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Ask HN: What are some good alternatives to HN?

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Re: Ask HN: What are some good alternatives to HN?

#101

Post by brymaster »

pavedwalden wrote: post #93
brymaster wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh. These meta-HN topics about the "quality" of the discussion come up every six months or so, even dating all the way back to the beginning. Cut it out already. > Poll: How do you feel about making HN invite only? (5 years ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=373789 > Ask HN: Is it just me, or are HN comments becoming more and more negative? (4 years ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926604 > Why peopl…

Just because something gets talked about a lot doesn't mean it's not worth trying to find a solution.

Just because something gets talked about a lot doesn't mean there's a real issue. The problem is with perception and it's not the reality.

Looking forward to a dataset to show me otherwise. One that clearly defines the subjective nature of "quality" and "degradation" of comments.

Re: Ask HN: What are some good alternatives to HN?

#102

Post by rosser »

pavedwalden wrote: post #94
wavesounds wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right my bad. 500pts to downvote

I wonder if that asymmetry is part of the problem. There's a large population of users who can push junk to the top of the page, and a much smaller population with the ability to downvote it.

You can't downvote submissions; you can only flag them.

Re: Ask HN: What are some good alternatives to HN?

#103

Post by shawnreilly »

gabemart wrote: post #48
simias wrote: post #23

The thing with HN is that there are a lot of interesting threads that get increasingly drowned in "drama" contents: stuff about politics, the NSA, silicon valley drama... See the G+ outrage lately: there are three articles about that at the top of the frontpage that say exactly the same thing with exactly the same comments. It's reddit/4chan tier "pitchforking". The problem seems to be that the community is growing q…

Alternatively, only activate voting on comments when new users reach a certain karma threshold (does this exist already?), and only activate voting on stories when users reach a certain higher karma threshold.

Another thing to consider is what constitutes a karma point. I don't have any statistics to validate, but it seems that posting new submissions rewards more karma points than responding to submissions. Maybe the Admins/Mods could run some stats and see if this is true or not. While I do not personally care about karma points (I'm here because I actually enjoy the community), basing the ability to vote (as in, influence the ranking of what is presented) on a single metric that does not differentiate between submissions and comments likely results in a skewed representation of the community.

To put it simply, if you want lots of karma points, don't bother responding to submissions (presumably in an attempt to help someone with a problem, or contribute to the conversation). Instead just find some "hot" controversial articles on some other tech related news sites and submit them instead. If this is true, then it should not be surprising that there is more "white noise" here at HackerNews, as this approach facilitates submitting stories instead of contributing to conversations.

My recommendation (if anyone cares), break karma points up into two separate values, one related to submitting articles/stories (which is valuable), and another related to submitting comments (which is also valuable). Then I would remove any reference of points from the system (make them hidden from users) as to remove any desire to "game the system" for points. This would result in a system where points do not influence how people contribute to the community.

Re: Ask HN: What are some good alternatives to HN?

#104

Post by twotwotwo »

sebastianconcpt wrote: post #86
twotwotwo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since technical solutions to things are always fun, a recommendation system could be awesome: look at your upvotes and activity, cluster you with folks who vote similarly, then show you links based on neighbors' votes. There are refinements (maybe there could be other signals--domains, user-added post tags, etc.) but even a basic try at it has the potential to make everybody happier. I love posts about algorithms and…

You described an implementation of the Confirmation Bias :D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Well, any community that tries to show people what they want does that, including HN as it stands now; it doesn't mean you abandon the goal of getting people content they want.

It's still an interesting problem, though. You might help address it with distinct kinds of vote (relevant vs. agree), or a randomized rather than static list to show people some things outside their filter bubble, a change folks have already proposed for other reasons (it would spread some votes to things off the homepage).

I'm not sure even the naïve implementation would be so bad, though. Things from HN that have actually improved my life haven't really had a component of agreement/disagreement; often they were, e.g., tips or new things to play with or interesting CS or math.

