4 ms·

News News: Faster, Fewer Flamewars

82 points by pg 18y ago

vaksel 18y ago
Do we even have flame wars? I'm a fairly active reader and I don't really remember ever seeing one on here.
- tokenadult 18y ago
  They are ignored by most of the most active users here, which keeps them small and contained, because they never gain much karma, in most cases.
jasongullickson 18y ago
I'm a newcomer to HN but I was amazed to find out how long it's been around. It has the feel that many of my favorite sites had in their infancy which they inevitably loose as time goes on. It's great to hear that the system is constantly being improved to maintain this environment, bravo.
- trickjarrett 18y ago
  Change is a constant on HN. Site changes, algorithms, etc. But through it all the community has remained largely tightknit and focused, which are definitely feats of their own.
  - Hexstream 18y ago
    There is one constant: widespread paranoia, justified or otherwise, about the quality of the site and alleged degradation. This since approximately day 1.
    - trickjarrett 18y ago
      Because the community here is largely composed of early adopters and tech people. People who have been part of other sites who we grew attached to and watched as they degraded around us. Is it paranoia? I don't think so. I think it's a fervent and constant vigilance against such. But even then, it's definition has changed. The acceptable topics has broadened. We held open forums through the political season to discuss whether we wanted political news, etc. So even then our definition of quality submissions has changed.
      - bitdiddle 18y ago
        I'm just curious about this exponential delay :) I've been a member since almost the very first day I think. I rarely post but occasionally comment and read a lot. This is a great site with very good content for programmers and entrepreneurs. I do hope it stays that way!
      - jasongullickson 18y ago
        If nothing else it proves that this Quality is sustainable, even if the cost is eternal vigilance (which isn't so bad, and I imagine not outside the nature of the sort who frequent this site).
        swolchok 18y ago
        Maybe it's just me, but I thought I had been watching the site go downhill in the past month or so. I have rarely found a submission I really wanted to upmod in that time.
        Hexstream 18y ago
        It's not just you, everyone thinks the site is going downhill in round-robin fashion.
        TrevorJ 18y ago
        That sentiment needs to be carved in marble and displayed prominently in Washington DC.
    - stcredzero 18y ago
      Reminds me of a joke used by a couple of musicians I respect: "This one starts out slow, then sorta tapers off from there..."
  - TrevorJ 18y ago
    I is, I think, due to this change constant that the site still feels new. since, in some senses it always is new becasue of the subtle changes.
mechanical_fish 18y ago
there is now an exponential delay before reply links appear on deeply nested comments I think this is a fascinating idea.
- trickjarrett 18y ago
  It will be interesting to see how it goes, but I see it more as a way to slow down conversations. I think perhaps we may find that it is best to exponentially delay replies in a thread from the same person. Most comment thread discussions go maybe 2 for each person before losing most value (from my observations) and so it may also find value in adding logic to slow or disable that sort of "noise" as well.
- eru 18y ago
  I'd prefer to be able to enter my comment as soon as I can think of it, but do not have it show for other people until the time is up.
  - Hexstream 18y ago
    I'm thinking this would significantly affect the effectiveness of this new feature. Maybe we'd get some flamewar thread depth transferred into breadth but otherwise have about the same quantity of flame comments?
    - DanielBMarkham 18y ago
      Exactly. Let's say I'm really mad at your comment you just wrote. Really mad. So the little "reply" button isn't showing up. Do I a) stop being angry because a little button is disabled or b) find some other way to vent online? I'm voting for b. And if you're going to vent anyway, I'd rather you nest it. That's what nested comments are for, anyway -- stuff that gets more and more detailed about a particular conversation.
      - TrevorJ 18y ago
        That's why I think auto-collapsing threads with less then a certain threshold of karma after a period of time might be the way to go.
bisceglie 18y ago
i like the idea of exponential delays for deeply nested comments. i wonder if there is a more direct way to force people to take their time in writing replies. maybe a timer on how long a reply textfield is active (i know, full of flaws, but a start, at least). if it doesn't inhibit thoughtless replies/comments, at least it will destroy the excuses of "oh, i should have thought about my response a bit more", and "that's not what i meant, i should have clarified that point."
- amalcon 18y ago
  It also might simply cause people to work around the feature, by adding new top-level comments (that are actually replies to nested comments). I will be interested to see how well it works.
  - philwelch 18y ago
    Opening "link" in another tab is a better workaround.
    - benreesman 18y ago
      Hopefully the delay is enforced at the server. Have you checked to see if opening 'link' in another tab defeats the restriction?
      - philwelch 18y ago
        I'm doing it right here. (I should clarify that you don't need to actually use another tab.)
