61–70 of 72 posts
#1. Fix the fucking website. Seriously, what kind of half-assed aggregator gives a 9 in 10 change of getting 'missing or unknown link' when clicking to the next page?
Also the minimalist computer science inspired upvote/downvote sorting system is a bit of a mismatch to human communication. Someone has to try a more complicated paradigm. I think tags on posts and comments would work better. Have a menu/autocomplete thing for common tags like [agree, troll, disagree, interesting, this, politics, hostile] and weigh submissions and comments through them. Should also be able to combine multiple tags and have a rating option for each tag. Label severity of disagreement, politics or suspected trolling.
This way when you need to tune the knobs you have more data to work with than just upvote/downvote, total karma and average karma. I don't expect pg to do these kinds of experiments though, he has minimalist tastes and limited time.
Also many times when communities fall apart, we have limited data to work with to see where things started to go wrong. Was it too many n00bs that chased experts away? Was it hostility? Did too many new people start voting on new submissions? I've seen some attempts at analysis of HN but don't remember them making clear conclusions.
Not submit or upvote stories which are fundamentally about politics (even politics within a thirty mile radius of a computer!), because they predictably descend into value-free flame wars. That destroys the sense of community even on good threads: after seeing "you're a fucking idiot" on some article about how the TSA is cracking down on Wall Street music piracy, people often think "Did you read the fucking post?" is…
In that vein, I think the guidelines ( http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ) are too wishy-washy: "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some…
The downvotes are horribly biased and uninformative. I think an interesting experiment to try is to force downvoters to also give a comment, so the parent knows why he/she is being downvoted, so as to discourage that behavior in the future. This is a great way for newcomers to stop making rookie mistakes, and to reduce the number of "Why was my post downvoted?" updates/comments that add little value, but is a questio…
[downvote] [comment about reason] [what? you missed the point] [no, you said this] [no, read it again] [you can't write] [you can't read] [your an idiot?] [you're a bigger idiot]
I recently submitted an article about lemonade stands. Most of the discussion was political. I was disappointed - I thought people could talk about ways to promote entrepreneurship or to teach basic concepts like added value. So, I apologise. I try hard not to respond to any political posts. Now I can downvote I might consider downvoting those. I avoid anything that mentions Apple, or MS, or often Linux, especially i…
#1. Fix the fucking website. Seriously, what kind of half-assed aggregator gives a 9 in 10 change of getting 'missing or unknown link' when clicking to the next page?
It's to stop crawlers. Just refresh before you go to the next page, or open the second page straight away before the link expires.
Just makes our experience bad.
The downvotes are horribly biased and uninformative. I think an interesting experiment to try is to force downvoters to also give a comment, so the parent knows why he/she is being downvoted, so as to discourage that behavior in the future. This is a great way for newcomers to stop making rookie mistakes, and to reduce the number of "Why was my post downvoted?" updates/comments that add little value, but is a questio…
Reasons for down voting would quickly end up in many arguments. [downvote] [comment about reason] [what? you missed the point] [no, you said this] [no, read it again] [you can't write] [you can't read] [your an idiot?] [you're a bigger idiot]
Not submit or upvote stories which are fundamentally about politics (even politics within a thirty mile radius of a computer!), because they predictably descend into value-free flame wars. That destroys the sense of community even on good threads: after seeing "you're a fucking idiot" on some article about how the TSA is cracking down on Wall Street music piracy, people often think "Did you read the fucking post?" is…
I "personally" would prefer that such discussions still be made available, but that people have an easier way to block those if they don't want to discuss that (or at least don't want to discuss that at HN).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a great idea.
The other thoughts I had on this subject are a little more radical but I'll say them anyway: why not get rid of downvoting entirely? I'm a new enough user that downvoting isn't even an option for me and I can't say that I miss it. This site is already radically different from other online communities, why not go full-bore and just make it based purely on a the-cream-rises-to-the-top model? I would imagine the flag fe…
Hacker News seems to be evolving and becoming many things to many users. Why not leverage that instead of trying to restrict it? Regardless of whether things are "on topic" or not, the site has two things going for it that other communities often strive in vain to build: traffic and a definable culture. My suggestion: a column down the left with a topic marker: startup advice, network technology, programming tips, ha…