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Welcome to HN. Please, read 'Hacker News Guidelines.' We take them seriously.
- bugs 17y agoI don't know if this is still the case but when I created this account there was a welcome link up where you find [Y]Hacker News welcome | new | comments | ... linking to this. Edit: To be more clear I think the welcome link disappeared after a certain amount of karma was acquired like other little features on HN ( flag,downvote,topcolor ).
- pg 17y agoActually it doesn't link to the guidelines. It links to http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html I added this feature within the last year, so none of the established users know it exists, but I think it has helped stave off decline as HN has grown.
- jacobolus 17y agoYou should add a bit of space between the edge of the beige and the text.
- pg 17y agoYeah, you're right. The original intention was to make the beige almost invisible, so that it just added a subtle impression of a box bounding the text, but it isn't really working that way. It works better on pages with images that are flush with the beige on both sides. If you indent the text, what do you do with the images? Indent them too? Maybe.
- pvg 17y agoThe 'welcome' link is hard to find. It does little to explain things like flagging, the karma limit to down or up voting and in general, anything at all. In fact, it doesn't even tell you the format rules the HN comment box accepts. There is conceivably some deluded notion that 'real' hackers will sort all of this out. Or they'll just call terrible UI as they see it.
- Xichekolas 17y agoIf you look at the FAQ at the bottom, one of the question/answers has a link to the formatting rules. http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
- nfriedly 17y agoThanks, I've been curious about how that worked ever since I signed up!
- cmelbye 17y agoWhat are the thresholds for voting down a comment? I looked in News News and it says karma of 100, but there must be something else because I have over 100 now and I don't see any down arrows.
- pwmanagerdied 17y agoI think it's around 200 now, it increases over time to deal with karma inflation.
- malte 17y agoIt's a good idea to point to the HN guidelines from time to time. I just wonder if there was a specific incident that made you submit them. Just curious.
- iamwil 17y agohttp://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=978141 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=978141 Edit: oh, just answering to which incident. In the comments, iamelgringo talked about submission guidelines, so I'm guessing that's why he resubmitted them here, so yeah, I meant the discussion.
- bugs 17y agoIf you look at his submissions there are quite a few and most of them of the Ask HN variety of something that really shouldn't be here
- physcab 17y agoKinda confused. The user who submitted that Ask HN is an older member, so they technically should know the rules. Or perhaps you meant the discussion taking place?
- malte 17y agoI guess he's referring to this comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=978170 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=978170
- nkurz 17y agoCan I add a suggest adding something about comment moderation to the Guidelines? Perhaps: "Don't downmod comments just because you disagree with them. Similarly, don't upmod a comment just because it takes your side. Instead, vote up for comments that further the discussion, and down for comments that do not."
- dpcan 17y agoUsually it's the comments I agree with that I want to see discussed more.
- nkurz 17y agoOK, feel free to reword it to "upvote the comments you want to see discussed more". My main thrust is that an explicit guideline should be given for comment moderation, not what the exact content should be.
- billswift 17y agoUsually it's comments I disagree with that I want to see discussed more. It's where someone else disagrees with you that you are most likely to identify mistakes in your own reasoning. Reading things you agree with can make you feel all warm and fuzzy, but you won't learn much from them.
- tokenadult 17y agoDon't downmod comments just because you disagree with them. This is a legitimate and rather frequently made suggestion, but a contrary suggestion was made in a comment by pg http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 where he wrote, "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness." On some threads, I can find occasion (as I do here) to post a reply indicating substantive, polite disagreement with a previous comment, to which I reply with my disagreement. On some other threads, I see comments to which it would not be good use of time to post a disagreeing reply, and sometimes in those cases (not all the time), I find it most appropriate to downvote to indicate disagreement. I can tell that I am not alone in that practice. What I especially like to do is to upvote any comment that is good, where "good" is defined as helps me learn something I didn't know or makes me think from a new point of view. People can disagree with positions I hold and still get upvotes from me, especially if they post verifiable information indicating why they hold the positions they hold.
