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The really hackery thing to do would be to let people create and use custom ranking algorithms. Implementing this might be very difficult.

by Dilpil 17y ago

andreyf 17y ago
If you implement them in JS, implementing them would be easier (computation wise) than the current model.
stanleydrew 17y ago
Why do people keep suggesting this? There's so much value in having everyone see the same set of stuff in the same order.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  Is there ? The ultimate user experience is the one that gives a user what they want. If that is stuff ranked in a different way than someone else then by giving them that they'll feel more at home. I think that sort of thing (extreme customizability) is analogous to what drove the PC revolution, power to the user. The web is an exercise in bringing back the centralization of data and code, no need to also centralize the kinds of user experiences.
  - stanleydrew 17y ago
    I think in a lot of cases there is a lot of value. You make an interesting analogy to the PC revolution, but Apple is now making huge sums of money by limiting user customizability and essentially telling people what they want. If you take extreme customizability to it's logical end then everybody just ends up writing their own web-app front ends on top of public apis. I don't know that that's better. There are certain best practices that probably should be enforced. I guess you might argue that a sensible default would satisfy that need, while allowing for deviations for those who care. The last thing I'll say then is that perhaps a community wants to enforce (or at least encourage) some cultural features. If people can customize out certain cultural features then you lose that ability. For instance, maybe HN wants itself to be a place where comments are ranked in a certain way so that new comments aren't completely buried and everybody is at least forced to scan over them. If you can customize that out, it possibly hurts the culture. This is kind of rambly and the thread is already old but it could be a very interesting discussion. feel free to contact me directly (gmail: andrewmbenton).

The really hackery thing to do would be to let people create and use custom ranking algorithms. Implementing this might be very difficult.

by Dilpil 17y ago

The really hackery thing to do would be to let people create and use custom ranking algorithms. Implementing this might be very difficult.

andreyf 17y ago

If you implement them in JS, implementing them would be easier (computation wise) than the current model.

stanleydrew 17y ago

Why do people keep suggesting this? There's so much value in having everyone see the same set of stuff in the same order.

jacquesm 17y ago
Is there ? The ultimate user experience is the one that gives a user what they want. If that is stuff ranked in a different way than someone else then by giving them that they'll feel more at home. I think that sort of thing (extreme customizability) is analogous to what drove the PC revolution, power to the user. The web is an exercise in bringing back the centralization of data and code, no need to also centralize the kinds of user experiences.
- stanleydrew 17y ago
  I think in a lot of cases there is a lot of value. You make an interesting analogy to the PC revolution, but Apple is now making huge sums of money by limiting user customizability and essentially telling people what they want. If you take extreme customizability to it's logical end then everybody just ends up writing their own web-app front ends on top of public apis. I don't know that that's better. There are certain best practices that probably should be enforced. I guess you might argue that a sensible default would satisfy that need, while allowing for deviations for those who care. The last thing I'll say then is that perhaps a community wants to enforce (or at least encourage) some cultural features. If people can customize out certain cultural features then you lose that ability. For instance, maybe HN wants itself to be a place where comments are ranked in a certain way so that new comments aren't completely buried and everybody is at least forced to scan over them. If you can customize that out, it possibly hurts the culture. This is kind of rambly and the thread is already old but it could be a very interesting discussion. feel free to contact me directly (gmail: andrewmbenton).