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Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

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Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#291

Post by esseph »

heavyset_go wrote: post #137
esseph wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what's the issue with labeling AI content with what it is 1. Your guess is not always correct 2. Over time, AI content will get harder to guess until it is indistinguishable from human content 3. You're not helping anyone by posting "this is AI". Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but it's not helpful. It just adds to the noise.

I'm not suggesting anyone post "this is AI", the submitter should vouch that it's AI or eventually get banned for spamming. Ideally there could be a label on the submission that states it's AI

> Ideally there could be a label on the submission that states it's AI

A lot of people tried for #politics and that didn't work. I doubt you'll get #ai.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#292

Post by SsgMshdPotatoes »

jsunderland323 wrote: post #246

I’ve been mulling over this for a couple of days too. I have a project I want to share with the HN community that I put a substantial amount of effort into but it was definitely AI assisted (as is literally everything today). I’ve read all of the source and I drove the architecture but it would be a stretch to say I didn’t ask for assistance on things that felt fuzzy or foreign to me. I also have generally stopped ty…

I don't think people are blasted for using AI (mostly), I think people are blasted for low effort work, just like pre-LLMs. LLMs just made it way easier to complete low effort projects, so therefore there is more of it.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#293

Post by greazy »

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…

There needs to o be a distinction between creating a post and replying.

IMO New accounts should be restricted from creating new posts, or at least certain kinds of new posts.

Replying shouldn't be restricted. That is how users interact with each other and learn the etiquette of HN.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#294

Post by spartanatreyu »

stuartjohnson12 wrote: post #288
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…

> 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.

Not to mention reddit mass removed experienced moderators when all the moderators had a protest about reddit removing their access to good third party tooling.

That's the day the site started its death spiral.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#295

Post by sltkr »

krapp wrote: post #90
elpocko wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is already heavily moderated. Low-effort posters and spammers get downranked immediately, based on their behavior. OP is simply intolerant and unable to function in a social setting. Minimum karma and account age filters are discriminatory, anti-social features that should not exist on any social site. The people asking for such features are intolerant jerks, no different from ageists or ableists. They are parasit…

>What would happen if every single user enabled their minimum karma filter? Hacker News would be a much better place. In fact, filter stories as well as users. I want to filter out any story with fewer than three upvotes and any flagged comments. That would improve quality tremendously.

How would any new user earn karma in that system? How would any story get upvoted?

Again, this system can only work if there are at least _some_ people that are willing to upvote newbies and read new posts.

It sounds like what you want isn't a community with collaborative filtering, like Hacker News, but a newsletter with editors, like Slashdot for example.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#296

Post by AnimalMuppet »

BalinKing wrote: post #7

I furthermore wish that "posting an LLM-generated comment (i.e. and passing it off as your own)" was worthy of an instant ban, because I see this sort of behavior from non-green accounts as well. EDIT: I meant (but totally forgot) to qualify that my "proposal" would only apply when the LLM-ness is self-obvious—idk, make up a "reasonable person" standard or something. Presumably, the moderators would err on the side o…

I think you need (at least) one exception to that rule. We have many people here whose first language is not English, and this is an English-only forum. For at least some of those people, an AI translation may give better clarity than their own attempt at writing in English.

So I would propose that, in the ideal world where we could perfectly enforce the rules that we chose, that the rule would be "AI for translation only". If it wrote your content, your comment is gone. If it translated content that you wrote, your comment is still welcome.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#297

Post by AnimalMuppet »

jacquesm wrote: post #105
BalinKing wrote: post #7

I furthermore wish that "posting an LLM-generated comment (i.e. and passing it off as your own)" was worthy of an instant ban, because I see this sort of behavior from non-green accounts as well. EDIT: I meant (but totally forgot) to qualify that my "proposal" would only apply when the LLM-ness is self-obvious—idk, make up a "reasonable person" standard or something. Presumably, the moderators would err on the side o…

For now there is already a pretty effective mechanism in place, downvote and/or flag those comments that you think are across the line in that sense. But in principle I agree with you, the rule for me is 'if it wasn't worth your time to write then it certainly isn't worth 1000x times other people's time to read'.

Exactly. If your LLM wrote it, then my LLM can read it. I don't want to.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#298

Post by edanm »

BalinKing wrote: post #7

I furthermore wish that "posting an LLM-generated comment (i.e. and passing it off as your own)" was worthy of an instant ban, because I see this sort of behavior from non-green accounts as well. EDIT: I meant (but totally forgot) to qualify that my "proposal" would only apply when the LLM-ness is self-obvious—idk, make up a "reasonable person" standard or something. Presumably, the moderators would err on the side o…

I disagree with this policy.

Some people can really benefit from using LLMs to help them write. E.g. non-native speakers.

LLM-assisted-writing doesn't have to be low effort, it can help people express themselves better in many cases. I'd argue that someone who spent their time doing multiple passes with an LLM to get their phrasing just write, has taken obviously more care than the majority of people on HN take before commenting.

And if you don't like the way something is written? Just down vote it. That's true whether or not it's partially/wholly written by an LLM.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#299

Post by swat535 »

dang wrote: post #34

We'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...

Why not let the users choose at settings? like "Show dead" ?

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#300

Post by 8cvor6j844qw_d6 »

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…

Honest question, what are the alternatives to HN?

Because if new account restrictions create enough friction, you lose legitimate users who periodically rotate accounts for privacy reasons.

At some point the annoyance tips toward just lurking, and a forum where only old accounts talk is a stagnant forum given enough time.

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