5 ms·

Ask HN: Why doesn't HN have a rec algorithm?

9 points by sujayk_33 7mo ago

I was just wondering about why there's a constant timeline and no recommendation.

al_borland 7mo ago
From the FAQ: How are stories ranked? The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted. Comments in threads are ranked the same way. Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action. —- Personally, I appreciate that the rankings are done at a site level, and there isn’t a bunch of tracking and manipulation to give me a personal “feed” to drive engagement. A lot of comments on this site complain about those practices on other sites. I don’t think it’s welcome here.
- muzani 7mo ago
  This is very much the feature of HN. I want to see what news everyone else is getting.
idontwantthis 7mo ago
Because it doesn't serve ads so the point is the content not the engagement.
- paulcole 7mo ago
  The whole site is an ad…
mrkpdl 7mo ago
It’s much better the way it is - one of the last remaining high quality feeds on the Internet! (PS please feel free to disagree and post other ones I don’t know about below!)
- sujayk_33 7mo ago
  I agree too.
A_Duck 7mo ago
The idea is to discover new things you didn’t know you wanted to know - not consume more of the same
- paulcole 7mo ago
  Why can’t a recommendation engine do that?
  - ravshan 7mo ago
    Have you been living under the rock for the past 10 years? Haven't you seen what happens with recommendation engines over time?
    - nananana9 7mo ago
      Big tech recommendation algorithms optimize for time spent on platform, and the easiest and safest way to do that is to show you content very similar to (or literally the same) as what you've clicked before. I don't see why you can't have an algorithm that's aware of your interests and attempts to show you novel things tangentially related to them.
    - paulcole 7mo ago
      I don't think you need to try to insult me. You can just explain why a recommendation engine is unable to help you discover new things you didn’t know you wanted to know and try to help me understand better.
kamomkoian 7mo ago
How do you organize technical articles you read? I read a lot of backend and architecture articles and often struggle to revisit them later. I’m curious how others handle this. Do you: Use Notion or Obsidian? Bookmark everything? Keep markdown notes? Rely on memory? What has worked long-term for you? What hasn’t?
- btrettel 7mo ago
  A directory hierarchy works well for me. I've described my setup online before: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/173314/31143 https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/173314/31143 https://www.reddit.com/r/datacurator/comments/p75xlu/how_i_organize_about_15000_research_papers/ https://www.reddit.com/r/datacurator/comments/p75xlu/how_i_o... I don't read everything I have from start to finish. A lot of this is for future reference. Since that StackExchange post, I'm now up to about 36.6K PDF files in 4.4K directories, with 14.5K symlinks so I can put files in multiple directories. I also have a separate version controlled repo with notes a bunch of subjects. I'm planning to eventually merge my PDF hierarchy and the notes to have a unified system. It's going to have to be done in stages.
  - kyboren 7mo ago
    How many GB is your PDF collection? Have you considered sharing it more widely? I know about Sci-Hub, Anna's Archive, etc., but I'm not so interested in a giant landfill containing all papers ever written. I'm much more interested in a curated collection of useful papers.
    - btrettel 7mo ago
      The root directory of the archive is 142 GB large. It's not only PDFs, but mostly PDFs. It includes many things that were never online and some things that were online at one point but are not online any longer. For copyright reasons I can not share the entire thing as-is. I have plans to share most notes in there and bibliographic data for most directories. Doing so would be a major project in itself as this was never designed for that. I have some information I would prefer to keep private in there that's going to have to be filtered out, and I would prefer to clean some of it up to be in a more "presentable" state. As for how useful you'd find it, I think that depends entirely on the overlap between my interests and yours. You might be interested in this project of mine: https://github.com/btrettel/specialized-bibs https://github.com/btrettel/specialized-bibs
chistev 7mo ago
It's not meant to be addictive, even though it kinda is.
lyaocean 7mo ago
Shared ranking beats personalized engagement loops.
krapp 7mo ago
Because it's a bare bones forum written in the early 2000s whose purpose was mostly to show off the author's bespoke LISP dialect. I think dang mentioned one time having random stories bubble up to give them visibility and encourage variety and people hated it.
UqWBcuFx6NV4r 7mo ago
[dead]
qsera 7mo ago
Because shills will game the shit out of it. That is why.