- travisjeffery 17y agoThey used to be taken seriously.
- NathanKP 17y agoWhich one do you feel is not being taken seriously? Just wondering.
- travisjeffery 17y agoWhere shall I start? First I'll start with submissions: all to often Hacker News looks like any run of the mill news site. No longer is it the spot I rely on to go and see what the hackers are up to. Because too often now it's the same junk on Digg. Comments: the quality of comments on here is pitiful. They're used to be good discussions and relatively long, well thought and written comments. Again, like Digg it's getting where people are just doing a 1 line/sentence post where seems like they're just trying to hit on something that other people will vote up for more karma points.
- NathanKP 17y agoFair enough. Yet I have to wonder about how you criticized one line posts after making that one line post yourself: "They used to be taken seriously." One line posts can sometimes be better than rambling on and one. If you get straight to the point a pithy statement can be more rewarding. However, there is definitely a problem with snarky one line put downs as the guidelines suggest.
- Xichekolas 17y agoI haven't read these in quite a while, and had hearty chuckle at: "If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)" Was that in the original guidelines, or a recent addition? It seems almost too perfect in response to the comment that iamelgringo was responding to. (As malte pointed out elsewhere in this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=978170 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=978170)
- NikkiA 17y agoIt was there when I signed up a month or so ago. Beyond that, I cannot (obviously) say.
- adbachman 17y agoIt's been in at least since Erlang Day. I'd bet it's been a year or two. It's always felt on the verge, but has never dropped off the edge. I suppose it's more exciting that way.
- araneae 17y agoI'm assuming this is a different Erlang Day than the one I was here for, as I'm still a noob. (And on that note, how many have there been? And can we pick another language for subsequent days plz?)
- allenbrunson 17y agoi can recall two 'erlang days' so far. the first happened when pg said the site was having some trouble coping with an influx of new users due to some high-profile mentions on other sites. he suggested posting articles about erlang to make the site look boring. i guess people complied a little more than he was expecting, so then he asked people to stop. the second time was when the site was overrun with articles about _why, right after his disappearance. some people thought it was a little too much, which once again triggered an influx of erlang articles. it looked to me like pg and the editors started killing erlang articles after that, and possibly the _why articles as well.
- gvb 17y agoSuggestion: after "If you submit a link to a video or pdf, please warn us by appending [video] or [pdf] to the title." add another paragraph: If you submit a link to old news, please warn us by appending [year] (the year of publication) to the title. Justification: Revisiting "old" news can be very worth while, but we appreciate a warning that it isn't current.
- dasil003 17y agoI actually don't have a problem with this. I've long since trained myself to check the date in all circumstances when I'm looking at something online. My main complaint is when something on the web doesn't have a date (or it just has month and day but no year), how do we push guidelines out to all web publishers?
- access_denied 17y ago> how do we push guidelines out to all web publishers? By setting an example wherever we go. Be the change, that you want to see on the web.
- billswift 17y agoIf it's old, but of current interest, who cares much about the date? If it's old and not of current interest, don't link it here.
- antipaganda 17y agoThe date is information. More info = good in this case.
- pronoiac 17y agoIt's not "old is bad," but "avoiding unnecessary confusion is good."
- wvenable 17y agoMy biggest complaint about Hacker News is that the upmodding and downmodding of comments is used to express agreement/disagreement rather than as a method of distinguishing the quality of the post itself. I regularly upmod intelligent, yet unpopular, comments if they've fallen below 1.
- mgrouchy 17y agoIf you would upmod them anyway, why do you distinguish by " I regularly upmod intelligent, yet unpopular, comments if they've fallen below 1." ? Wouldn't you just upmod these anyway? I think HN does an above average Job with its comment moderation. I think this is a testament to the quality of the HN community.
- joe_the_user 17y agoI do that also but I upmod and downmod higher modded posts according to my opinions. It seems like a popular approach. I think that's why my favorite comments usually stay at 2. The way to get a high modded post seems to be state a completely obvious refutation of a parent post. Saddly, I don't actually find such posts terribly interesting. Fortunately, I don't think everyone posts for points here.
