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I'm curious about the degree to which decreasing quality is a consequence of dilution in which "less desirable" individuals lower the mean quality (or some othe
by kevinalexbrown 13y ago
I'm curious about the degree to which decreasing quality is a consequence of dilution in which "less desirable" individuals lower the mean quality (or some other holistic measure), versus the social effects due purely to size.
I'm curious because a large community will probably change the behavior of all individuals, regardless of quality. One such effect is they way discussions happen. In a village, town halls can have discussions with every member. An idea is brought forth, multiple people make changes, it gets amended, reworked, changed. In short, topics have some amount of "persistence", and opinions have more dynamism.
In a city, discussions are more like a broadcast: any member might be able to speak, but they're not sparking discussion, they're broadcasting a point of view, and with so many points of view broadcast at any given moment, it's hard to have a discussion that lasts more than a few hours before the next topic of interest is brought forth. In short, topics seem to have little persistence, and opinions have far less dynamism.
It seems much more rewarding in a city to make comments designed to convince the audience of how intelligent I am, because I only have the city's attention for a moment. Perhaps this leads to the preponderance of middlebrow dismissals or other "how can I look smart here?" comments. In a village, by contrast, these comments are much less lucrative. If I walk around and the only comment I can give to others is that their new crop idea might not work, I'm probably not going to be very valued, because people will notice over time that those are the only comments I give.
It's difficult for me to articulate quite what I mean, perhaps someone could help.
- scott_s 13y agoI think of this as conversational intimacy. If too many people are involved, the intimacy is lost. It's still possible, even on the HN of today. Focused technical articles, which are not conventionally controversial, often produce the most valuable discussions to me. They may only have on the order of 30 comments, but those commenters are either interested in learning about the topic, or knowledgable of the topic.
- harryf 13y agoSomething I've observed on both Reddit and to a lesser extent HN is as popularity grows, the comment UI rewards speed and brevity if you want to get your point of view heard. If you're one of the first posters and manage to say something provocative with few words, you get more attention. Someone who takes more time (relative to the time the link was posted) to make a reasoned argument with many words (a paragraph or two) will start lower down and have a lower chance of getting up votes as it takes more effort read the entire comment. In other words those that take more time to consider what they post are effectively punished compared to those that post quickly and wittily.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jacquesm 13y agoHN is like democracy, it is flawed but it is the best we've got.
- obviouslygreen 13y agoWhile I agree that democracy passes "it's flawed but it's the best we've got," I don't think that's a good analogy for HN. HN is good because of the quality of the submissions... which is still slightly questionable at times, and I've only been around here for a couple years, not long enough to assess whether it's dropped dramatically. Average quality of comments drop with the quantity of users; that's something anyone who's run any number of web forums knows. Unfortunately, because the users also curate HN's content collectively, despite any weighting that might go on, a higher number of users leading to a lower quality of content will also lead to a lower quality of curation. This is why Slashdot's article content varies with the quality of the editors, largely independent of the quality of comments. HN doesn't have that advantage, or any of the disadvantages that come with it. They're interesting foils in this case.
- micampe 13y agoHN hellbanning is just infuriating, no upsides.
- chalst 13y agoAre there any actual hellbanning tragedies on HN?
- saalweachter 13y agoImagine the saddest, loneliest, weirdest, most obnoxious kid from your elementary school. Maybe you were that kid. They go up to every little clique and say something, but no one listens. They invite everyone to their birthday party, but no one comes. Would you wish that on anyone, even if they were annoying or angry or wrong?
- jlgreco 13y ago
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- GhotiFish 13y agoA way to resolve this might be to branch more aggressively. Reddit does this with it's /r/*s. There's nothing wrong with subdividing a group that gets too large, the problem is there is no obvious impetus to do that.
- tommi 13y agoI agree, but on the other hand, wouldn't that make HN effectively Reddit? There is some value in the whole group being together.
- GhotiFish 13y agono ones suggesting to actually have subreddits, just subdivision. How about just arbitrary partitions? Create random sub-communities of 500 active users, show stores submitted between those 500 first, then those top stories to the rest of hacker news. That kills three birds with one stone: You get smaller community thinking, people are more willing to submit stories to smaller groups, and people are more willing to see new stories. There's tones of ways you can subdivide a community! I am envious of their opportunity to try something. Hacker News is free, they can do what they want! They should have some fun with it.
- gus_massa 13y agoCan I be in the partition with patio11 and tokenadult, please?
- Spearchucker 13y agoThe answer seems obvious. Create another, read-only version of Hacker News. To get permission to post and comment you need to aquire n karma. Voila.