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Hi Paul, I apologize for submitting this article. If it is viewed by the community as sub-par or unworthy please know it was unintentional. My thought was that

Hi Paul, I apologize for submitting this article. If it is viewed by the community as sub-par or unworthy please know it was unintentional. My thought was that this take on the article helped put the numbers into perspective relative to other classes of trade. It probably would have made a better comment than submission. I have a huge respect for what has been created at HN and though my account is less than a year old I've been reading for far longer. Two thoughts on things that could be done other than weighting (which I'm actually a fan of). 1. I would make this guideline a bit more explicit "Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter. -- Reference replies to the primary source in comments unless the analysis is equal to or greater in quality than the original" 2. Create a 2 column approach for comments with "new" on the right and sequential, or popular on the left. This would help some comments get a fair hearing in heavily threaded stories. However neither suggestion will take the place of a strong community. Thanks for calling me out.

thorax 17y ago
It's a decent (though light) link-- it doesn't deserve #2 status, but I still upvoted it. It made me think a bit about what our own company focuses on for measuring ROI. In the book Good to Great, there's discussion on finding a good "denominator". They give Walgreens as an example of maximizing "profit per customer". Any denominator choice tends to have different effects on your business style and this is another way to optimize. In a lot of workforce-intensive industries, I assume it really just mirrors your overall profit as labor costs could be your number one expense.
pg 17y ago
Don't worry about that. The problem is not so much that it got submitted-- all kinds of stuff gets submitted-- but that it got so many votes so rapidly. Could just be a random statistical outlier, come to that.
- andrewljohnson 17y ago
  If you aren't yet treating the community like they will aggressively abuse and spam the system, I think you should start. Are you looking at any other information about how this story got voted up so fast? I haven't looked at the HN code at all, but I wonder if there is anything sophisticated for stopping people from colluding and spamming. Do these accounts come from the same geographic area? ISP? Do they vote like each other in the past? Vote-weighting doesn't even really seem like it's going to be the solution to the problem. Well, it might end up being the solution if you give a great deal of weight to trusted accounts, but you might in the end discourage new users from contributing. I think maybe you consider attacking spammers head on. I really don't think the problem is a bunch of newbies up-voted this story. HN is just easy to game.
  - dorictemple 17y ago
    Andrew, You see spam on HN, but it is hard to believe this is a case. The story about profit per company had been up for about 10 hrs by the time I posted. A respected blogger with impeccable tech/startup credentials (founder of Tabblo acquired by HP) posted a thoughtful reply showing how poor PPE was at some large tech companies relative to other companies. It is related and interesting, if a bit mislocated.

thorax 17y ago

It's a decent (though light) link-- it doesn't deserve #2 status, but I still upvoted it. It made me think a bit about what our own company focuses on for measuring ROI. In the book Good to Great, there's discussion on finding a good "denominator". They give Walgreens as an example of maximizing "profit per customer". Any denominator choice tends to have different effects on your business style and this is another way to optimize. In a lot of workforce-intensive industries, I assume it really just mirrors your overall profit as labor costs could be your number one expense.

pg 17y ago

Don't worry about that. The problem is not so much that it got submitted-- all kinds of stuff gets submitted-- but that it got so many votes so rapidly. Could just be a random statistical outlier, come to that.

andrewljohnson 17y ago
If you aren't yet treating the community like they will aggressively abuse and spam the system, I think you should start. Are you looking at any other information about how this story got voted up so fast? I haven't looked at the HN code at all, but I wonder if there is anything sophisticated for stopping people from colluding and spamming. Do these accounts come from the same geographic area? ISP? Do they vote like each other in the past? Vote-weighting doesn't even really seem like it's going to be the solution to the problem. Well, it might end up being the solution if you give a great deal of weight to trusted accounts, but you might in the end discourage new users from contributing. I think maybe you consider attacking spammers head on. I really don't think the problem is a bunch of newbies up-voted this story. HN is just easy to game.
- dorictemple 17y ago
  Andrew, You see spam on HN, but it is hard to believe this is a case. The story about profit per company had been up for about 10 hrs by the time I posted. A respected blogger with impeccable tech/startup credentials (founder of Tabblo acquired by HP) posted a thoughtful reply showing how poor PPE was at some large tech companies relative to other companies. It is related and interesting, if a bit mislocated.