        tracy 18y ago
        Yes, it works. Click on link, open in new tab and you can reply just fine.
        byrneseyeview 18y ago
        It looks a little strange to have no replies on the comment at the bottom of the screen (especially given the 'link' feature). Perhaps we could keep the 'link' exception, but just incorporate its use into the flagging algorithm (e.g. people who use it a lot get treated as if every comment they made has been flagged X times).
noss 18y ago
Another clever idea is to add delays to troublemakers' site-browsing experience. Not my idea, I picked it up somewhere. Not that it was added according to the post, but I am just saying that it is clever. :)
DanielBMarkham 18y ago
I'm skeptical of the exponential delay -- seems like another way of saying "if you're in a drawn-out conversation with somebody, take it somewhere else because you're boring us" Which then limits your options for participating in a controversial subject to a) doing nothing, and b) making some grand overarching statement and not caring what comes after it. Neither of these seem to add to the site. I understand the desire to prevent emotions from overwhelming posters, but geez, sounds like throwing the baby out with the bathwater! I've found that if both sides are honest and stick to an intelligent conversation, a lot of times you can learn a lot by the time you're about 7 levels in. Most of the time you learn that the two sides, while posturing, aren't really that far apart. I like deep threads every now and then. Shows me how people are thinking. Shows how they react on their feet. Shows the depth of their position (or lack thereof). Teaches respect for each other and community values. Flamewars? Not so much. But HN hasn't exactly been a nest of flame-waring, at least as far as I can see. There are heated discussions, they blow over, then life moves on. But hey, not my call. I hope this works out the way you want, Paul! I'm always willing to see how an experiment works out. After all, I was one of the original orange members. (or was it red?) : )
- stcredzero 18y ago
  What if readers could vote on the exponent? Maybe add a "flamewar" button that raises the exponent, which starts out at something innocuous like 1.1.
  - indiejade 18y ago
    A button might encourage the flames and flame-type replies, though. Another option might be to add a section (right now there is "news" and "newest") where members can move their too tired/drunk/grumpy to be posting posts in order to keep them out of the main discussions. *Disclaimer: I am certainly guilty of posting when too tired/drunk/grumpy to be posting, and I kinda wish that there was an option to delete old items. I don't really care about the karma aspect, but it would be nice to be able to delete.
  - bmelton 18y ago
    I suspect that it would be easier (though I don't know how practical) to simply zero the exponent for arguments that are getting upvotes. At least then it doesn't penalize the discussions generally accepted as quality.
dschobel 18y ago
Rtm just made a couple changes to Arc's internals that have made the site visibly faster. I was just reading the wikipedia page on Arc yesterday and it talks about an unofficial fork of Arc which came about because of a perception of slow development in the official branch. How are those two branches playing these days? Is there any cross-pollination of code?
- stefano 18y ago
  Currently the last release of Arc is one year old. The fork (Anarki) has had more visible development, although it has slowed down after october 2008. You can see the full history here: http://github.com/nex3/arc/commits/master/ http://github.com/nex3/arc/commits/master/ . There has been no cross pollination of code: the anarki fork fixes a few bugs that are still present in the official release of arc and it has a few interesting extra features, such as the possibility of defining your own functions to be called when a non-function object gets called. Another interesting implementaton of arc, which does include a few features from anarki, is rainbow: http://github.com/conanite/rainbow http://github.com/conanite/rainbow .
axod 18y ago
I just assumed it was a bug... You can just click on [link] and then comment still right?
jasonlbaptiste 18y ago
I'm officially nicknaming http://news.ycombinator.com/noobs http://news.ycombinator.com/noobs The Land Of The [dead]
dfranke 18y ago
The one day timer for /noobs should start ticking when they make their first submission, not when they create their account. Otherwise spammers can just wait a day before submitting anything.
- ericb 18y ago
  On a site I ran, spammers routinely signed up then submitted spam weeks later--I'm fairly certain it was automated.
- pg 18y ago
  I haven't seen any cases yet of spammers letting accounts mature before using them. There would be no practical benefit. All the limits depend on karma, not account age.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
ggchappell 18y ago
Shouldn't there be a link to the the noobs list on the lists page? There isn't (yet).
benreesman 18y ago
Is it possibly to give a nice brief summary of the kind of change that brought about this speed up? Because... damn the site is fast now!
- gruseom 18y ago
  I was going to ask that too: what are the "couple changes"?
  - pg 18y ago
    Some common functions that took n arguments used to generate garbage when given 2.
pmarin 18y ago
When arc3 ?
ilamont 18y ago
Thanks for making HN faster. I visit the site repeatedly throughout the day and the slowdowns can be frustrating.

