4 ms·

How about "this doesn't belong to the front page" flag for the stories? Clearly it takes very little effort to upvote a fluff story to the front page and to ke

How about "this doesn't belong to the front page" flag for the stories? Clearly it takes very little effort to upvote a fluff story to the front page and to keep it there. It takes substantially more effort to pull an interesting story up from the New page. For example, I am routinely disappointed with the Front page content, and yet I am very rarely browse the New page. Moreover, this is not going to change, because I know myself. I am guessing I am not alone. There's lot more people who would be willing to clean up the front page from the fluff than those who'd be willing to patrol New page in a search of fitting submissions. Just give us a chance.

adrianhoward 14y ago
The problem is that the 'fluff' category is subjective. Obviously the upvoters didn't think it was fluff - or they wouldn't have upvoted it. If we had the doesn't-belong flag I can guarantee that we'd rapidly see different flagging cliques like: * anything apple related * anything microsoft related * anything not related to coding * anything not related to startups * ... and so on ... Take the MS Surface reviews for example (bias disclaimer: I'm a Linux/OS X guy). I personally found the pro- and anti-reviews that made it to the front page both interesting, but I'm guessing you'd class either or both reviews as fluff. Not because though either class of review was 'right' - but because of what they revealed about the product related to the reviewer's values. In the same way that I can read Roger Ebert one star film review and know that I'm going to love it (or a four star that I'm going to hate). Reading different reviews from people with different perspectives is interesting to me - not fluff. I, personally, think the surface is going to be a huge success since MS seem to have been bright enough to make a tablet that's not aimed straight at the iPad, but with some strong design values that are going to meet the needs of a certain chunk of the market much better than the iPad does. That - to me - is an interesting conversation. I've been chatting to folk on these topics elsewhere. But not here since it's filled with the equivalent of "You're a fanboy", "No - you're a fanboy"... Which is sort of sad.
- anonymouz 14y ago
  What about allowing downvoting of stories (maybe not below 1?). Upvoting is subjective too, and while flagging may be to strong for something so subjective and ill-defined, maybe it would help if people could downvote a story so that it disappears from the front page faster.
  - adrianhoward 14y ago
    It seems likely that downvoting won't help any more than upvoting or flagging. All would be done on people's personal preferences. All would result in lists that will annoy some folk. As I see it the problem is not that 'fluff' gets to the front page. The problem is that the hackernews community is now sufficiently large that there are groups who have very different ideas of what 'fluff' is.
    - huhtenberg 14y ago
      "Fluff" is all that relates to the mainstream tech news. Basic Litmus test - is it something that Engadget/Arstechnica/etc would pick up? If yes, then I'd rather not see it here. Alternatively, since the comments on HN can be of a value - have a separate section for mainstream tech subjects. Like the Ask page. And call it Fluff :)
      - adrianhoward 14y ago
        Basic Litmus test - is it something that Engadget/Arstechnica/etc would pick up? If yes, then I'd rather not see it here. And that's a perfectly reasonable litmus test for what you consider fluff/non-fluff. It doesn't work well for me (for example - I personally like the arstechnica stuff I see here. I don't follow, and don't have the time or interest to follow, most of the arstechncia stuff that gets published. The stuff I see here tends to be the stuff I'm interested in. On the other hand I could quite happily never see a techcrunch or verge post ever again ;-) I'm sure there are a bunch of HN posters who would disagree with both of us (and a bunch more that would agree). To misquote Walt Whitman - HN is large. It contains multitudes :-) If I was going to bet - I'd say that HN is going to end up in one of three places: 1) Things stay pretty much as they are. The admin folk add in new tweaks around post promotion, voting, karma displays, voting on new posts, etc. The community continues to grow. As it does the majority view of what the site "is" will change. This will annoy some folk who preferred the 'old' majority view. Where this ends up - something like slashdot. 2) HN fragments. Tagging / sub-groups / whatever. Some way for folk to focus on the stuff they're interested in and ignore the rest. They'll still be trolling/flames - but it'll be more obvious since folk will need to explicitly search it out rather than having stuff that runs counter to their world view hitting their front page. This ends up more like reddit. 3) YC/PG/whoever decides what HN should be. We acquire moderators with banhammers of doom - possibly recruited/promoted by the HN community. Much more focussed submission guidelines. Lots of self-policing and strong and rapid responses to closing/flagging posts. Associated accusations of bias / censorship. I suspect we'll get (1) or (2). Especially with us being a rather geekish site - and us geeky folk do love trying to solve social problems with technical solutions ;-)
white_devil 14y ago
How about "this doesn't belong to the front page" flag for the stories? Anything belongs to the front page by virtue of getting to it. You can argue that the community is broken because it upvotes stuff you don't want to see, but that's a battle you just can't win. Basically, you're suggesting that in addition to there being a button for "I find this interesting!", there should be another button for "No, you fools! No!".
- raganwald 14y ago
  > there should be another button for "No, you fools! No!" I have that button, it's called "flag," and that's exactly what it's for: Posts that are popular but toxic. If a post was unpopular, you wouldn't need to flag it.
  - huhtenberg 14y ago
    Beware. I got my "flag" taken away a year ago, because I too thought what you think.
    - raganwald 14y ago
      I haven't flagged any of these posts.
  - white_devil 14y ago
    Why do you get to be the arbiter of what is "toxic"?
    - GHFigs 14y ago
      Why does anybody get to vote in the first place?
      - white_devil 14y ago
        An upvote says "I find this interesting", but you're only speaking for yourself. If you deem something "toxic" to the community, it implies you know what's best for everyone involved.
debacle 14y ago
What frustrates me the most is a bad blog post about math or science that makes it to the top 5 on the front page with no comments. Clearly no one is reading the story, and is just upvoting it because they want to believe that it's something they're interested in.