- tokenadult 17y agoSee http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 from the keyboard of pg, expressing a differing point of view. After edit: the low-rated comments that most disappoint me are the comments asking follow-up questions, to verify information asserted in the parent comment. I'd like to see a lot more upvotes for comments along the lines of "Could you cite some references on that?" or "What is an example of that?" or "What are some of the best online sources on that issue?" Most of us like to learn here, and the guidelines say that "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" is on topic, so anyone who asks a question to pursue curiosity ought to see that comment upvoted, it seems to me.
- mapleoin 17y agoWhat is an example of that?
- modelic3 17y agoWhy is this posted? There is a link for the guidelines at the bottom so what's the point of making a post of it.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- outotrai 17y agoIf you expect a comment of yours to be downvoted, perhaps you should consider whether or not the comment in question is actually contributing to the discussion. I imagine that your original comment was downvoted because it expressed your feeling that this was not worthy of submission without including any reasons supporting your opinion. You seem to be surprised, in general, when people disagree with you. Try convincing them, or considering things from their points of view.
- nudded 17y ago-4 is the limit.
- tokenadult 17y ago-4 is the current system-imposed limit. When a comment reaches -4, it's a reasonable inference that there may be many more than five participants willing to downvote it.
- NathanKP 17y agoI wonder what would happen if a similar system was set up for upvotes? I guess that would make it harder to tell the relative worth of valuable comments. Nevermind.... scrap that idea.
- araneae 17y ago"Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation." I certainly don't say things on HN that I wouldn't say in a face to face conversation, but that's because I'm honest offline as well as on (read: not civil). It can get me into trouble, but I sure as hell am not going to stop saying what I think because of downvotes (on HN) or in the name of good manners (IRL).
- techiferous 17y agoHonesty and politeness are generally orthogonal.
- dagw 17y agoPopular belief among those lacking social grace. It is quite easy to disagree with people without being impolite about it. All it requires is a bit social intelligence and basic good manners. Being an asshole and trying to excuse it with "I'm just being honest" just makes you a far bigger asshole.
- araneae 17y agoWhen I mean honest, I mean honest both literally and emotionally. If I see bullshit, then I actually call it bullshit, instead of calling it "innaccurate." While the two terms may be similar in meaning, they are not equivalent.
- dagw 17y agoAt the end of the day it is about what you want to get out of the situation. Do you simply want to vent your frustrations and make yourself feel better, or do you actually want to try to do something constructive to improve the situation? While the former may be more satisfying in short run, working with people and being constructive is often better for everyone in the long run. I'm not saying you should never simply call bullshit, but before you do you should analyse the situation and the people involved and try to work out what your best course of action is given the result you want to achieve. Going with your first instinct is often satisfying, but rarely optimal.
- techiferous 17y agoBy the way, the fact that there is a continued and unresolved discussion about voting based on agreement suggests that the voting feature is broken. There is a design defect in this web software, pg; please consider redesigning it! I would consider it fixed when a significant majority of users find voting intuitive and useful.
- tsally 17y agoIt's not broken, it just could be better. The same could be said for any voting system that exists today on the web. The reason why no one has quite solved it yet is because the solution is not obvious. It may very well be that the current system is an adequate approximation of a perfect voting system because a perfect voting system is too complex to implement well.
- techiferous 17y ago> "It's not broken, it just could be better." Yes, that's a much better way of putting it. It does work well enough to be useful, it just has some unresolved rough edges.
- pg 17y agoAn ongoing dispute isn't always (or perhaps even often) a sign that something is broken. E.g. evolution. If I could think of a better approach I'd implement it, of course, but I doubt there is one.