82 points by pg 18y ago

vaksel 18y ago

Do we even have flame wars? I'm a fairly active reader and I don't really remember ever seeing one on here.

tokenadult 18y ago
They are ignored by most of the most active users here, which keeps them small and contained, because they never gain much karma, in most cases.

jasongullickson 18y ago

I'm a newcomer to HN but I was amazed to find out how long it's been around. It has the feel that many of my favorite sites had in their infancy which they inevitably loose as time goes on. It's great to hear that the system is constantly being improved to maintain this environment, bravo.

trickjarrett 18y ago
Change is a constant on HN. Site changes, algorithms, etc. But through it all the community has remained largely tightknit and focused, which are definitely feats of their own.
- Hexstream 18y ago
  There is one constant: widespread paranoia, justified or otherwise, about the quality of the site and alleged degradation. This since approximately day 1.
  - trickjarrett 18y ago
    Because the community here is largely composed of early adopters and tech people. People who have been part of other sites who we grew attached to and watched as they degraded around us. Is it paranoia? I don't think so. I think it's a fervent and constant vigilance against such. But even then, it's definition has changed. The acceptable topics has broadened. We held open forums through the political season to discuss whether we wanted political news, etc. So even then our definition of quality submissions has changed.
    - bitdiddle 18y ago
      I'm just curious about this exponential delay :) I've been a member since almost the very first day I think. I rarely post but occasionally comment and read a lot. This is a great site with very good content for programmers and entrepreneurs. I do hope it stays that way!
    - jasongullickson 18y ago
      If nothing else it proves that this Quality is sustainable, even if the cost is eternal vigilance (which isn't so bad, and I imagine not outside the nature of the sort who frequent this site).
      - swolchok 18y ago
        Maybe it's just me, but I thought I had been watching the site go downhill in the past month or so. I have rarely found a submission I really wanted to upmod in that time.
        Hexstream 18y ago
        It's not just you, everyone thinks the site is going downhill in round-robin fashion.
      - TrevorJ 18y ago
        That sentiment needs to be carved in marble and displayed prominently in Washington DC.
  - stcredzero 18y ago
    Reminds me of a joke used by a couple of musicians I respect: "This one starts out slow, then sorta tapers off from there..."
- TrevorJ 18y ago
  I is, I think, due to this change constant that the site still feels new. since, in some senses it always is new becasue of the subtle changes.

mechanical_fish 18y ago

there is now an exponential delay before reply links appear on deeply nested comments I think this is a fascinating idea.

trickjarrett 18y ago
It will be interesting to see how it goes, but I see it more as a way to slow down conversations. I think perhaps we may find that it is best to exponentially delay replies in a thread from the same person. Most comment thread discussions go maybe 2 for each person before losing most value (from my observations) and so it may also find value in adding logic to slow or disable that sort of "noise" as well.
eru 18y ago
I'd prefer to be able to enter my comment as soon as I can think of it, but do not have it show for other people until the time is up.
- Hexstream 18y ago
  I'm thinking this would significantly affect the effectiveness of this new feature. Maybe we'd get some flamewar thread depth transferred into breadth but otherwise have about the same quantity of flame comments?
  - DanielBMarkham 18y ago
    Exactly. Let's say I'm really mad at your comment you just wrote. Really mad. So the little "reply" button isn't showing up. Do I a) stop being angry because a little button is disabled or b) find some other way to vent online? I'm voting for b. And if you're going to vent anyway, I'd rather you nest it. That's what nested comments are for, anyway -- stuff that gets more and more detailed about a particular conversation.
    - TrevorJ 18y ago
      That's why I think auto-collapsing threads with less then a certain threshold of karma after a period of time might be the way to go.

bisceglie 18y ago

i like the idea of exponential delays for deeply nested comments. i wonder if there is a more direct way to force people to take their time in writing replies. maybe a timer on how long a reply textfield is active (i know, full of flaws, but a start, at least). if it doesn't inhibit thoughtless replies/comments, at least it will destroy the excuses of "oh, i should have thought about my response a bit more", and "that's not what i meant, i should have clarified that point."

amalcon 18y ago
It also might simply cause people to work around the feature, by adding new top-level comments (that are actually replies to nested comments). I will be interested to see how well it works.
- philwelch 18y ago
  Opening "link" in another tab is a better workaround.
  - benreesman 18y ago
    Hopefully the delay is enforced at the server. Have you checked to see if opening 'link' in another tab defeats the restriction?
    - philwelch 18y ago
      I'm doing it right here. (I should clarify that you don't need to actually use another tab.)
      - tracy 18y ago
        Yes, it works. Click on link, open in new tab and you can reply just fine.
      - byrneseyeview 18y ago
        It looks a little strange to have no replies on the comment at the bottom of the screen (especially given the 'link' feature). Perhaps we could keep the 'link' exception, but just incorporate its use into the flagging algorithm (e.g. people who use it a lot get treated as if every comment they made has been flagged X times).

