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It could be made so that a nickname is automatically selected per-page. This way threads he comments in could be followed. A small pool of 5 or so names could be reused so that he couldn't be exposed by finding the user that has just been created. Example implementation: unames=['bob1','bob2','pg'] lu=len(unames) secret_seed=309580435 from binascii import crc32 def hash_eq(number): return crc32(str(number),secret_see…
An idea I just thought of would be to keep the poster anonymous until the post achieves a certain rating - after that show who the poster is. If there actually is favoritism this might solve that issue somewhat and yet give people credit where it's due.
yes, but sometimes the reputation is valuable. Given a poster's prior probability of intelligent comments, you have more information on which to vote.
I can only reducing this making the overall quality here improve.
"Might be an interesting social experiment." It's not an interesting experiment unless you learn something from it. There's virtually nothing that can be learned from this. Plus, I like being able to follow the comments of pg and others on their threads page.
Being able to follow pg on his threads page is part of the bias too. He gets more votes because his comments get read by more people.
"If you were going to build a piece of social software to support large and long-lived groups, what would you design for? The first thing you would design for is handles the user can invest in. [...] It's pretty widely understood that anonymity doesn't work well in group settings, because "who said what when" is the minimum requirement for having a conversation. What's less well understood is that weak pseudonymity doesn't work well, either. Because I need to associate who's saying something to me now with previous conversations. The world's best reputation management system is right here, in the brain.[...] If you want a good reputation system, just let me remember who you are."
I am not sure what the problem is that you are trying to solve, but full anonymity will undoubtedly cause the HN community much more headache than whatever you believe is afflicting is now. Whether there is a "PG bias" or not, he is accountable for his words because they are associated in a persistent fashion with his login.
One final point, I don't know about a pg bias, but I certainly have a positive nickb bias, because he has submitted so many good articles, I will normally follow whatever he posts even if I am not thrilled about the title. Doesn't mean I vote him up no matter what, but making the submissions anonymous would remove an important signal/attribute.
Persistent identity is an important building block in community formation. Clay Shirky goes into some detail on this in "A Group is Its Own Worst Enemy" http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html "If you were going to build a piece of social software to support large and long-lived groups, what would you design for? The first thing you would design for is handles the user can invest in. [...] It's pretty widely…
I don't think the original question was identifying a problem and trying to solve it, but the points made here all seek to improve what's working already today.
Just because people upmod more recognizable names, it doesn't mean they are pandering. For example, I will be more likely to read a comment if it was written by any user that I recognize. If I'm more likely to read a comment I'm more likely to upvote it as well.
But voting like this is screwing up the entire merit system we have here and enforcing group-think. It's like movie stars getting elected to political office just because they are more recognizable...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But voting like this is screwing up the entire merit system we have here and enforcing group-think. It's like movie stars getting elected to political office just because they are more recognizable...
No, it's like movie stars being paid more based on past performance. People go with brand names and things they recognize whether it's clothes, fast food, detergent or people. Always have and always will.
Unfortunately I suspect more than a few will recognise his fist. Just like old school morse signallers can recognise individuals by listening. I'm pretty sure individual writing styles are recognisable.
My idea would be to make user names invisible on submissions to individuals, until after you vote. Only then revealing who they are to the person who votes.
("pg" 4)
("theoneill" 3)
("mechanical_fish" 3)
("garbowza" 3)
("kkim" 3)
("paul" 3)
("cperciva" 3)