- djcapelis 17y agoActually I would like the ranking algorithm to distinguish between a comment with no votes and a comment with 5 upvotes and 5 downvotes. I think the latter usually shows the comment is controversial and probably deserves to be displayed as it's likely to be interesting. This makes it so that people can still use votes as agree/disagree without negatively impacting the quality of the debate. I suppose it depends on whether or not you want to promote controversial discussion, which you may not. It would be harder to enforce etiquette through downvotes and might bring on eternal september sooner. That said, if you wanted to experiment, one simple way to do this is simply to make the number of points an upvote grants different than the number of points a downvote produces. Not for purposes of karma, I think HN probably does that right now, but simply for purposes of comment ranking. The downside is jokes that aren't that funny would likely be ranked higher than they should be under this algorithm. (The only instance I can think of where downvotes that came along with upvotes served as suitable chastisement under the current algorithm but might not under the approach I just outlined.) Then again, I'm new here, so grain of salt.
- pge 17y agoI suggest adding one more guideline - before submitting a post, check to see if it has already been submitted.
- makecheck 17y agoLast I checked, identical URLs are automatically prevented. But the duplication becomes a problem when people decide to submit blog posts, etc. instead of original articles. There is (usually) only one "best" URL for a story.
- philwelch 17y agoAlso an issue when people submit the "printer-friendly version" and also the ordinary version. Proposed guideline: submit the "printer-friendly" version?
- thirdusername 17y agoand/or have hacker news auto-flag the printer friendly / non-printer friendly version where it's possible to do so, could be an idea too. :)
- est 17y agoHow does HN handle URL with parameters? e.g. http://example.com/2009/23137321.html?from=rss http://example.com/2009/23137321.html?from=rss http://example.com/2009/23137321.html http://example.com/2009/23137321.html They are basically both the same article.
- RevRal 17y agoWhat is the opinion on silly comments in submissions that will soon be killed? I've seen people get in one word comments in some of these submissions and not get downvoted. I have had some fun myself. My latest: "Opening studiobriefing.net was like watching time lapse photography of some butt-ugly flower blooming." These are the only times that I knowingly type something that I know has a good chance of getting downvoted. But I will stop if you guys tell me it is a bigger deal than I think it is. I just don't see the harm in commenting something silly into a submission that will likely get killed. Please correct me if this is at all detrimental to the community.
- scott_s 17y agoConsider that it adds to the noise, even if in a small way. People learn etiquette through observation; if someone sees both a bad submission and a bad comment, they're more likely to think that's okay around here.
- RevRal 17y agoThank you for your reply. As for my downvote. I had an idea of how my question would be received. But, it was an honest question since -- and you have to agree -- the values of humor and sarcasm here are usually left at the front door. For some of us, it is hard to let go of since it is held in high regard in the real world and other internet communities. So, I thought it was a valid question that deserved a response for those of us who are so new, that we're on the border of whether or not to completely abandon humor and snark. The appropriateness of this aspect of the HN community has been really hard to gauge, and is frankly a culture shock. scott_s's comment was the final verification that I needed that, yes, when submitting silliness, to please be more careful.
- sofal 17y agoHumor is welcome on HN, but attempts at humor are not. It's just that HN has a higher standard of what is actually funny. Some recent examples: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=976321 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=976321 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=978683 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=978683 I've found that humor is always acceptable in any community, but the standards and flavor can vary wildly. Unless you feel that you really have a good handle on what the community thinks is funny, it's best to avoid trying. I'm convinced that discouraging attempts at humor that are not funny is for the best in any online community. Humor should be used sparingly and skillfully.
- bonsaitree 17y agoIt looks like I've been breaking the "use asterisks for emphasis" rule for years without realizing it. I've always used _foo_ for code-specific articles, or FOO for a more general audience, and reserved foo for parenthetical physical actions such as shrug or bows. My bad.
- mrlebowski 17y agoWould some research in the field help ? I am reading http://presnick.people.si.umich.edu//#publications http://presnick.people.si.umich.edu//#publications for a term paper, seems very relevant. If anyone has read his work before, can you tell us what is applicable to HN case? I'll post back something when done reading!
- d0m 17y agolike/dislike to show opinion. +1/-1 to assure that the post is valid.