5 ms·

I'll be the grouchy contrarian and observe that I frequently don't like the more highly voted submissions. Seems the high point submissions are frequently pop

I'll be the grouchy contrarian and observe that I frequently don't like the more highly voted submissions. Seems the high point submissions are frequently pop science or culture articles (e.g., "Amateur astronomers discover a planet with four suns" or "A Very Unusual Camera That Emphasizes Time Over Space"), while the lower point submissions are articles I actually learn from (e.g. "Exploring the Virtual Database Engine inside SQLite" or "How to do a great product promo video for less than $200"). I get enough of the former on Reddit; I come to Hacker News for the latter.

larrys 14y ago
"articles I actually learn from" I think part of the thing that was great about a physical printed paper (I still receive the printed WSJ and NYT) is that you are exposed to things that you wouldn't normally think you would be interested in (you gave two examples of things that I wouldn't normally be interested in). Because these items are pushed to you and you browse past them. That said it would be nice to be able to identify (ala netflix) articles that you would be interested in. Or at least articles that seem to be of interest to others that pop up all the time in the articles that you read. I've noticed that many of the HN top 20 commenters I never seem comments from presumably because they are posting comments on article that I don't read (or maybe they don't post anymore perhaps). The other thing that is missing from HN is speed. The site is entirely to slow.
crististm 14y ago
Exactly my thougth. Most of the time I prefer the mid-upper range while excluding the highly voted.
thebigshane 14y ago
I would like to see a solution that addresses this issue too. Perhaps something like http://news.ycombinator.com/classic http://news.ycombinator.com/classic but instead of users who have been on HN for a year, you pick the users. Some AI programmers might suggest that HN itself could figure out what users typically upvote the same content as you -- no thanks, I can pick them out myself. A tag/keyword system would be ideal but that's a lot of work and tags never seem to turn out as good as they sound. (also, `larrys`, you died yesterday -- hellbanned, and looking at your comment history yesterday, seems like an entirely inappropriate response from the mods)
- nbashaw 14y ago
  Or a modified version of the follow model would be interesting.
- k3n 14y ago
  Where are you seeing `larrys`? The guy you're replying to doesn't seem to be "larrys", and when I looked at larrys profile here on HN I can see there was some recent arguing, but nothing that I would think would merit a ban, and additionally, I don't see a 'inappropriate response from the mods' (but perhaps I'm not sure what to look for; do mods get special CSS styling or anything?). I'm confusered.
  - AgentConundrum 14y ago
    You can't reply directly to hellbanned users, so a lot of people reply to the person such a user was replying to, to try to send them a message that they've been banned. Most users won't see these comments/users. If you go to your user page, you'll see an option called "showdead". Enable that ('Yes'), and you'll see these messages.
    - k3n 14y ago
      Thanks! That clears things up.
- papsosouid 14y ago
  >hellbanned, and looking at your comment history yesterday, seems like an entirely inappropriate response from the mods) Isn't that normally the case here? I've seen more people shadow banned for seemingly no reason than I've seen shadow banned for a legit reason. The whole point of shadow bans is supposed to be to waste the time of obvious trolls, here it is used randomly and seemingly as the only response to any perceived misbehaviour, so whatever wrong-doing is perceived never gets corrected, people just make a new account and continue as before. By far the most baffling and absurd aspect of HN.
  - sbierwagen 14y ago
ImprovedSilence 14y ago
True, possibly because articles of value are very specific, in which not everyone can relate to or retain anything of value. What might be your domain expertise, I might have no interest in, or don't have the background to comprehend, and vice versa. Thus, the "least common denominator" tends to float up. edit: there doesn't seem to be an "under" call for the karma number, it might be fun to troll the submissions with less love...
jpdoctor 14y ago
I really really wish there were a filter so that users could eliminate all HN from aggregation sources (read wired, extremetech, etc).
- sho_hn 14y ago
  Wouldn't that be relatively easy to do client-side as a bookmarklet or GreaseMonkey script? (And yes, that's a challenge, lazyweb!)
stephengillie 14y ago
Now all I want is this: http://news.ycombinator.com/under?points=55 http://news.ycombinator.com/under?points=55
tripzilch 14y ago
> I get enough of the former on Reddit; I come to Hacker News for the latter. I subscribe to a lot of tiny subreddits on specific computing and math related topics that I'm interested in--they may be (very) low traffic, but things that may not get many upvotes in /r/programming, get reposted in those places, so they still show up on my personal frontpage. The discussions there also tend to have hardly any "memes" (because that's only fun if you know hundreds will read it). I do agree that Hacker News has even more "meat" hidden away in this manner. I recently re-discovered this, at some point I had changed my HN bookmark to /best and saw only the top-voted links. Recently I've been peeking at the regular feed and indeed there's loads of quality posts that "only" get a few tens of upvotes and therefore not even show on /best, but are definitely worth reading. Do many people actually read HN/newest? I suppose they must, how would new posts get their first upvotes otherwise :) But it moves so fast, and it has a lot of (blog)spam last time I looked? Why'd you go there if the regular feed has so much better quality links, except of course out of some sense of "duty" maybe?

