4 ms·

HNScore - another look at post quality on Hacker News

31 points by alex_c 17y ago

lincolnq 17y ago
Awesome! You've written down a pattern I noticed on both Reddit and HN -- what I called the troll filter: if more comments than points, the troll filter fails (the link is a troll and unlikely to be worth reading). Exceptions are the types of threads where people are encouraged to contribute, such as "who's hiring" or "I'm <something interesting>, ask me anything" I'll use this.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
paulbaumgart 17y ago
It works on /classic and /news, too, if you add an asterisk to the end of the @include url. I.e.: // @include http://news.ycombinator.*/* Would you mind throwing it on GitHub or somewhere similar? I really like the idea, and that way lots of people can easily contribute tweaks/improvements.
- alex_c 17y ago
  Of course. http://github.com/alexcurelea/HNScore/tree/master http://github.com/alexcurelea/HNScore/tree/master (btw - for me it works on inner pages even without the second wildcard. Odd.)
  - rwolf 17y ago
    I have the same problem as the parent comment. (http://news.ycombinator.com/news http://news.ycombinator.com/news doesn't work while http://news.ycombinator.com http://news.ycombinator.com does). If it doesn't break anything for you to add the wildcard, you should tack it on. edit: you also seem to have forgotten to add it to userscripts--that's where all the cool greasemonkey kids hang out.
endtwist 17y ago
It might also be pertinent to take into account how long ago an article was submitted. I've noticed the votes-comments quality filter myself, but I've never really added "submission age" to that mental filter. I'm not sure how it would affect the results, but I certainly think its something worth researching.
noodle 17y ago
doesn't seem to take into account the "ask hn" types of posts. the ones that tend to get voted up also tend to have interesting material in them, as well as a larger number of responses.
Perceval 17y ago
Not too long ago I stumbled across someone doing visualizations of comment threads, which seemed like it might help in sorting out what was going on: http://demaws.net/projects/tldr http://demaws.net/projects/tldr Also, I wrote a very long essay on the problems of web forums (http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2009/3/12/33338/3000 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2009/3/12/33338/3000) which was covered previously here on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=515682 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=515682 In that essay, I tried to rethink what exactly moderation and comments/conversations meant. I like your approach of contrasting threads that are over- or under-moderated with threads that maintain an 'appropriate' moderation/reply ratio. But as noodle wrote above (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=794856 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=794856), it may not be able to distinguish between certain types of commenting. My current instinct is that moderation tells us more about the moderator than it does about the comment being moderated. I'm just not sure how to to operationalize that insight.

31 points by alex_c 17y ago

Awesome! You've written down a pattern I noticed on both Reddit and HN -- what I called the troll filter: if more comments than points, the troll filter fails (the link is a troll and unlikely to be worth reading). Exceptions are the types of threads where people are encouraged to contribute, such as "who's hiring" or "I'm <something interesting>, ask me anything" I'll use this.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

paulbaumgart 17y ago

It works on /classic and /news, too, if you add an asterisk to the end of the @include url. I.e.: // @include http://news.ycombinator.*/* Would you mind throwing it on GitHub or somewhere similar? I really like the idea, and that way lots of people can easily contribute tweaks/improvements.

alex_c 17y ago
Of course. http://github.com/alexcurelea/HNScore/tree/master http://github.com/alexcurelea/HNScore/tree/master (btw - for me it works on inner pages even without the second wildcard. Odd.)
- rwolf 17y ago
  I have the same problem as the parent comment. (http://news.ycombinator.com/news http://news.ycombinator.com/news doesn't work while http://news.ycombinator.com http://news.ycombinator.com does). If it doesn't break anything for you to add the wildcard, you should tack it on. edit: you also seem to have forgotten to add it to userscripts--that's where all the cool greasemonkey kids hang out.

endtwist 17y ago

It might also be pertinent to take into account how long ago an article was submitted. I've noticed the votes-comments quality filter myself, but I've never really added "submission age" to that mental filter. I'm not sure how it would affect the results, but I certainly think its something worth researching.

noodle 17y ago

doesn't seem to take into account the "ask hn" types of posts. the ones that tend to get voted up also tend to have interesting material in them, as well as a larger number of responses.

Perceval 17y ago

Not too long ago I stumbled across someone doing visualizations of comment threads, which seemed like it might help in sorting out what was going on: http://demaws.net/projects/tldr http://demaws.net/projects/tldr Also, I wrote a very long essay on the problems of web forums (http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2009/3/12/33338/3000 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2009/3/12/33338/3000) which was covered previously here on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=515682 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=515682 In that essay, I tried to rethink what exactly moderation and comments/conversations meant. I like your approach of contrasting threads that are over- or under-moderated with threads that maintain an 'appropriate' moderation/reply ratio. But as noodle wrote above (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=794856 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=794856), it may not be able to distinguish between certain types of commenting. My current instinct is that moderation tells us more about the moderator than it does about the comment being moderated. I'm just not sure how to to operationalize that insight.