Requiring 10 points to submit is really stupid?
Tell HN: An Observation
21–30 of 93 posts
Re: Tell HN: An Observation
#22I can sympathize with your complaints. There does seem to be a lot of retreaded topics on the main page, so I've just changed my HN bookmark to http://news.ycombinator.com/newest. I'll try it for a week, and hopefully I'll spot some more interesting stuff that otherwise would fall by the wayside.
Re: Tell HN: An Observation
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
As for the original topic of your submission, minimalistic interfaces, I'm all for it. I predict the death of the submit button in the next 2 years.
It occurred to me over the last week or two that most all of the startup and pet project work I've been doing over the past decade has all boiled down to presenting complex and thought-provoking data to the user in the most simple way possible. Every little piece of user interface, web application, or technology that sits between the brain and a simple version of the decisions it needs to make each day is a cognitive…
This is going to sound very cryptic, but I hope it comes across, you are a solution looking for a problem.
I think it's only a matter of time before you find your groove, I see it happening all over HN, people that try one thing after another and suddenly it clicks, they find their thing and from there on it's upwards.
Don't give up, the 'making complex stuff simple' thing you've got is absolutely a key in all this. The webcam thing was much the same, until we came along it was just too hard to put live video on the web, we reduced it to one click, that was all it took. Youtube did the same for clips and look where they ended up.
All you you need to do is to apply that wisdom to something that draws a crowd.
Re: Tell HN: An Observation
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
But that would have the unintended side-effect of making the site much more attractive to spammers because they'd be almost guaranteed some homepage exposure.
Feature a random article selected from new articles submitted by users with at least 10 points?
Feature a random article selected from a probability distribution based on user karma.
e.g.
Alice - 100
Bob - 200
Charlie - 300
Dave - 0
Re: Tell HN: An Observation
#25The title "My Master Plan to Destroy the Internet as we know it (whattofix.com)" doesn't have any terms that interest me.
In your first paragraph you use the phrase "web interface" if that or some other technical term had been in the title, I might have clicked. fyi
Re: Tell HN: An Observation
#26Requiring 10 points to submit is really stupid?
Requiring 10 points to submit stories seems like a pretty decent idea to me.
Re: Tell HN: An Observation
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Feature a random article selected from new articles submitted by users with at least 10 points?
Feature a random article selected from a probability distribution based on user karma. e.g. Alice - 100 Bob - 200 Charlie - 300 Dave - 0 Dave's new article will never get front page exposure. Charlie has a 50% chance, Bob a 33% chance, and Alice a 16% chance.
That wouldn't work either, it would simply cause a karma feedback loop.
Re: Tell HN: An Observation
#28I think this is one the places where the concept of subreddits really shines. Allowing users to control the content that is shown to them allows interesting niche posts to maintain visibility.
Re: Tell HN: An Observation
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Feature a random article selected from new articles submitted by users with at least 10 points?
Feature a random article selected from a probability distribution based on user karma. e.g. Alice - 100 Bob - 200 Charlie - 300 Dave - 0 Dave's new article will never get front page exposure. Charlie has a 50% chance, Bob a 33% chance, and Alice a 16% chance.
If you want to modify the probability based on karma points, I would suggest giving larger probability to those users with fewer points, as those with more points (ostensibly) would already get more attention given to their submissions anyway.
Dave won't get anywhere with either this scheme or the one I proposed, at least not immediately. But that's the idea: it will be a little bit harder for Dave to gain traction, but it will demonstrate that he's not a spammer, which should be a reasonable price to pay for ensuring the site isn't overrun with garbage (any more than some claim it already is).
Re: Tell HN: An Observation
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Feature a random article selected from a probability distribution based on user karma. e.g. Alice - 100 Bob - 200 Charlie - 300 Dave - 0 Dave's new article will never get front page exposure. Charlie has a 50% chance, Bob a 33% chance, and Alice a 16% chance.
That wouldn't work either, it would simply cause a karma feedback loop.
Worse things have happened. You could easily cap the "considered" karma at like 500. Or some value that is a function of the total karma in the system.
EDIT: or cap the "considered" karma at the median for all users.