larrys 14y ago

"articles I actually learn from" I think part of the thing that was great about a physical printed paper (I still receive the printed WSJ and NYT) is that you are exposed to things that you wouldn't normally think you would be interested in (you gave two examples of things that I wouldn't normally be interested in). Because these items are pushed to you and you browse past them. That said it would be nice to be able to identify (ala netflix) articles that you would be interested in. Or at least articles that seem to be of interest to others that pop up all the time in the articles that you read. I've noticed that many of the HN top 20 commenters I never seem comments from presumably because they are posting comments on article that I don't read (or maybe they don't post anymore perhaps). The other thing that is missing from HN is speed. The site is entirely to slow.

crististm 14y ago

Exactly my thougth. Most of the time I prefer the mid-upper range while excluding the highly voted.

thebigshane 14y ago

I would like to see a solution that addresses this issue too. Perhaps something like http://news.ycombinator.com/classic http://news.ycombinator.com/classic but instead of users who have been on HN for a year, you pick the users. Some AI programmers might suggest that HN itself could figure out what users typically upvote the same content as you -- no thanks, I can pick them out myself. A tag/keyword system would be ideal but that's a lot of work and tags never seem to turn out as good as they sound. (also, `larrys`, you died yesterday -- hellbanned, and looking at your comment history yesterday, seems like an entirely inappropriate response from the mods)

nbashaw 14y ago
Or a modified version of the follow model would be interesting.
k3n 14y ago
Where are you seeing `larrys`? The guy you're replying to doesn't seem to be "larrys", and when I looked at larrys profile here on HN I can see there was some recent arguing, but nothing that I would think would merit a ban, and additionally, I don't see a 'inappropriate response from the mods' (but perhaps I'm not sure what to look for; do mods get special CSS styling or anything?). I'm confusered.
- AgentConundrum 14y ago
  You can't reply directly to hellbanned users, so a lot of people reply to the person such a user was replying to, to try to send them a message that they've been banned. Most users won't see these comments/users. If you go to your user page, you'll see an option called "showdead". Enable that ('Yes'), and you'll see these messages.
  - k3n 14y ago
    Thanks! That clears things up.
papsosouid 14y ago
>hellbanned, and looking at your comment history yesterday, seems like an entirely inappropriate response from the mods) Isn't that normally the case here? I've seen more people shadow banned for seemingly no reason than I've seen shadow banned for a legit reason. The whole point of shadow bans is supposed to be to waste the time of obvious trolls, here it is used randomly and seemingly as the only response to any perceived misbehaviour, so whatever wrong-doing is perceived never gets corrected, people just make a new account and continue as before. By far the most baffling and absurd aspect of HN.
- sbierwagen 14y ago

ImprovedSilence 14y ago

True, possibly because articles of value are very specific, in which not everyone can relate to or retain anything of value. What might be your domain expertise, I might have no interest in, or don't have the background to comprehend, and vice versa. Thus, the "least common denominator" tends to float up. edit: there doesn't seem to be an "under" call for the karma number, it might be fun to troll the submissions with less love...

jpdoctor 14y ago

I really really wish there were a filter so that users could eliminate all HN from aggregation sources (read wired, extremetech, etc).

sho_hn 14y ago
Wouldn't that be relatively easy to do client-side as a bookmarklet or GreaseMonkey script? (And yes, that's a challenge, lazyweb!)

stephengillie 14y ago

Now all I want is this: http://news.ycombinator.com/under?points=55 http://news.ycombinator.com/under?points=55

tripzilch 14y ago

> I get enough of the former on Reddit; I come to Hacker News for the latter. I subscribe to a lot of tiny subreddits on specific computing and math related topics that I'm interested in--they may be (very) low traffic, but things that may not get many upvotes in /r/programming, get reposted in those places, so they still show up on my personal frontpage. The discussions there also tend to have hardly any "memes" (because that's only fun if you know hundreds will read it). I do agree that Hacker News has even more "meat" hidden away in this manner. I recently re-discovered this, at some point I had changed my HN bookmark to /best and saw only the top-voted links. Recently I've been peeking at the regular feed and indeed there's loads of quality posts that "only" get a few tens of upvotes and therefore not even show on /best, but are definitely worth reading. Do many people actually read HN/newest? I suppose they must, how would new posts get their first upvotes otherwise :) But it moves so fast, and it has a lot of (blog)spam last time I looked? Why'd you go there if the regular feed has so much better quality links, except of course out of some sense of "duty" maybe?