noss 18y ago

Another clever idea is to add delays to troublemakers' site-browsing experience. Not my idea, I picked it up somewhere. Not that it was added according to the post, but I am just saying that it is clever. :)

DanielBMarkham 18y ago

I'm skeptical of the exponential delay -- seems like another way of saying "if you're in a drawn-out conversation with somebody, take it somewhere else because you're boring us" Which then limits your options for participating in a controversial subject to a) doing nothing, and b) making some grand overarching statement and not caring what comes after it. Neither of these seem to add to the site. I understand the desire to prevent emotions from overwhelming posters, but geez, sounds like throwing the baby out with the bathwater! I've found that if both sides are honest and stick to an intelligent conversation, a lot of times you can learn a lot by the time you're about 7 levels in. Most of the time you learn that the two sides, while posturing, aren't really that far apart. I like deep threads every now and then. Shows me how people are thinking. Shows how they react on their feet. Shows the depth of their position (or lack thereof). Teaches respect for each other and community values. Flamewars? Not so much. But HN hasn't exactly been a nest of flame-waring, at least as far as I can see. There are heated discussions, they blow over, then life moves on. But hey, not my call. I hope this works out the way you want, Paul! I'm always willing to see how an experiment works out. After all, I was one of the original orange members. (or was it red?) : )

stcredzero 18y ago
What if readers could vote on the exponent? Maybe add a "flamewar" button that raises the exponent, which starts out at something innocuous like 1.1.
- indiejade 18y ago
  A button might encourage the flames and flame-type replies, though. Another option might be to add a section (right now there is "news" and "newest") where members can move their too tired/drunk/grumpy to be posting posts in order to keep them out of the main discussions. *Disclaimer: I am certainly guilty of posting when too tired/drunk/grumpy to be posting, and I kinda wish that there was an option to delete old items. I don't really care about the karma aspect, but it would be nice to be able to delete.
- bmelton 18y ago
  I suspect that it would be easier (though I don't know how practical) to simply zero the exponent for arguments that are getting upvotes. At least then it doesn't penalize the discussions generally accepted as quality.

dschobel 18y ago

Rtm just made a couple changes to Arc's internals that have made the site visibly faster. I was just reading the wikipedia page on Arc yesterday and it talks about an unofficial fork of Arc which came about because of a perception of slow development in the official branch. How are those two branches playing these days? Is there any cross-pollination of code?

stefano 18y ago
Currently the last release of Arc is one year old. The fork (Anarki) has had more visible development, although it has slowed down after october 2008. You can see the full history here: http://github.com/nex3/arc/commits/master/ http://github.com/nex3/arc/commits/master/ . There has been no cross pollination of code: the anarki fork fixes a few bugs that are still present in the official release of arc and it has a few interesting extra features, such as the possibility of defining your own functions to be called when a non-function object gets called. Another interesting implementaton of arc, which does include a few features from anarki, is rainbow: http://github.com/conanite/rainbow http://github.com/conanite/rainbow .

axod 18y ago

I just assumed it was a bug... You can just click on [link] and then comment still right?

jasonlbaptiste 18y ago

I'm officially nicknaming http://news.ycombinator.com/noobs http://news.ycombinator.com/noobs The Land Of The [dead]

dfranke 18y ago

The one day timer for /noobs should start ticking when they make their first submission, not when they create their account. Otherwise spammers can just wait a day before submitting anything.

ericb 18y ago
On a site I ran, spammers routinely signed up then submitted spam weeks later--I'm fairly certain it was automated.
pg 18y ago
I haven't seen any cases yet of spammers letting accounts mature before using them. There would be no practical benefit. All the limits depend on karma, not account age.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

ggchappell 18y ago

Shouldn't there be a link to the the noobs list on the lists page? There isn't (yet).

benreesman 18y ago

Is it possibly to give a nice brief summary of the kind of change that brought about this speed up? Because... damn the site is fast now!

gruseom 18y ago
I was going to ask that too: what are the "couple changes"?
- pg 18y ago
  Some common functions that took n arguments used to generate garbage when given 2.

pmarin 18y ago

When arc3 ?

ilamont 18y ago

Thanks for making HN faster. I visit the site repeatedly throughout the day and the slowdowns can be frustrating.