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To Paul Graham

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: To Paul Graham

#21

Post by gr366 »

gte910h wrote: post #12
bdickason wrote: post #5

As someone who recently discovered HN as an alternative to digg/reddit I am thankful as well. Things I love: 1) People downvote trolling and negative/witty comments 2) The interface gets out of your way 3) It updates constantly 4) The content is exactly what I'm looking for... and exactly what I couldn't find anywhere else 5) People are genuinely here to help. I am eagerly anticipating launching my startup so I can p…

Yeah, but they need to make votes non permanent. It's a crapshoot if you'll hit the up or down arrow on a mobile device or iPad when you try to rate stuff.

Or could simply modifying the UI solve this problem? Putting the downvote arrow to the right of a news item (maybe just on mobile devices) would prevent fat-fingering, and then votes can remain permanent.

Re: To Paul Graham

#22

Post by manish »

One thing that is different here is that this site does not need to generate (ad/any) revenue, so many of the irritating things that will be common in other forums will be absent here.

Re: To Paul Graham

#23

Post by lionhearted »

gte910h wrote: post #12
bdickason wrote: post #5

As someone who recently discovered HN as an alternative to digg/reddit I am thankful as well. Things I love: 1) People downvote trolling and negative/witty comments 2) The interface gets out of your way 3) It updates constantly 4) The content is exactly what I'm looking for... and exactly what I couldn't find anywhere else 5) People are genuinely here to help. I am eagerly anticipating launching my startup so I can p…

Yeah, but they need to make votes non permanent. It's a crapshoot if you'll hit the up or down arrow on a mobile device or iPad when you try to rate stuff.

I like the permanence, because sometimes I upvote an insightful comment, then read an insightful reply and upvote it too. I think if votes were impermanent, I might be more tempted to null or downvote the original point if the second one is better - not because of evil, just because of the natural human desire to be very consistent. So I like the permanence thing...

...but I understand the misclicks. Maybe an "undo" button for a short time, like 10 seconds or until your next click that just nulls your vote?

Re: To Paul Graham

#25

Post by jodrellblank »

gr366 wrote: post #21
gte910h wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but they need to make votes non permanent. It's a crapshoot if you'll hit the up or down arrow on a mobile device or iPad when you try to rate stuff.

Or could simply modifying the UI solve this problem? Putting the downvote arrow to the right of a news item (maybe just on mobile devices) would prevent fat-fingering, and then votes can remain permanent.

Or could simply not feeling guilty solve this problem? The up/downvotes are to give an aggregate view of the community response to a comment, not to give a precision karma score.

Re: To Paul Graham

#26

Post by jayruy »

It's worth noting that hn doesn't aspire to profitability via advertising - pg doesn't have to worry about things like "stickiness" and "reach".

So yes - hn is a great service to the community.

Re: To Paul Graham

#27

Post by bdickason »

alanh wrote: post #20
jokermatt999 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see why they are permanent; it makes your votes feel like they mean something. But please, can we at least get an allotted number of "vote revokes" per week or something? I agree, it's too easy to misclick on an arrow on a touchscreen, and there's nothing that can be done.

Better & simpler solution: Bigger buttons on touchscreen devices, preventing mis-clicks in the first place

This is definitely the answer :)

Re: To Paul Graham

#28

Post by thaumaturgy »

drlisp wrote: post #19

This level of ass kissing makes me want to puke.

I have to agree, actually. More to the point, this submission violates both the written and unspoken rules of submissions here: "Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something", and the unspoken rule that content-less submissions are generally frowned upon.

This is something that could have been equally effective as a brief email to pg. As the current top-ranked post here, it's kind of ... masturbatory.

Re: To Paul Graham

#29

Post by kierank »

edw519 wrote: post #16

I imagine hn owes a lot of success to its simplicity. I was always confused by slashdot's filters and the threads in almost every other forum, with Post #18 replying to Post #7 and Post #27 replying to Post #3, but only 10 posts visible per page. Busy people don't have the time to wade through stuff like that, so all you're left with are the trolls. hn's nested threads built with are so simple that they're brilliant.…

Hacker News is the craigslist of Social News sites.

Re: To Paul Graham

#30

Post by cenazoic »

LaPingvino wrote: post #8
tjmaxal wrote: post #2

This seems like as good a place as any to ask this: Can only some people down vote? B/c I have seen posts with negative scores and as I am only allowed to up vote, I have wondered how someone gets a negative score next to a comment?

When you participate enough with quality articles and comments (measured with upvotes) you get a higher karma and at some point this will grant you the ability to downvote. I am mostly passively participating here (although I see myself commenting and submitting a bit more now) so I didn't reach such a karma yet...

I'm another one of the mostly passive readers of the site, mostly because I'm teaching myself to program, rather than actually being a programmer.

HN has raised my awareness, made me more thoughtful about how and what I actually think about things (part of the passivity comes from the idea that any sloppy thought will be immediately shot down (rightfully so)), and overall contributed to an ongoing desire to be a larger part of the overall tech community online.

Thanks to PG (whose essays I often reread -"Keep Your Identity Small" is one I constantly refer to other people - for HN and providing this nonname wannabe programmer a place to learn. And to learn to think. Thank you, PG.

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