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Ask HN: Many quality articles don't go to the front page. What is the problem?

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11–20 of 45 posts

Re: Ask HN: Many quality articles don't go to the front page. What is the problem?

#11
post #8

I think the HN community is becoming more and more diluted with people who are here for techcrunch-type gossip and articles and not actual thought provoking insights and research.

No more so than three years ago, when I started lurking. Or two and a half years ago, when I signed up. Or however long ago when I first commented.

People are interested in what other people are doing. Techcrunch happens to be a big resource in figuring this out. Thats not necessarily a bad thing in itself.

Re: Ask HN: Many quality articles don't go to the front page. What is the problem?

#12

I think it's a function of there being too many items submitted every day, and not enough people checking the "new" page. During busy times of the day, if you don't get 5-10 votes within the first 10-15 mins, you're on the 2nd page of the "new" posts area, and you're never going to make it. I'm afraid the end result is that the only posts that will end up on the front-page are: 1. Where the author (domain) is well-kn…

Another obvious cause of submissions falling too quickly off the "new" posts page is that there is only room for the latest 30 posts. Seems like we could fit another 3-5 posts on the "new" page if we removed the posts that have already hit the front page. Of course, this is only a minor band-aid that doesn't solve the root problems, as you pointed out.

Re: Ask HN: Many quality articles don't go to the front page. What is the problem?

#13
Rich get richer phenomenon.

Not enough people check the new page. It's impossible to get an article on the frontpage unless like four or five people upvote it in the first few minutes after submission. This is extremely unlikely, unless you have a popular title or popular username.

Once something gets on the frontpage, it gets a LOT of upvotes, and the algorithm decays its weight so slowly that it is essentially a rich get richer phenomenon.

Possible solutions:

* Front page upvotes don't count as much, since there are more views. In particular, the "weight" of an article should be the probability that someone who views the title clicks on it, combined with the probability that someone who clicks the link decides to upvote it.

* Frontpage is stochastic. Instead of being fixed, you sample articles based upon their probability (or score). Each person gets a new frontpage, in order to actually explore which articles are good. (Exploration vs. exploitation)

Re: Ask HN: Many quality articles don't go to the front page. What is the problem?

#15
I believe a flip side to this is that stories are staying on the front page longer. Not too long ago I recall that each day I opened HN for the first time, every story on the front page was brand new to me. Recently stories seem to stay on the front page for 2-3 days sometimes.

Re: Ask HN: Many quality articles don't go to the front page. What is the problem?

#17
post #11
post #8

I think the HN community is becoming more and more diluted with people who are here for techcrunch-type gossip and articles and not actual thought provoking insights and research.

No more so than three years ago, when I started lurking. Or two and a half years ago, when I signed up. Or however long ago when I first commented. People are interested in what other people are doing. Techcrunch happens to be a big resource in figuring this out. Thats not necessarily a bad thing in itself.

i like to know too. but only about the innovators and leaders, not so much the 100 me-too startups that try to make the same thing but with a different name.

Re: Ask HN: Many quality articles don't go to the front page. What is the problem?

#18

I think it's a function of there being too many items submitted every day, and not enough people checking the "new" page. During busy times of the day, if you don't get 5-10 votes within the first 10-15 mins, you're on the 2nd page of the "new" posts area, and you're never going to make it. I'm afraid the end result is that the only posts that will end up on the front-page are: 1. Where the author (domain) is well-kn…

The other way is for multiple people to post the same link, which adds to the total. Maybe if people started submitting more, or submissions from high karma types had more initial karma, it would have a cumulative effect.

Re: Ask HN: Many quality articles don't go to the front page. What is the problem?

#19

My suggestion would be to randomly feature 5 new articles on the home page (probably below rank 20, so as not to pollute the top 10). This way, they get more visibility than by being only on the "new page", and get a chance to get the clicks they need.

I think that it's already the case : some articles are nofollow on HN homepage. They usually are 3 or 4 upvote at the bottom mixed with upvoted dofollow links.

Re: Ask HN: Many quality articles don't go to the front page. What is the problem?

#20

I think it's a function of there being too many items submitted every day, and not enough people checking the "new" page. During busy times of the day, if you don't get 5-10 votes within the first 10-15 mins, you're on the 2nd page of the "new" posts area, and you're never going to make it. I'm afraid the end result is that the only posts that will end up on the front-page are: 1. Where the author (domain) is well-kn…

There is a different solution to the reddit one, one that discourages block voting.

Perhaps there should be voting groups, essentially a cap on the population of voters.

Each time you hit a threshold, you randomly split the voters in two and then the articles you see only get the votes of the people in your group. So one site has multiple groups on the go at one time, all to stop the overwhelming nature of popularity drowning out the minority.

It stops block voting as all you can do is influence the group you are in rather than the community as a whole. There's a good chance on a big site you're not in the same group.

On the otherhand you could end up with groups that have wildly different front pages that don't suit your tastes. Perhaps to solve that there could even be something intelligent about it in that it switches you into groups with voting tendencies like your own, improving your perceived quality of the site.

Comments are a little troublesome, do you include them in the group voting or not? In one group a comment could be negative, while popular in another.

A random thought that occurred to me, I generally hate these regular meta threads of 'HN has got bad'.

Do you know what I saw today on HN? DHH and Joel Spolsky duking it out in the comments. Two of my favourite internet personalities arguing.

That rocked. HN is still the best place to go.

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