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To Paul Graham

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: To Paul Graham

#81

Post by _pius »

coderdude wrote: post #58
petercooper wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hn's nested threads built with are so simple that they're brilliant. No horizontal scrolling, no flipping between pages, just click "reply" and you're good to go. I don't think s should get undue praise. With s, the code would be easier to read mechanically (for manipulation with Greasemonkey, say) and even though there'd be a little more CSS, the page weight might be reduced a little (I'd have to make a mockup to be…

I disagree. Tables are still the most reliable way to display content under nearly all circumstances (maybe less so on mobiles, but definitely on the desktop). They've been stable for years and years. I went through the hardcore standards phase where I thought it would be the death of my soul if I ever went back to using tables for layout, but then I read a great article (wish I had the link) that struck a chord with…

Tables are still the most reliable way to display content under nearly all circumstances (maybe less so on mobiles, but definitely on the desktop).

I don't think that's been true for several years.

Re: To Paul Graham

#83

Post by GFischer »

blizkreeg wrote: post #57

Perhaps audience curation is a big factor in HN's success? HN attracts a very select band of people. I wouldn't say the same thing about Digg or Reddit (perhaps they were the same when smaller, I never used them). Hacker News, by virtue of its name, reputation, and association with YC is not open (not in the literal sense) to anyone and everyone willing to participate. This, IMO, keeps the quality of posts and commen…

Hmm.. it might not be "mainstream" yet (and I hope it remains selective).. however, I'm reminded of Groucho Marx's quote: "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member" ...

I used to participate on Slashdot actively, I'm a programmer, yet I've never seen a line of Lisp so far, nor started a Startup - and I saw comments from "old-timers" that said they weren't as interested in some of the kind of articles that interest me and would rather HN had stayed focused entirely on startups and hacking.

Does that mean HN has gone "mainstream"? I don't know. But it's not as select as it used to be :) (and I hope it's a good thing)

Re: To Paul Graham

#84

Post by Ixiaus »

kqr2 wrote: post #70

I believe this is the blog post which the original poster refers to: Digg is deadd http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2...

Thanks, I should have referenced the original post I derived that quote from (it slipped my mind).

Re: To Paul Graham

#85

Post by jacquesm »

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #72
pg wrote: post #64

Thanks very much. I don't think it's really HN's features or lack of them is the attraction for most users though, but the quality of the submissions and comments. So thank you guys. Ironically I've been thinking of adding some variant of following as a way to deal with the increasing volume of comments. I just haven't had time to yet. I did recently (about 3 weeks ago) tweak the algorithm for ranking comments, and t…

isn't this a less transparent version of the orange users experiment?

I think it isn't because it does not assign 'yellow stars' to users for being good boys, the sort order always was open to interpretation, if this one is less gameable than the previous one that would seem to be an improvement to me.

The problem I perceive is that average score does not say much about a specific comment being non-productive, so someone with a high average score could toss in some complete junk and get it sorted to the top in spite of better comments by average under producers further below.

I'd say that if it remains below the detection threshold it might be a net plus, if too many of such instances appear it might be a loss.

Re: To Paul Graham

#86

Post by JesseAldridge »

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #72
pg wrote: post #64

Thanks very much. I don't think it's really HN's features or lack of them is the attraction for most users though, but the quality of the submissions and comments. So thank you guys. Ironically I've been thinking of adding some variant of following as a way to deal with the increasing volume of comments. I just haven't had time to yet. I did recently (about 3 weeks ago) tweak the algorithm for ranking comments, and t…

isn't this a less transparent version of the orange users experiment?

The problem with orange users was that it divided the community into two camps. This doesn't have the same issue.

Re: To Paul Graham

#87

Post by all_elements »

pg wrote: post #64

Thanks very much. I don't think it's really HN's features or lack of them is the attraction for most users though, but the quality of the submissions and comments. So thank you guys. Ironically I've been thinking of adding some variant of following as a way to deal with the increasing volume of comments. I just haven't had time to yet. I did recently (about 3 weeks ago) tweak the algorithm for ranking comments, and t…

Kudos on sticking to the fundamentals. I especially love the login screen. Plain and simple. No eye distracting BS anywhere.

Re: To Paul Graham

#88

Post by sesqu »

pg wrote: post #64

Thanks very much. I don't think it's really HN's features or lack of them is the attraction for most users though, but the quality of the submissions and comments. So thank you guys. Ironically I've been thinking of adding some variant of following as a way to deal with the increasing volume of comments. I just haven't had time to yet. I did recently (about 3 weeks ago) tweak the algorithm for ranking comments, and t…

How about instead of average comment score, you consider average likelihood of quality, treating the score (or its log) as odds? That is, w=avg(score/(1+score)). That way a single popular comment won't dominate.

Re: To Paul Graham

#89

Post by gizmo »

pg wrote: post #64

Thanks very much. I don't think it's really HN's features or lack of them is the attraction for most users though, but the quality of the submissions and comments. So thank you guys. Ironically I've been thinking of adding some variant of following as a way to deal with the increasing volume of comments. I just haven't had time to yet. I did recently (about 3 weeks ago) tweak the algorithm for ranking comments, and t…

Since this is a meta-thread anyway: have you considered something like a blacklist? That would give us a way to filter out those users who like to make bad puns or witty one-liners too much, and those users who too often make wildly incorrect claims.

This would still serve as a filter, but this wouldn't result in some kind of whitelist where you effectively only really notice the people you know you're going to agree with anyway. Whitelists encourage groupthink, and incorrectly penalize low-karma users. (Nobody is going to friend users who only occasionally comment even though the quality of their comments is really high.)

I prefer any solution that filters out the noise over any solution that gives emphasis to the opinions of popular users with high karma.

Re: To Paul Graham

#90

Post by mortenjorck »

jacquesm wrote: post #39

If HN ever got as large as digg it would suffer from much of the problems that digg has, and you will not be able to remedy those by 'staying simple'. Digg is complex because it is that large, and I think that if HN ever got that large it would start to suffer in much the same ways. HN is not so much a reflection of the person that built it (though that definitely does help) as it is a reflection of the people that p…

As long as this document retains the respect of the majority of the users: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html HN will thrive. It's the single best set of "social news" community guidelines I've read.

The triumph of HN has been in attracting an initial audience that agrees with the spirit of that document, and in their subtly but firmly encouraging its adherence in newcomers.

The character of a community is a tricky thing to build and maintain. A community can easily veer into the superficial and glib territory of Digg, the self-referential and jaded territory of Slashdot, or even the sycophantic territory of Wikipedia. HN has been quite fortunate.

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