I would actually expect Openclaw bots to be showing up here from time to time now, since there's no explicit documented policy against them.
(edit: And thus such bots can't easily discover that they shouldn't post, afaict)
Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
71–80 of 559 posts
Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am more annoyed by the anti-AI luddites filling the comments with low value complaints than I am by quality content written partially by an LLM. Those low value complaints add nothing to the conversation, and the content didnt make it to the front page because it was bad. If the sole objection is "AI bad", keep it to yourself....its boring.
Without engaging in more ad hominem, that are wrong by the way, what's the issue with labeling AI content with what it is?
It's one thing to have an AI-label. It's another to completely derail a conversation with a likely false AI accusation.
Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47122272
You have to scroll a few pages before the actual article is discussed.
"This was LLM generated" is likely to float to the top of an article. That's where the best comments about the article deserve to go, not an off topic comment. An AI label should be much less obtrusive.
Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#73I 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 your comment was generated by an LLM and hereby vote for your immediate and permanent instant ban.
Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#74There have been numerous stories on HN where someone directly involved with the story has created an account specifically to engage in discussion about whatever the story was about. Losing that seems too high of a price to pay. Yes there are AI generated comments, in the past there has been script generated comments. You can report, downvote, or just ignore and move on. I am aware of posts like this existing, but I f…
> There have been numerous stories on HN where someone directly involved with the story has created an account specifically to engage in discussion about whatever the story was about.
Yes, and sometimes some of the HN automatic filters kills the comments. Remember to "vouch" the comments if they are interesting/relevant, a few "vouches" unkill the comments. And in extreme cases, send an email to hn@ycombinator.com so dang/tomhow can take a look and use some magic to fix the problem.
Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#75Earlier 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.
Filtering is a valid form of improving signals. If there there was a reliable heuristic for users posting low effort content that was better then the user would be considering that instead. If someone in a chatroom for example is being spammy with their messages at the expense of noticing posts one finds more relevant then blocking them isn't due to considering them some filthy pleb but improving their experience. If…
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 parasites, because they want the people who are not intolerant jerks to do their filtering for them, and keep the site alive by doing so.
What would happen if every single user enabled their minimum karma filter?
Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do this with submissions, too. Or at least put some indicator that it's AI generated.
I am more annoyed by the anti-AI luddites filling the comments with low value complaints than I am by quality content written partially by an LLM. Those low value complaints add nothing to the conversation, and the content didnt make it to the front page because it was bad. If the sole objection is "AI bad", keep it to yourself....its boring.
In every single article's comments now, there's always someone coming out of the woodwork to post "This article is written by LLM." These comments are about as useless as "The website's color scheme is annoying" and "The website breaks the [back button | scrollbar]." (which, by the way, are not allowed per the HN guidelines[1])
If anything should be banned, it's low-effort "This is AI" commentary. It adds absolute zero to the conversation.
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#77I'm honestly surprised how well it's going. From the perspective of usually just swinging into a post from the front page, when I do see green, it's usually overtly political trolling, and dead from the start. So I had assumed new account = everyone sees your post in gray, at least for a week or two. I don't envy the "Show HN:" case. It can be intractable, story time: Last week, there was a "Show HN:" post for a GitH…
How about this: ask your LLM to review your post, "does it follow HN rules?", "how would others read it", "If I were the other person, how would I feel about this reply" , "is it convincing to you?" that sort of questions. That'll help, and it'll still be your voice.
And beware of what's already in context. Sometimes ideas that seem obvious given antecedents are not so obvious when taken in isolation.
Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#78Let's turn HN into a place where we all grow old together until it slowly dies when we do.
That's indeed the problem with restricting new users. Existing community members always want to do that, but it's a recipe for not surviving.
Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#79Earlier 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?
Sorry, updated my original comment—I meant to qualify it to only those cases where it's blatantly obvious. Obviously a lot of ambiguous comments will slip through as a result, but I agree with you that false negatives are better than false positives.
Your comments use em dashes. Many would claim those are vastly overrepresented in AI language and thus an account overly using them are blatantly AI.
I don't think your account is AI just by these few comments, but I would like to point out that most rubrics one might use to determine what is obviously AI might end up including the way you talk.
If there was a truly accurate tell, some algorithm you could feed a few sentences in and it could tell you "yep, this is 100% AI", then yeah sure use that. I don't know you could realistically build that machine, especially when it comes to the generation of text.
Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
#80[deleted]