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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

#381

Post by Marsymars »

shimman wrote: post #89
delichon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moderators are supposed to just know it when they see it? It's that black and white to you? Or are lots of false positives a price we have to pay?

Something we need to remember that AI was trained on every public internet comment, the vast majority of which are legit terrible. The biggest tell that someone is using AI is having multiple paragraphs saying the same point over and over again. Even trolls are more succinct.

Huh, this is what specifically drove me to complain about LLM-generated tickets at work - multiple paragraphs rewording and emphasizing the same point, all of which was topically relevant, but not necessary.

(i.e. it was obvious in the first place, think along the lines of a ticket about a screen loading slowly, and then multiple paragraphs explaining the benefits of faster-loading screens.)

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#382

Post by cozzyd »

basilikum wrote: post #282
SoftTalker wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

didn't even bother not using an em dash...

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#383

Post by thutch76 »

pesus wrote: post #267
thutch76 wrote: post #248

I'm very wary of this request, though I understand it. I've been reading HN daily since around 2014. My involvement was purely passive (e.g., I have been a lurker) because I really didn't think I had much to contribute that wasn't already stated better by others. I didn't actually create my account until 2021? 2022? I can't remember. And I didn't make my first post or even comment until just last week. While I think…

If you're going to spend 3 hours making a post, why not just write it yourself in the first place and avoid the issue and the reputational damage?

This is awfully narrow minded. I had Claude give me an initial framework, based on the many many hours of context of chat across many different documents. It helped me organize my thoughts.

Some of us need assistance to communicate effectively. And for me, yes that took 3 hours even with this assistance.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#384

Post by vunderba »

brewdad wrote: post #191
vunderba wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This already happens now. Go look through a few of the "Show HN" authors - you'll inevitably see around several accounts that are 50-100 days old with a karma of 1 to avoid a green label. The OP is talking about posts, not comments. The simplest solution might be to prevent someone from posting a "Show HN" until they’ve earned twenty-five or fifty karma, to demonstrate that they’ve been actively participating on Hack…

This leads inevitably to karma farming bots who upvote each other’s submissions à la Reddit. It’s a speed bump at best.

Yeah I considered that - but any friction is better than none. Maybe integrate an additional consideration by which low karma (threshold Honestly, we don’t really have the same cold start problem that a brand new social media site would. We already have plenty of reputable active users here. So HN could restrict new accounts to only being able to comment initially. As they participate, their comments receive upvotes, allowing them to build up enough karma (even a small amount of 25) which unlocks the ability to upvote, and then, finally, the ability to create posts.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#385

Post by beautron »

laborcontract wrote: post #95
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...

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.

Perhaps more proof of work is necessary, but it makes me sad.

I still remember creating my HN account. It stands out in my memory, because it was the smoothest, simplest, easiest, and quickest account creation of my life.

I had lurked here for around a decade before finally creating an account. Any urge to participate was thwarted by my resistance toward creating accounts (I just hate account creation for some reason). But HN's account creation process was a breath of fresh air. "You mean it can be this easy? Why isn't it this easy everywhere? If I had known how simple it was, I would have created an HN account years earlier, lol."

It was especially stunning to me, because I think the discourse on HN is generally of a higher quality than most other sites (which I wouldn't naturally associate with such an easy account creation process).

It's my only fond memory of account creation (along with maybe when I created an account on America-Online back in the 90s, since that was my first ever account and it was all so novel). Just a few quick seconds, and then I'm already commenting on HN. It was beautiful. I remain delighted.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#387

Post by Terretta »

dang wrote: post #347
magicalhippo wrote: post #149

Earlier 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…

Indeed. Here is a recent litmus test: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47051852 . How can we filter the lightweight stuff while still benefiting from posts like these? (a bit more about this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47056384 , with a reply from the OP)

Interesting litmus test, as the post isn't just green, it's riddled with LLM copyediting. Doesn't read as if originally composed by an LLM, so there's that.

Would seem to require some discernment to classify. Not all assistive use is slop.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#388

Post by vunderba »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #270
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...

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…

It'd be pretty easy to spot too, because most people don’t even bother trying to hide it (either out of laziness and/or ineptitude).

A lot of users don’t seem to realize that anyone can click on the domain in a "Show HN", and Hacker News will show you all the times that domain has been submitted. So you’ll see four or five different low karma sock puppets accounts that have all submitted the same site.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#389

Post by heavyset_go »

localuser13 wrote: post #329
sdenton4 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any amount of friction reduces the amount of slop. What proportion of clankers are going to realize that they need to warm up the accounts two weeks in advance? Answer: a proportion that your never going to see with that barrier in place. With a couple few layers of defense, you'll weed out almost all of the bad actors. Without strong monetary incentives for spamming, you also avoid most persistent actors.

With enough layers you will also weed out almost all of the good actors. Normal people are busy and don't have time nor patience to jump over too many hoops to promote their cool new research, or to respond in a thread where someone linked it.

Reddit has more friction to sign up or post while new or low karma.

The main subreddits will basically shadowban you until your account is aged and has more than X karma.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#390

Post by onionisafruit »

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’s worse than that. On r/news they shadow ban anybody who doesn’t have verified email. No message or anything. Just nobody sees your comments. I probably made 20 or more comments there over a few months before I figured it out. It felt humiliating.
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