adrianhoward 14y ago

The problem is that the 'fluff' category is subjective. Obviously the upvoters didn't think it was fluff - or they wouldn't have upvoted it. If we had the doesn't-belong flag I can guarantee that we'd rapidly see different flagging cliques like: * anything apple related * anything microsoft related * anything not related to coding * anything not related to startups * ... and so on ... Take the MS Surface reviews for example (bias disclaimer: I'm a Linux/OS X guy). I personally found the pro- and anti-reviews that made it to the front page both interesting, but I'm guessing you'd class either or both reviews as fluff. Not because though either class of review was 'right' - but because of what they revealed about the product related to the reviewer's values. In the same way that I can read Roger Ebert one star film review and know that I'm going to love it (or a four star that I'm going to hate). Reading different reviews from people with different perspectives is interesting to me - not fluff. I, personally, think the surface is going to be a huge success since MS seem to have been bright enough to make a tablet that's not aimed straight at the iPad, but with some strong design values that are going to meet the needs of a certain chunk of the market much better than the iPad does. That - to me - is an interesting conversation. I've been chatting to folk on these topics elsewhere. But not here since it's filled with the equivalent of "You're a fanboy", "No - you're a fanboy"... Which is sort of sad.

anonymouz 14y ago
What about allowing downvoting of stories (maybe not below 1?). Upvoting is subjective too, and while flagging may be to strong for something so subjective and ill-defined, maybe it would help if people could downvote a story so that it disappears from the front page faster.
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  It seems likely that downvoting won't help any more than upvoting or flagging. All would be done on people's personal preferences. All would result in lists that will annoy some folk. As I see it the problem is not that 'fluff' gets to the front page. The problem is that the hackernews community is now sufficiently large that there are groups who have very different ideas of what 'fluff' is.
  - huhtenberg 14y ago
    "Fluff" is all that relates to the mainstream tech news. Basic Litmus test - is it something that Engadget/Arstechnica/etc would pick up? If yes, then I'd rather not see it here. Alternatively, since the comments on HN can be of a value - have a separate section for mainstream tech subjects. Like the Ask page. And call it Fluff :)
    - adrianhoward 14y ago
      Basic Litmus test - is it something that Engadget/Arstechnica/etc would pick up? If yes, then I'd rather not see it here. And that's a perfectly reasonable litmus test for what you consider fluff/non-fluff. It doesn't work well for me (for example - I personally like the arstechnica stuff I see here. I don't follow, and don't have the time or interest to follow, most of the arstechncia stuff that gets published. The stuff I see here tends to be the stuff I'm interested in. On the other hand I could quite happily never see a techcrunch or verge post ever again ;-) I'm sure there are a bunch of HN posters who would disagree with both of us (and a bunch more that would agree). To misquote Walt Whitman - HN is large. It contains multitudes :-) If I was going to bet - I'd say that HN is going to end up in one of three places: 1) Things stay pretty much as they are. The admin folk add in new tweaks around post promotion, voting, karma displays, voting on new posts, etc. The community continues to grow. As it does the majority view of what the site "is" will change. This will annoy some folk who preferred the 'old' majority view. Where this ends up - something like slashdot. 2) HN fragments. Tagging / sub-groups / whatever. Some way for folk to focus on the stuff they're interested in and ignore the rest. They'll still be trolling/flames - but it'll be more obvious since folk will need to explicitly search it out rather than having stuff that runs counter to their world view hitting their front page. This ends up more like reddit. 3) YC/PG/whoever decides what HN should be. We acquire moderators with banhammers of doom - possibly recruited/promoted by the HN community. Much more focussed submission guidelines. Lots of self-policing and strong and rapid responses to closing/flagging posts. Associated accusations of bias / censorship. I suspect we'll get (1) or (2). Especially with us being a rather geekish site - and us geeky folk do love trying to solve social problems with technical solutions ;-)

white_devil 14y ago

How about "this doesn't belong to the front page" flag for the stories? Anything belongs to the front page by virtue of getting to it. You can argue that the community is broken because it upvotes stuff you don't want to see, but that's a battle you just can't win. Basically, you're suggesting that in addition to there being a button for "I find this interesting!", there should be another button for "No, you fools! No!".

raganwald 14y ago
> there should be another button for "No, you fools! No!" I have that button, it's called "flag," and that's exactly what it's for: Posts that are popular but toxic. If a post was unpopular, you wouldn't need to flag it.
- huhtenberg 14y ago
  Beware. I got my "flag" taken away a year ago, because I too thought what you think.
  - raganwald 14y ago
    I haven't flagged any of these posts.
- white_devil 14y ago
  Why do you get to be the arbiter of what is "toxic"?
  - GHFigs 14y ago
    Why does anybody get to vote in the first place?
    - white_devil 14y ago
      An upvote says "I find this interesting", but you're only speaking for yourself. If you deem something "toxic" to the community, it implies you know what's best for everyone involved.

debacle 14y ago

What frustrates me the most is a bad blog post about math or science that makes it to the top 5 on the front page with no comments. Clearly no one is reading the story, and is just upvoting it because they want to believe that it's something they're interested in.