Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're absolutely right.
You know it's bad when reading "you're absolutely right..." causes you to oscillate between wanting to laugh and also violently destroy the computer.
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Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
201–210 of 559 posts
Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#202Devils advocate take: I think the quality of the ShowHN projects are in fact getting higher, at least the ones that land in the front page. The issue is that projects that used to take weeks, months, or even years of work now can be done in a weekend or so. It’s been democratizing, but it also means that when we look at these posts we (rightly) see that these new projects aren’t that much effort _with AI assistance_.…
I'd pose a different perspective, that Show HN in non-hype cycles tend to have a higher self-imposed bar before posting. With the democratizing, there are many posts where time from first commit to Show HN is on the order of hours, 25m being the shortest I have personally seen. I would contend that community standards have not changed meaningfully, but due to the underlying mix changing, the front page changes too.
That being said, there is an above average, low quality submissions sub-trend, that are obviously trying to plant a money tree. This is largely driven by the "look ma, no hands" Ai tools like OpenClaw, mixed (venn) with the crypto crowd looking to make easy money with near-zero effort.
With that being said, I have definitely seen some real bangers that have large Ai contributions. So I am generally in favor of minimally changing how HN works today. One small change would be adding to the Guidelines and FAQ, giving the agents something to read before posting (such that they know that automated submissions are not allowed[1])
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#203We're going to at least restrict Show HNs for a while. I do think this is relevant though: "HN can't be immune from macro trends" - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Please do so. And, forgive me if I speak heresy, but there has to be more proof of work (friction) to create accounts. I was shocked at how easy it is for something like chatgpt atlas to create new accounts on the fly.
I was going to suggest emotional leetcode, but LLMs do well on this.
When given a conversation about Alice and Suzy having a one-upmanship conversation (my husband rich, my kid is a genius) and what emotions they are feeling, and what Suzy could have said instead to improve the conversation, it gave accurate responses (e.g. they're feeling insecure, competitive, envy).
Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that we might lose some gold. Not too seldom have I seen the author or a significant party of a story chime in through a fresh green account, as they were alerted by the story being posted here one way or another. And usually when they do it's very interesting. As such I would find it detrimental if they had to jump through too many hoops so they don't bother or it takes too long so the thread dies bef…
Seems like restricting posts but not comments from a fresh account would thread that needle pretty well?
I'd suggest: new accounts are read-only for at least a week. Then they can comment (rate limited at first, gradually relaxed) and vote, and then after some additional amount of time and/or karma they can submit a post. Maybe some of these mechanisms are already in place? Bots can probably game this too but drive-by bots maybe won't be patient enough.
Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please do so. And, forgive me if I speak heresy, but there has to be more proof of work (friction) to create accounts. I was shocked at how easy it is for something like chatgpt atlas to create new accounts on the fly.
I rotate accounts on "social media" (mostly Reddit and Hacker News, the others don't interest me) every few weeks or months to make sure not too much of my post history accumulates in one account. I would dislike it very much if there would be high friction to create new accounts. On the other hand my behavior is probably a major outlier.
Same, though I'm also surprised how easy I can make new accounts for this site. But I love that. Hope it doesn't require me to jump through a bunch of hoops in the future.
Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#206We're going to at least restrict Show HNs for a while. I do think this is relevant though: "HN can't be immune from macro trends" - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Agree, HN can't be immune to what happens in the programming world. Would be great though if we can have a way to mute or hide accounts. This way each HN user will be able to clean his own feed of articles.
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Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#207Eventually HN is going to need to charge people $1 to post, just for spam filtering. Maybe donate the money to open source or something.
Charging money does not seem a very good idea in a site like this where you expect users to upload all the content. Also this would require credit card info which is a massive barrier, even if you were to charge just 1 cent.
Those of us old enough to remember Compuserve know that the cost of entry was exactly why the quality was so high. I was lucky enough that my employer paid for it. I was also active on various comp.os.* Usenet forums. Both were great sources of quality information but Compuserve stayed “high signal” for longer. Usenet - the birthplace of trolling - eventually degraded to the point of near uselessness. The signal was drowning in noise. Mainly because some people are just shitty. Which is worth remembering here. Behind every AI agent spamming HN (and everywhere else) is a human who thought this was a good idea. Why do they think that? Maybe that’s the line to pursue for how to deal with this issue.
Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please do so. And, forgive me if I speak heresy, but there has to be more proof of work (friction) to create accounts. I was shocked at how easy it is for something like chatgpt atlas to create new accounts on the fly.
I rotate accounts on "social media" (mostly Reddit and Hacker News, the others don't interest me) every few weeks or months to make sure not too much of my post history accumulates in one account. I would dislike it very much if there would be high friction to create new accounts. On the other hand my behavior is probably a major outlier.
I think the problem is you can be tracked by your email when you sign up for a new account. So I am not sure how this can be helpful.
Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#209Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
We can relentlessly bully anyone using phrases like "Red Queen's race" unironically. Measly human resistance against the vapid strip-miners of semantic value.
You mean that you don't believe that we are in co-evolution with AI? Because otherwise it is a Red Queen's race, and it is a useful frame for understanding. For example we can make it a race between symbiotes. If you are Sisyphus, the fact that the hill is infinite is useful when planning your day.
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