Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#551

Post by latch » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 2:52 AM UTC

user24 wrote: post #72

Limit us to N upvotes per day. In other words - make votes precious. That way people will think more about how to 'spend' their precious votes. A similar thing works in poker. If you empty out your change jar and give everyone a fixed amount to start, and at the end of the game it all goes back in the jar, people play in a certain way. If you play for actual money, even just change, the gameplay does often change for…

This has been suggested a few times, but I don't get it. How does limiting votes impact quality of comments? Seems like it'll just cause people who have run out of upvotes to post disguised and meaningless "i agree" comments.

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#552

Post by crasshopper » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 2:52 AM UTC

diego wrote: post #247

I'm surprised this book hasn't been mentioned here yet: http://www.amazon.com/Building-Reputation-Systems-Randy-Farm... If you read that book and then look at HN, it's clear how its design encourages behaviors that are not aligned with the goals of the community managers.

diego, would you mind summarising for us what's wrong with the design?

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#553

Post by gruseom » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 2:54 AM UTC

mechanical_fish wrote: post #233

bretthopper wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, this is the biggest problem with HN rather than comment quality. Tons of related, and even duplicate, stories happen all the time which fragments discussion. Not to mention the duplicate posts which happen a few months later. Thankfully someone usually remembers and posts a link to the previous discussion but that shouldn't be required.

I think it's an interesting idea to be able to "group" related posts that occur within a certain time range of each other. If five posts on the new iPad 7 come in within the same three days, someone can drag them all together into the "iPad 7" thread. But this? the duplicate posts which happen a few months later Once we're up to a timescale of months , or even weeks, we're no longer being sensible. Instead we're exhi…

"Constant reexamination of classics" sounds like bliss to me. I would love to see more of it. nostrademons' comment (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403317) about feeling like he's absorbed as much as he's ever going to get out of 15 minute blog posts, and hungering for deeper learning, is one that deeply resonates with me. I remember books. The last 5 years, say, of internet use has retarded my learning, and I'm ashamed for letting it happen.

I wish there were places to go online to teach or be taught about topics in a discussion-forum kind of way. I'd love, for example, a Lambda the Ultimate for newbs. LtU is an awesome, high-quality site, I just wish I could understand more than 10% of it.

I tend to use HN when I'm too tired to work or just waking up. Those are also the times when I'm not interested in buckling down and studying a hard subject. But surely I could do better than the kind of learning I get from HN (and other casual internet use), which is random access to shallow, scattered tidbits, as if training for a massive Trivial Pursuit tournament you never signed up for. If only there were a community where people devoted themselves to teaching and learning classic topics in a sustained way, but that still had the social and casual aspect. News as such doesn't interest me that much. I'm mostly just consuming it by default. If anyone's read this far - my apologies for adding a mostly off-topic comment to an already crowded thread.

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#554

Post by thorax » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 2:57 AM UTC

Experiment suggestion: Upvotes are weighted as today, but downvotes are heavier weighted when you're downvoted by a user with high karma. I'd probably say that weight can't send a comment negative.

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#555

Post by crasshopper » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 3:00 AM UTC

danielford wrote: post #313

I've generally found a strong correlation between forum quality and the difficulty of gaining admission. One of my favorite forums put me on a waiting list for three months before they let me post. So I'd prefer the addition of some sort of barrier to entry. Either an invite system like the private file-stealing sites use, a sign-up fee like Metafilter uses, or a vetting process for potential members. Ideally, I'd lo…

NuclearPhynance doesn't block entry, but displays the community rules next to your first 10 posts. They quickly ban "bad guys" and IP block sock puppets / hidemy#ss.

[PS you mean a strong _positive_ correlation, right? ;) ]

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#556

Post by crasshopper » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 3:01 AM UTC

Devilboy wrote: post #331

Admit defeat and just use the slashdot system. For all its trolls and failings slashdot still has the best crowdsource comment moderation system on the interwebs. The Slashdot System - Comments start at +1 and can range from -1 to +5 only - Mod points are limited and distributed randomly as needed - Only members with good karma are eligible for mod points - Mod points must be used within 24 hours

I would distribute uniformly rather than randomly.

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#557

Post by gte910h » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 3:01 AM UTC

ig1 wrote: post #127

gte910h wrote: post #20

I disagree that the quality is declining. I think you're just suffering a misapprehension of the quality of old.

Comments are certainly declining in quality. For example this thread from a submission I made a year ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1215549 The quality of discussion was much higher than on most posts today. And that was only a year ago.

Depends entirely on the post. Esoteric technical issues (as in the business model of advertising) have a higher level of debate than more relatable articles.

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#558

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 3:01 AM UTC

crasshopper wrote: post #525

alextp wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except with sufficiently snarky/provocative comments trying to shame the commenter might look from the outside like something very similar to petty disagreement. I think some people here are learning that hugely self-confident, strongly opinionated, obvious writing tends to spark a strong agreement reaction on the readers, who quickly upvote a comment that adds nothing to a discussion. These are a problem, as they en…

Strongly agree with where you're going here. Every time I see a "senior" or "better" HN handle call someone dumb, I think: well, who says you're so smart? Who makes you the dictator of "good" comments? I never see "nice" tellings-off. A "nice" telling-off might be: "reader123, this comment is mean. please be nicer"

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#559

Post by crasshopper » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 3:03 AM UTC

RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #291

pg wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually that's something I've already changed. A few hours ago I made flags have a lot more weight. The old weights were ok for the more engaged users we had a year ago, but now the ratio of votes to flags on a fluff story tends to be a lot higher.

So that's why my submission plummeted so quickly. One person made a reasoned argument for it not belonging, lots of people piled on and flagged it, hey presto, gone. Giving flags more weight is not necessarily the answer. Punishing people for making bad comments is, I think, more important. Equally important is punishing people for upvoting bad comments. But now it's late here, and starting tomorrow I'm really not go…

You could make flags scale concavely.

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#560

Post by ww520 » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 3:04 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #137

psawaya wrote: post #100

Make it easier for new stories to get noticed before they fall off the new page. It's a crapshoot if your submission gets noticed, and (it seems at least) the stories on the front page come from the same domains and submitters, probably because people tend to vote based on name recognition. I realize that doesn't directly relate to comments, but I think some of the declining quality of conversation owes to the fact t…

Would it work to make the new page longer?

- Make the new page longer definitely help. Low hanging fruit.

- Give more karma to votes on new stories to compensate the extra effort to leave the front page.

- Display one or two random new items on the front page to increase exposure.

- UI change on front page. When mouse moves over the random new item box, display a popup overlaying page containing the new items to allow for upvotes. When mouse moves away, hide the new item page. It's more complicate to implement and might not work too well on phones but should remove the mental barrier to go to the new page.