5 ms·
A bit of meta-commenting but the "Welcome HN" banner which encourages us to upvote the story put me right off. I'll vote it up if I like it, not because you cus
by sh1mmer 17y ago
A bit of meta-commenting but the "Welcome HN" banner which encourages us to upvote the story put me right off. I'll vote it up if I like it, not because you customized your site to "Welcome" me because I read HN.
- Alex3917 17y agoFor every 100 people who read HN, my guess is that 10 upvote stories and 1 comments. I bet that more than half of regular HN readers don't even know that the site is powered by voting despite the little arrows next to each story. If people knew to upvote stories they liked on their own then the average story would have something like 800 upvotes. I agree with what you're saying because if everyone did this it would be really annoying, but certainly most people don't upvote the stories they like.
- Retric 17y agoI up vote 1 in 20 stories because I only like 5% of what's posted to HN. Looking at new submissions is mostly a waste of time, but when I am board I will occasionally take a look. And I expect most regular HN readers act the same way.
- tptacek 17y agoI might vote on 1 out of every 100 things I read, and usually it's not because I like the story, but because I want it to get more comments.
- barrkel 17y agoI comment a lot more frequently than I upvote stories; I have a pretty high bar for upvoting.
- whatusername 17y agoPG - I / We would love to see the engagement stats on here? Is that 1/10/100 rule valid? I'd like to hope that it's greater than 50% of people who understand the voting concept, but it would be interesting to see the metrics.
- ersi 17y agoOh, I do not think the problem would be that the users are unaware of upvoting. Surely, about everyone (some excluded because everything is not always valid for everyone) would notice there's a clickable triangle next to the story title (Especially since there's just one(!)) - and most users should be coming from, or have visited another "social news board" with similar features previously. Sometimes you simply do not like a story, article, linkpassing nearly enough to actually be thinking: "Hey, this was so interesting, that I am going to tell a really good friend about it - so he/she could enjoy it aswell!". You bet half of the regular Hacker News readership does not know the frontpage is powered by voting. I bet most of the fellow users have fairly or very high standards. Especially since there's so much quality content. Just my two minutes of thinking and other eight minutes of editorial process. Cheers fellow reader.
- tptacek 17y agoWhat's sad about this comment is that it's dominating the HN comment view on this article, and has nothing to do with the article.
- cracki 17y agouh, i didn't even see that. it probably looked like some ad banner. instead, i skipped to the title of the blog post.
- smartbear 17y agoThanks for the feedback; it was especially useful to see that so many people up-voted it! I've removed that special banner. You're right, HN folks know to upvote if they like it, of course, and it's insulting to say otherwise. In my defense, it's true that I'm an HM reader and it's true that I appreciate the upvotes. :-) But you're right. Thanks!