Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A website where opinions/posts don't get to the top based on likes from others

argoledo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 49 posts

Re: A website where opinions/posts don't get to the top based on likes from others

#31

Post by pjc50 »

NegatioN wrote: post #28

I've thought a bit about this recently, since HN and Reddit in particular are prone to have the posts sorted by how much it appeals to the average user. Other systems such as Twitter and Facebook limit you extremely in the fact that you only converse with likeminded people, and when you don't, you'll most likely never end up in a constructive discussion, just in a flamewar since everyone is dead set on their opinion…

This is an absolutely terrible idea, because truth is not something that can be inferred from the text alone; epistemology is hard enough for humans, let alone for machines. The approach of decoding human text into statements in propositional logic has been tried, it was the first 70s "AI wave", but ultimately it broke down on the complexity of the problem. Modern "ML" can only give you a stochastic truthiness.

The only people who haven't given up on the approach of a massive symbolic reasoning database to work out what's true and false are Cyc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyc

You might be able to have a system which auto-flags known bullshit statements, but people will get outraged by that.

Re: A website where opinions/posts don't get to the top based on likes from others

#32

Post by burgerdev »

egjerlow wrote: post #30
NegatioN wrote: post #28

I've thought a bit about this recently, since HN and Reddit in particular are prone to have the posts sorted by how much it appeals to the average user. Other systems such as Twitter and Facebook limit you extremely in the fact that you only converse with likeminded people, and when you don't, you'll most likely never end up in a constructive discussion, just in a flamewar since everyone is dead set on their opinion…

I think we would need more than the 'truth' dimension to make this work. Writings can have great value even if what they say is not directly 'true' - think poetry, motivational writings etc.

... and the first 10k digits of pi might be 'true', but are neither educational nor entertaining.

Re: A website where opinions/posts don't get to the top based on likes from others

#33

Post by meesterdude »

adrianN wrote: post #7
meesterdude wrote: post #6

can't pronounce the name easily; maybe/probably noneglish based? reading one of the posts about ads, the admin writes: > We are going to have to implement ads at some point anyway oh that sounds like a fun rollercoaster to ride again. > I know ads can be annoying, that's why we try to use them in an non intrusive way that can benefit both us and the users. total wanker. ads do not benefit users, and saying they do me…

I don't like ads either, but you can argue that ads benefit the user by paying for the service that they want to use. Until we have some viable micropayment system that allows me to pay the fraction of a cent that the website would otherwise receive by showing me an ad it's hard to finance popular services.

You can argue it, doesn't make it right! Nor are micropayments the only solution. Nor do sites make a fraction of a cent - it's usually at least a few.

With ads comes everything from annoyance, tracking, data theft, and malware. All things I am not a fan of, nor are they worthwhile tradeoffs for visiting a site.

But i'll agree - it's not as easy to do other things as it is to serve ads. You have to be creative, and also provide actual value that people are willing to pay for. But trying to romance the idea of serving ads - that it's good for users - is insulting.

Re: A website where opinions/posts don't get to the top based on likes from others

#34

Post by pjc50 »

rwmj wrote: post #14
megamindbrian2 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slashdot is the grim reaper of commenting.

> Slashdot is the grim reaper of commenting. I've no idea what it's like now, but in its heyday you could set your comment threshold to +3 or +5 to read the dozen or so most insightful comments on each topic. That was a great reader-friendly time-saving device. As far as I know that's not possible on HN.

Even better, they had custom multipliers for different kinds of upvote reason. This let you do things like set "Funny" to -1 if you didn't like Slashdot's sense of humour.

Re: A website where opinions/posts don't get to the top based on likes from others

#35

Post by digi_owl »

rwmj wrote: post #14
megamindbrian2 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slashdot is the grim reaper of commenting.

> Slashdot is the grim reaper of commenting. I've no idea what it's like now, but in its heyday you could set your comment threshold to +3 or +5 to read the dozen or so most insightful comments on each topic. That was a great reader-friendly time-saving device. As far as I know that's not possible on HN.

I fear the astroturfers have gotten their claws in, as i constantly see conflicting, and downright asinine, comments hovering at +5 (insightful).

Re: A website where opinions/posts don't get to the top based on likes from others

#36

Post by digi_owl »

pjc50 wrote: post #34
rwmj wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Slashdot is the grim reaper of commenting. I've no idea what it's like now, but in its heyday you could set your comment threshold to +3 or +5 to read the dozen or so most insightful comments on each topic. That was a great reader-friendly time-saving device. As far as I know that's not possible on HN.

Even better, they had custom multipliers for different kinds of upvote reason. This let you do things like set "Funny" to -1 if you didn't like Slashdot's sense of humour.

You can also tag people, and have their score weighted accordingly (and they can see how you tag them in their profile)...

Re: A website where opinions/posts don't get to the top based on likes from others

#37

Post by digi_owl »

pjc50 wrote: post #31
NegatioN wrote: post #28

I've thought a bit about this recently, since HN and Reddit in particular are prone to have the posts sorted by how much it appeals to the average user. Other systems such as Twitter and Facebook limit you extremely in the fact that you only converse with likeminded people, and when you don't, you'll most likely never end up in a constructive discussion, just in a flamewar since everyone is dead set on their opinion…

This is an absolutely terrible idea, because truth is not something that can be inferred from the text alone; epistemology is hard enough for humans, let alone for machines. The approach of decoding human text into statements in propositional logic has been tried, it was the first 70s "AI wave", but ultimately it broke down on the complexity of the problem. Modern "ML" can only give you a stochastic truthiness. The o…

Yeah any kind of community "tagging" system is fertile ground for trolls and whatsnot. Just check out the mess that is steam tags, where soft-core visual novels gets mixed in with just about anything thanks to troll applied tags.

We are simply asking for another racist AI or gorilla moment.

Re: A website where opinions/posts don't get to the top based on likes from others

#38

Post by kqr »

egypturnash wrote: post #4

Damn, that is one hell of a condensed font. Nigh-illegible on the 72dpi monitor I use at my desk.

I'm guessing they're going for a newspaper cram-in-as-many-characters-as-possible-in-a-narrow-column aesthetic. In my opinion, that was never a flattering look and it isn't now either.

Re: A website where opinions/posts don't get to the top based on likes from others

#40

Post by kqr »

Strilanc wrote: post #20
FrozenVoid wrote: post #18

There is an easy alternative to voting system. Rating=Number of comments - C*hours passed since post. where C is some site-specific activity variable. Same could be applied for comments without time factor: Rating=Number of replies/posts in subthread tree spawned by post

Incentivizing number of comments puts flame wars and chain letters at the top.

There should be a dictionary of common scoring systems and their flaws. So

- Scoring on comment count :: Flame wars.

- Scoring on forwards :: Chain letters.

- Scoring on sum of "likes" :: Memes and simple jokes.

- Scoring on five-star ratings :: hides important issues.

And so on. This way, we can make an informed business decision on what kind of junk we can best defend againt.

Post reply on HN