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The problem is that we might lose some gold. Not too seldom have I seen the author or a significant party of a story chime in through a fresh green account, as
by magicalhippo 8mo ago
The problem is that we might lose some gold.
Not too seldom have I seen the author or a significant party of a story chime in through a fresh green account, as they were alerted by the story being posted here one way or another. And usually when they do it's very interesting.
As such I would find it detrimental if they had to jump through too many hoops so they don't bother or it takes too long so the thread dies before they can participate.
- Uvix 8mo agoSeems like restricting posts but not comments from a fresh account would thread that needle pretty well?
- ThrowawayR2 8mo agoIf that were to happen, I'd also suggest that comments from fresh accounts should also have URLs deleted or disabled.
- Barbing 8mo agoEven something like… Example[.]com But don’t worry, HN has been thoughtful about links from new accounts for months and months (can’t speak for longer, but maybe/probably). Effort could well be duplicative unless I’m unaware of some more granular detail.
- johnnyanmac 8mo agoI'm surprised posts aren't restricted a bit more. Maybe that's just my old school "lurk moar" mentality, but I feel like I really need to understand the vibes of a community before I start to contribute posts to it.
- Barbing 8mo agoTrue Mm, balancing against “long-time lurker, made an account just to post this”…
- AnimalMuppet 8mo agoYeah, exactly. Thirteen years ago, I was a lurker. No account, because why would I make an account just to read? But when I wanted to say something badly enough, I made an account. (I think the first thing I did is post an Ask HN about functional programming, so "no posting for X time" might have turned me away.)
- SoftTalker 8mo agoI'd suggest: new accounts are read-only for at least a week. Then they can comment (rate limited at first, gradually relaxed) and vote, and then after some additional amount of time and/or karma they can submit a post. Maybe some of these mechanisms are already in place? Bots can probably game this too but drive-by bots maybe won't be patient enough.
- huddert 8mo ago[flagged]
- Barbing 8mo agoImmediate comment privileges are really important. Lots of examples, but to give a silly one, someone pastes their clipboard without realizing it includes their API key or their email. Good Samaritans should be able to say, "Hey, I just caught something." And, as another commenter mentions, if someone shares your work, you should be able to comment on that thread without delay.
- VorpalWay 8mo agoThis is the only reason I got myself a HN account: someone posted a link to a blog post of mine, and I happened to see the increased traffic on my VPS. (And I stuck around after, a few posts are interesting enough. All the AI stuff isn't, and there is too much of that unfortunately.)
- 3form 8mo agoYou reminded me how infuriating it was not to be able to post comments on StackOverflow. Felt like getting those few upvotes required was taking forever, and all without ability to ask for clarification.
- Barbing 8mo agoGoodness that is rough, then they instantly own your posts where blanking edits are vandalism (obviously great for the internet, albeit at potential occasional individual cost).
- trinsic2 8mo agoI think the right people will stick around. There is a certain kind of indivudal that has the paitence to understand that a system that restricts new accounts from post is a good thing. Of recent, there have been a lot of posters that come here from the open web just to try and slant opinion.
- wizzwizz4 8mo agoI am only that kind of individual when I'm inclined to post unconstructively – not that I know that, at the time. When I'm feeling constructive, friction is likely to make me take my constructive energies elsewhere.
- brudgers 8mo agoI believe HN's success is in large part not presuming to have a good idea of what "the right people" are. This doesn't mean it doesn't have a strong sense of what bad behavior is. It clearly does.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- Waterluvian 8mo agoThe SA Forums model does accomplish the goals of filtering out noise, but then you’re stuck with a stagnant community of “the right people.”
- bombcar 8mo agoUnironically slashdot's moderating and meta-moderating is the best long-term system I've seen. Everything else seems to eventually cause new blood to dry up.
- jtchang 8mo agoI remember reading slashdot but what is their system? Is there a separate set of mods that moderate the moderators?
- moralestapia 8mo agoTotally. I don't think the solution is changing the dynamic but flagging, this site self-moderates quite well, aside from dang and tomhow's great work.