Re: Ask HN: What are some good alternatives to HN?

#105

Post by Madrigal »

DavidWanjiru wrote: post #78
Noxchi wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a problem all successful communities face No it's not. It's a problem all large and free communities face. Try looking for private communities, and the quality is much higher. To get into these types of communities, you have to pass an interview or maybe pay monthly (I don't belong to these types, but I've heard good stuff about their quality). e.g. want a good business community? Maybe have a fee for $100/mon…

How does the ability to pay indicate ability to make worthwhile contributions? Or, how does inability/unwillingness to pay or prove yourself in some other way relate to an inability to make worthwhile contributions? (quality of posts, comments, etc)

It is more a psychological effect, when you need to prove yourself before entering a community you tend to appreciate it more, and (in theory) care more about the community. It will be interesting to see if this really holds in practice.

Re: Ask HN: What are some good alternatives to HN?

#106

Post by ajslater »

isaacdl wrote: post #70
dredmorbius wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there are three articles about that at the top of the frontpage that say exactly the same thing with exactly the same comments. Worse, two were based on the same guy at G+ raving about the whole thing.[1] I'm a little curious about how the stories hit the front page and have stayed up so long. I don't know if it's fully organic, if Google's reputation has really suffered that much, if it's specific to the HN communit…

What are some of the good subreddits that would appeal to an HN audience?

http://www.reddit.com//r/AskHistorians/ is easily my favorite subreddit. The quality of the lengthy submissions and the fanatically rigorous moderation is amazing.

http://www.reddit.com//r/DepthHub/ is a great highlighter for introductions to quality subreddits. Its how I found /r/AskHistorians/

http://www.reddit.com//r/BestOf/ is good too.

Other than that it depends on your particular interests.

There is an outstanding problem that subreddits I would love exist but are hard to find. However that does also protect them and their mods from the slavering hordes of captioned gif posts.

Re: Ask HN: What are some good alternatives to HN?

#107

Post by wdewind »

ecesena wrote: post #74

Theneeds [1]? We built Theneeds with a similar idea in mind, that people should come and just find interesting stuff, personalized according to their interests (we learn from users' activity to get smarter about what the interests really are). We focus on a broader range of topics than just tech & science, thought there is a good selection about that too. [1] http://www.theneeds.com

I tried your site out, it's pretty cool but some of the backgrounds make it completely unusable. Make it as minimal as possible, people are meant to stare at this for a long time.

Re: Ask HN: What are some good alternatives to HN?

#108

Post by dombili »

ajslater wrote: post #106
isaacdl wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some of the good subreddits that would appeal to an HN audience?

http://www.reddit.com//r/AskHistorians/ is easily my favorite subreddit. The quality of the lengthy submissions and the fanatically rigorous moderation is amazing. http://www.reddit.com//r/DepthHub/ is a great highlighter for introductions to quality subreddits. Its how I found /r/AskHistorians/ http://www.reddit.com//r/BestOf/ is good too. Other than that it depends on your particular interests. There is an outstand…

If someone likes the subreddits mentioned above, you might also want to look at these:

http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview,

http://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics,

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskSocialScience/,

http://www.reddit.com/r/Foodforthought/.

Re: Ask HN: What are some good alternatives to HN?

#110

Post by ecesena »

wdewind wrote: post #107
ecesena wrote: post #74

Theneeds [1]? We built Theneeds with a similar idea in mind, that people should come and just find interesting stuff, personalized according to their interests (we learn from users' activity to get smarter about what the interests really are). We focus on a broader range of topics than just tech & science, thought there is a good selection about that too. [1] http://www.theneeds.com

I tried your site out, it's pretty cool but some of the backgrounds make it completely unusable. Make it as minimal as possible, people are meant to stare at this for a long time.

Thanks for trying and for the feedback!

The background can be turned off, but we actually decided to keep it on by default. We think that it creates a more "full-immersion" experience and helps not going OT (out of need actually ;). We don't have numbers to support this, but... that's the idea!

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