3 ms·

HN is an experiment. As a rule, a community site that becomes popular will decline in quality. Our hypothesis is that this is not inevitable—that by making a co

by davi 17y ago

HN is an experiment. As a rule, a community site that becomes popular will decline in quality. Our hypothesis is that this is not inevitable—that by making a conscious effort to resist decline, we can keep it from happening. http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html How can a site as large as HN motivate people to avoid repeating linkbait titles? If you submit a toned-down, but more accurate title, it often falls quietly off the New page... I don't see a solution.

grinich 17y ago
Post interesting articles? If they're any good, you won't have to change the title.
- davi 17y ago
  Sure, this is the approach I try to take. But there are chaff articles that get more attention than I (personally, yes it's subjective) think they deserve, because the title is flashier than it could/should be. In an ideal world, this wouldn't be rewarded by the group dynamic. With a smaller community, people will learn to deprecate a 'flashy' submitter's titles but that can't really happen in a community as large as this one's. I think it's an interesting problem. -- edit, here's a recent example I participated in: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=704348 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=704348 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=704664 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=704664 The flashy dupe got 19 points, vs. 8 for a deeper bunch of information I posted in response. I'm not saying this because I care about the discrepancy on a personal level -- it's just an easy-to-recall example of what I'm talking about, because I participated in it. In fact, in this case, hey, maybe people want the quick fix: "Ooh! Graphene! Cool!" Upvote, and move on. But this verges on falling in this category: The worst thing to post or upvote is something that's intensely but shallowly interesting. Gossip about famous people, funny or cute pictures or videos, partisan political articles, etc. If you let that sort of thing onto a news site, it will push aside the deeply interesting stuff, which tends to be quieter. (http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)
- biohacker42 17y ago
  That's a simplistic view of crowd behavior. Greatest common denominator link bait headlines will outperform interesting articles as the audience gets larger.

by davi 17y ago

grinich 17y ago

Post interesting articles? If they're any good, you won't have to change the title.

davi 17y ago
Sure, this is the approach I try to take. But there are chaff articles that get more attention than I (personally, yes it's subjective) think they deserve, because the title is flashier than it could/should be. In an ideal world, this wouldn't be rewarded by the group dynamic. With a smaller community, people will learn to deprecate a 'flashy' submitter's titles but that can't really happen in a community as large as this one's. I think it's an interesting problem. -- edit, here's a recent example I participated in: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=704348 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=704348 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=704664 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=704664 The flashy dupe got 19 points, vs. 8 for a deeper bunch of information I posted in response. I'm not saying this because I care about the discrepancy on a personal level -- it's just an easy-to-recall example of what I'm talking about, because I participated in it. In fact, in this case, hey, maybe people want the quick fix: "Ooh! Graphene! Cool!" Upvote, and move on. But this verges on falling in this category: The worst thing to post or upvote is something that's intensely but shallowly interesting. Gossip about famous people, funny or cute pictures or videos, partisan political articles, etc. If you let that sort of thing onto a news site, it will push aside the deeply interesting stuff, which tends to be quieter. (http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)
biohacker42 17y ago
That's a simplistic view of crowd behavior. Greatest common denominator link bait headlines will outperform interesting articles as the audience gets larger.