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Since technical solutions to things are always fun, a recommendation system could be awesome: look at your upvotes and activity, cluster you with folks who vote
by twotwotwo 13y ago
Since technical solutions to things are always fun, a recommendation system could be awesome: look at your upvotes and activity, cluster you with folks who vote similarly, then show you links based on neighbors' votes. There are refinements (maybe there could be other signals--domains, user-added post tags, etc.) but even a basic try at it has the potential to make everybody happier.
I love posts about algorithms and anything about Go or Python 'cause I use those; people's snazzy tech demos are always cool; startup/career stuff can be fine but isn't super relevant to me. It's just weird that to get to the bits I like I load a page that also has a lot of strident arguments about the things I shouldn't or must do, the things people are quitting, the things folks are mad at each other over, etc.
- sebastianconcpt 13y agoYou described an implementation of the Confirmation Bias :D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
- twotwotwo 13y agoWell, any community that tries to show people what they want does that, including HN as it stands now; it doesn't mean you abandon the goal of getting people content they want. It's still an interesting problem, though. You might help address it with distinct kinds of vote (relevant vs. agree), or a randomized rather than static list to show people some things outside their filter bubble, a change folks have already proposed for other reasons (it would spread some votes to things off the homepage). I'm not sure even the naïve implementation would be so bad, though. Things from HN that have actually improved my life haven't really had a component of agreement/disagreement; often they were, e.g., tips or new things to play with or interesting CS or math.