9 points by sujayk_33 7mo ago

I was just wondering about why there's a constant timeline and no recommendation.

From the FAQ: How are stories ranked? The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted. Comments in threads are ranked the same way. Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action. —- Personally, I appreciate that the rankings are done at a site level, and there isn’t a bunch of tracking and manipulation to give me a personal “feed” to drive engagement. A lot of comments on this site complain about those practices on other sites. I don’t think it’s welcome here.

muzani 7mo ago
This is very much the feature of HN. I want to see what news everyone else is getting.

idontwantthis 7mo ago

Because it doesn't serve ads so the point is the content not the engagement.

paulcole 7mo ago
The whole site is an ad…

mrkpdl 7mo ago

It’s much better the way it is - one of the last remaining high quality feeds on the Internet! (PS please feel free to disagree and post other ones I don’t know about below!)

sujayk_33 7mo ago
I agree too.

A_Duck 7mo ago

The idea is to discover new things you didn’t know you wanted to know - not consume more of the same

paulcole 7mo ago
Why can’t a recommendation engine do that?
- ravshan 7mo ago
  Have you been living under the rock for the past 10 years? Haven't you seen what happens with recommendation engines over time?
  - nananana9 7mo ago
    Big tech recommendation algorithms optimize for time spent on platform, and the easiest and safest way to do that is to show you content very similar to (or literally the same) as what you've clicked before. I don't see why you can't have an algorithm that's aware of your interests and attempts to show you novel things tangentially related to them.
  - paulcole 7mo ago
    I don't think you need to try to insult me. You can just explain why a recommendation engine is unable to help you discover new things you didn’t know you wanted to know and try to help me understand better.

kamomkoian 7mo ago

How do you organize technical articles you read? I read a lot of backend and architecture articles and often struggle to revisit them later. I’m curious how others handle this. Do you: Use Notion or Obsidian? Bookmark everything? Keep markdown notes? Rely on memory? What has worked long-term for you? What hasn’t?

btrettel 7mo ago
A directory hierarchy works well for me. I've described my setup online before: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/173314/31143 https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/173314/31143 https://www.reddit.com/r/datacurator/comments/p75xlu/how_i_organize_about_15000_research_papers/ https://www.reddit.com/r/datacurator/comments/p75xlu/how_i_o... I don't read everything I have from start to finish. A lot of this is for future reference. Since that StackExchange post, I'm now up to about 36.6K PDF files in 4.4K directories, with 14.5K symlinks so I can put files in multiple directories. I also have a separate version controlled repo with notes a bunch of subjects. I'm planning to eventually merge my PDF hierarchy and the notes to have a unified system. It's going to have to be done in stages.
- kyboren 7mo ago
  How many GB is your PDF collection? Have you considered sharing it more widely? I know about Sci-Hub, Anna's Archive, etc., but I'm not so interested in a giant landfill containing all papers ever written. I'm much more interested in a curated collection of useful papers.
  - btrettel 7mo ago
    The root directory of the archive is 142 GB large. It's not only PDFs, but mostly PDFs. It includes many things that were never online and some things that were online at one point but are not online any longer. For copyright reasons I can not share the entire thing as-is. I have plans to share most notes in there and bibliographic data for most directories. Doing so would be a major project in itself as this was never designed for that. I have some information I would prefer to keep private in there that's going to have to be filtered out, and I would prefer to clean some of it up to be in a more "presentable" state. As for how useful you'd find it, I think that depends entirely on the overlap between my interests and yours. You might be interested in this project of mine: https://github.com/btrettel/specialized-bibs https://github.com/btrettel/specialized-bibs

chistev 7mo ago

It's not meant to be addictive, even though it kinda is.

lyaocean 7mo ago

Shared ranking beats personalized engagement loops.

krapp 7mo ago

Because it's a bare bones forum written in the early 2000s whose purpose was mostly to show off the author's bespoke LISP dialect. I think dang mentioned one time having random stories bubble up to give them visibility and encourage variety and people hated it.

UqWBcuFx6NV4r 7mo ago

[dead]

qsera 7mo ago

Because shills will game the shit out of it. That is why.