- hinkley 8mo agoResponding from a new account is different from posting from a new account. You aren’t vetting people by making accounts have a minimum age to post articles. That’ll just cause people to make accounts before they need them. Reddit has forums where you need a minimum karma to post to certain subreddits and that is typically upvotes on your comments, but it could also be upvotes on someone else’s moderated subreddit.
- grapheneposter 8mo agoYes that is exactly what I just did, some of us are just getting around to having time to post
- 8cvor6j844qw_d6 8mo agoHonest question, what are the alternatives to HN? Because if new account restrictions create enough friction, you lose legitimate users who periodically rotate accounts for privacy reasons. At some point the annoyance tips toward just lurking, and a forum where only old accounts talk is a stagnant forum given enough time.
- alwa 8mo agoLobste.rs comes to mind. High enough friction that, even as a seasoned participant here, I haven’t tried over there yet.
- esperent 8mo agoI've wanted to join lobste.rs for several years but don't see any way to do so. I think that might be a bit too far in the other direction.
- mastazi 8mo agoSame here, I don't know anyone who might send me an invite unfortunately. It's unlikely for this topic to come up organically in a conversation as in "hey by the way are you on lobste.rs" so my previous attempts were by sending messages in my company's notice board asking if someone is there. But in the last few years I have worked in smaller startups so the sample size is too small for this strategy to succeed.
- ajdecon 8mo agoFWIW, folks on lobste.rs are (mostly) friendly and willing to extend invites if you seem like a real person. My understanding is that the invite system is primarily in use to avoid drive-by spammers and the like. Feel free to send me an email (findable via my HN profile) mentioning that you found it via this thread, and I’m happy to extend an invite.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- vova_hn2 8mo agoThis problem can be solved by an invite/vouch for system. New account can be invited or vouched for by an old account with good karma. If an account that you vouched for starts spamming and/or slopposting, you lose your vouching for abilities for a period of time or forever.
- throwaway2037 8mo agoI didn't know anybody here before I joined. (I have been here for a few years, and I still don't know anybody here.) How would a person like me get invited or vouched?
- vova_hn2 8mo agoAsk you IRL friends or colleagues from your job "hey, do you happen to have an HN account?" If the discussion is related to a public project, like in the examples in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47303604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47303604 ...you can use existing communication channels (website, readme on github) to ask people for an invite to participate in it.
- throwaway2037 8mo agoI am pretty sure that none of my friends nor co-workers read HN. Whenever I have shared stuff, none of them have heard of HN.
- dang 8mo agoIndeed. Here is a recent litmus test: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47051852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47051852. How can we filter the lightweight stuff while still benefiting from posts like these? (a bit more about this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47056384 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47056384, with a reply from the OP)
- Terretta 8mo agoInteresting litmus test, as the post isn't just green, it's riddled with LLM copyediting. Doesn't read as if originally composed by an LLM, so there's that. Would seem to require some discernment to classify. Not all assistive use is slop.
- dang 8mo agoI mean I guess you're right - I didn't notice it, because the community reaction to the project was so positive. > Not all assistive use is slop. That's right, and the key is to discern which posts/projects are interesting.
- thinkingemote 8mo agoThe discussion about the LLM assisted/written submission at the time, with replies by the author: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47055300 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47055300 The defence given was essentially "just reformatted it for better grammar" It's obviously says LLM to me at first read through. I suspect that: a) less people are willing to expend a bit of energy to notice LLM usage given how much of it is. ("we've lost" theory) b) that people are losing the ability to detect LLM submissions. ("we're cooked" theory) or c) that people don't care about the use of LLM. ("who cares" theory). Personally I've been feeling less invested, because it seems as if most users don't care and even the main users of the site don't notice it.
- trinsic2 8mo agoDo you have any good links to guides on how to spot? I would like to care, but its hard to tell. and then what do we do when we spot it?
- kristopolous 8mo agoI think we've gone from the eternal September to the eternal December
- intended 8mo agoThese changes aren’t being suggested in a vacuum. It’s perhaps unintentional, but your framing makes it seem that this is a baseless whimsy. At this point, it appears that we will be talking to bots more than humans. It’s a brave new world, and not adapting to it will see the humans leave.
- gmerc 8mo agothe death of the press should give you all the answers you need on this one.
- dwedge 8mo agoHeh until this moment I thought green was a respected account somehow - like moderators on Reddit