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Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#281

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Barbing wrote: post #219
johnnyanmac wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised posts aren't restricted a bit more. Maybe that's just my old school "lurk moar" mentality, but I feel like I really need to understand the vibes of a community before I start to contribute posts to it.

True Mm, balancing against “long-time lurker, made an account just to post this”…

Yeah, exactly. Thirteen years ago, I was a lurker. No account, because why would I make an account just to read? But when I wanted to say something badly enough, I made an account. (I think the first thing I did is post an Ask HN about functional programming, so "no posting for X time" might have turned me away.)

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#282

Post by basilikum »

SoftTalker wrote: post #204
Uvix wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Requiring accounts to be a certain age does not help and will only affect legitimate users. The slopsters will simply create accounts, wait a bit and start posting then.

Actually cross the will out. They are already doing this to avoid the green smell. This account replied to me today. 4 months old, but only started posting today. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=BelVisgarra

Oh damn, that's the one who posted the AskHN about the verified job portal on the frontpage today. Either this is some chilling still in build up, or it's an actual human being with severe LLM slop impersonation derangement syndrome.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#283

Post by pinkmuffinere »

rdevilla wrote: post #274
pinkmuffinere wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking of setting up a system to highlight sock-puppeters and other consistent-rule-violating accounts, as a 'fun project' that might improve the HN experience. But it strikes me that the HN staff probably already does something like this, they may not welcome a side-loaded project of this sort, and it would require some automated crawling of HN (which again may be unwelcomed). Finally, I don't actually have…

I'm wary about new accounts such as yours wanting to censor and shape discourse by antagonizing people who hold diverse views that differ from your own here. The HN culture has shifted drastically over the past 5 years.

To be clear, I wouldn't filter people just because they have different views than me (the goal is to automate the detection, to avoid the effort of reading all the comments -- I should mostly not be in the loop). But I have come across accounts that openly admit to being sock-puppets (eg https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47242156). These sorts of accounts I would highlight.

Likewise for guideline-abusers. I don't really know what heuristic you would use to detect rules abuse, but I imagine there are at least some clear violations that could be detected.

Finally, I think I'd make one account for sock-puppets, another for guidelines-abusers, etc, so people can 'subscribe' to whatever degree of 'highlighting' that they want.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#284

Post by AnimalMuppet »

john01dav wrote: post #213
trinsic2 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This matters when you're hiding from the website. It doesn't matter if you're just trying to hide such things from the public.

It also matters if you're trying to hide from subpoenas to the website.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#285

Post by solaire_oa »

I created a Firefox plugin which takes HN commenters'/submiters' account create date and sort/scales the order/points based on its creation since 2009 (older accounts get more weight). Optionally, the plugin just puts "spoiler" text over accounts created after a certain date (say, 2023 or so).

Unfortunately, I was not able to "reorganize" comments/posts in a manner that I felt was particular "better", and didn't keep the plugin, for whatever that's worth.

I think it would be more prudent to overlay a web-of-trust, where accounts which submitted links/comments that you upvoted are then given significantly higher priority in other threads/feeds (unfortunately downvotes are not made apparent on HN, but factoring downvotes would also help.) Exposing your web-of-trust may also assist others in determining trusted content.

Perhaps this web-of-trust approach is dystopian on the order of MeowMeowBeenz, but I have not heard any other practical solutions to the disintegration of trust which is upon us.

Edit: Elsewhere in this thread HackerSmacker was mentioned, which is what I'm describing. That's exciting, I'll be trying it out later.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#287

Post by sltkr »

ArekDymalski wrote: post #215
elpocko wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want other people to deal with the things you don't like and filter stuff for you, to improve your own experience and shield you from the filthy masses. God beware you have to endure a comment you don't like, your royal highness. I'd rather see you gone than the people you complain about.

Core function of HN Front page is based on "other people filtering stuff for others". Filtering out by any criteria (karma, account color, first letter of the nickname, whatever) doesn't automatically mean that someone is a jerk as you have stated in the comments nearby. It just means that someone is selecting the information to consume and does not harm anyone (perhaps besides the selective person who might miss int…

The filtering is supposed to be based on the quality of the content, and it's only useful to the extent that people filter either on quality directly or closely correlated metrics.

If everyone votes purely on basis of the first letter of the username, to use your example, then the votes provide no useful information and you may as well abolish it.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#288

Post by stuartjohnson12 »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #266

Reddit has tried this approach and, IMO, it's failed. A new human user will spend actual time creating a thoughtful and helpful post, only to be greeted by "sorry, your post has been removed by automod because you don't meet criteria". They get disheartened and walk away forever. The spammers, on the other hand, know how the rules work and so will just build their bots to work around this (waiting 30days, farming kar…

It failed on Reddit because Reddit is maintained by a bunch of volunteers to whom Reddit provides woefully, woefully, horrifically underdeveloped tooling to automate their communities in a more nuanced way. Hacker News has three advantages. First, it is moderated by the same people who build the tooling, so the incentives are aligned. Second, it is an enormous source of soft power for a venture capital firm with the resources, incentives, and likely the competence and capacity to keep it running smoothly. Third, the scale is smaller and is not tied to hardline revenue constraints like CPM, user LTV and DAU-maximization which restrict what Reddit can do.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#289

Post by grapheneposter »

magicalhippo wrote: post #149
laborcontract wrote: post #95

Earlier 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.

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…

Yes that is exactly what I just did, some of us are just getting around to having time to post

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#290

Post by usr1106 »

trinsic2 wrote: post #208
HendrikHensen wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My HN account has no email. Not sure whether it would still be possible for a new account.
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