - _nato_ 14y ago
        I also vote more :)
        RegEx 14y ago
        I tend to ignore slightly grayed out text. When I see a barely visible comment (such as mine!), my curiosity gets the best of me.
ramchip 14y ago
Here you go: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3481174 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3481174
- mistercow 14y ago
  That was a very classy way to say "I don't want reddit to do to HN what Digg did to reddit."
jsprinkles 14y ago
It was gone last night, before the LinkedIn news. I know because my session happened to expire and I noticed. At least 12 hours ago, possibly more.
BadLogInMyAss 14y ago
I wish they'd fix the log-in system in general. It continually reports "bad login" for no reason, rendering your ID permanently useless because there's A: nothing wrong with the credentials you entered and B: no way to reset them. And yes, I have an E-mail address specified. And the behavior is totally unpredictable. Once, after several attempts, a message magically appeared about sending a new password... but because the log-in credentials were "bad" and in fact cleared out, the system didn't know where to send any such E-mail. Yet it claimed to do so. Surprise, surprise: That E-mail never arrived. So we wind up having to create a new user ID on every machine or every time a cookie expires. It's pathetic.
naner 14y ago
FYI Metafilter does the same thing.
- andrewcooke 14y ago
  they also change a minimal amount - $5 i think - that discourages idle registration. i think it works well for them. maybe hn should consider it (it's not for profit - it's for the psychological "bump").
  - jmduke 14y ago
    SomethingAwful forums does it too ($10 i think?) -- with the additional caveat that 'bad' posters can and do get banned.
  - mnicole 14y ago
    The problem with Metafilter is that $5 over time hasn't scaled. It's been $5 since they implemented it way back when, and as the popularity of the site rose, $5 wasn't enough to stop people from registering to add their pointless commentary anyway. A few years ago I used to really find value in their community and felt that the added registration fee filtered out people that were just there to give bad advice on the green or self-post on the blue, but for the two years or so, it seems as if paying such a little amount makes people even more likely to post crap because they feel some sense of validation or privilege after payment. Additionally (since SA was mentioned), there are so few moderators at MF that subtle trolls and misinformation loudmouths are prevalent (some have been known for their antics for several years) and threads derail and turn into a get-off-my-lawn!-fest really quickly.

Monotoko 14y ago

I remember this too... pretty sure it had something to do with reddit.

nostromo 14y ago

It was the day of the SOPA blackout IIRC. Redditors were bored and looking for their hit of lolcats.

RegEx 14y ago
Bashing Reddit on HN? SO BRAVE
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- ivv 14y ago
  Does graying out a downvoted comment attract less or more attention to it?
  - RegEx 14y ago
    Probably more. I'm looking at -40 from that comment alone, hah.
    - _nato_ 14y ago
      I also vote more :)
      - RegEx 14y ago
        I tend to ignore slightly grayed out text. When I see a barely visible comment (such as mine!), my curiosity gets the best of me.

ramchip 14y ago

Here you go: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3481174 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3481174

mistercow 14y ago
That was a very classy way to say "I don't want reddit to do to HN what Digg did to reddit."

jsprinkles 14y ago

It was gone last night, before the LinkedIn news. I know because my session happened to expire and I noticed. At least 12 hours ago, possibly more.

BadLogInMyAss 14y ago

I wish they'd fix the log-in system in general. It continually reports "bad login" for no reason, rendering your ID permanently useless because there's A: nothing wrong with the credentials you entered and B: no way to reset them. And yes, I have an E-mail address specified. And the behavior is totally unpredictable. Once, after several attempts, a message magically appeared about sending a new password... but because the log-in credentials were "bad" and in fact cleared out, the system didn't know where to send any such E-mail. Yet it claimed to do so. Surprise, surprise: That E-mail never arrived. So we wind up having to create a new user ID on every machine or every time a cookie expires. It's pathetic.

naner 14y ago

FYI Metafilter does the same thing.

andrewcooke 14y ago
they also change a minimal amount - $5 i think - that discourages idle registration. i think it works well for them. maybe hn should consider it (it's not for profit - it's for the psychological "bump").
- jmduke 14y ago
  SomethingAwful forums does it too ($10 i think?) -- with the additional caveat that 'bad' posters can and do get banned.
- mnicole 14y ago
  The problem with Metafilter is that $5 over time hasn't scaled. It's been $5 since they implemented it way back when, and as the popularity of the site rose, $5 wasn't enough to stop people from registering to add their pointless commentary anyway. A few years ago I used to really find value in their community and felt that the added registration fee filtered out people that were just there to give bad advice on the green or self-post on the blue, but for the two years or so, it seems as if paying such a little amount makes people even more likely to post crap because they feel some sense of validation or privilege after payment. Additionally (since SA was mentioned), there are so few moderators at MF that subtle trolls and misinformation loudmouths are prevalent (some have been known for their antics for several years) and threads derail and turn into a get-off-my-lawn!-fest really quickly.