"Rate My Startup" Post Policy • Hacker News Board

Re: "Rate My Startup" Post Policy

#21

Post by andre3k1 » Tue, Nov 02, 2010, 6:44 PM UTC

jakestein wrote: post #16

bdittmer wrote: post #5

What constitutes an established account? I rarely comment on posts but have had an account for 2.5+ years and regularly upvote posts and comments. Is my account "established"?

I have no first hand knowledge, but I would be surprised if a 2.5 year old account with 250 of karma (like you do) is not considered established enough for this purpose.

What about a 2.5 year old account with no karma? You'd be surprised at how many lurkers there are. I know quite a few (and was one myself up until a short while ago).

EDIT: added emphasis

Re: "Rate My Startup" Post Policy

#22

Post by pg » Tue, Nov 02, 2010, 6:44 PM UTC

bdittmer wrote: post #5

What constitutes an established account? I rarely comment on posts but have had an account for 2.5+ years and regularly upvote posts and comments. Is my account "established"?

The easiest threshold is karma, as for polls.

Re: "Rate My Startup" Post Policy

#23

Post by pg » Tue, Nov 02, 2010, 6:45 PM UTC

noodle wrote: post #19

how about you just disallow all frontpage submissions until a certain karma level? make people comment before they're allowed to submit links or text content, since those are the easiest to game. comments are easier for the community to moderate and its easier to pick out spammier ones, since they're clearly off topic or include random inappropriate links.

Because then spammers would start to post comments instead, and those are harder to catch.

Re: "Rate My Startup" Post Policy

#24

Post by djtumolo » Tue, Nov 02, 2010, 6:46 PM UTC

mickdarling wrote: post #17

i think this XKCD points out the issue rather well. http://xkcd.com/810/ Is there any kind of captcha on the submission for RMS? If not perhaps a direct link to the other RMS's and a requirement to post there.

Agree. Also add a moderation queue. It doesn't go live as an RMS unless you pass either captcha + moderation or karma check. A great way to gain karma would be to review the moderation queue.

Re: "Rate My Startup" Post Policy

#25

Post by pg » Tue, Nov 02, 2010, 6:47 PM UTC

kyro wrote: post #3

I can definitely imagine lurkers creating accounts to show off their latest project, so auto-killing posts from newly created accounts doesn't seem like the best way. Perhaps make it policy that all RMS submissions be text submissions explaining the idea to give it a bit of authenticity, and every RMS submission with a link in the title be auto-killed. I don't imagine spammers would go through the effort of writing o…

If there was an established rule about who got to submit RMS posts, lurkers would know that and create accounts.

Re: "Rate My Startup" Post Policy

#26

Post by pg » Tue, Nov 02, 2010, 6:48 PM UTC

wccrawford wrote: post #15

phr wrote: post #9

I'd rather see a fairly low karma and a few weeks or months account age thresholds, but then I'm biased, being mostly a lurker here.

Spammers would just create accounts months in advance, and then use them when they mature. They're not above that sort of thing for high-traffic sites like this.

In fact they do it constantly.

Re: "Rate My Startup" Post Policy

#27

Post by KevinMS » Tue, Nov 02, 2010, 6:48 PM UTC

Maybe another section like the "new" section?

But don't name it rms, that means something else on any hacker site.

Re: "Rate My Startup" Post Policy

#28

Post by kapauldo » Tue, Nov 02, 2010, 6:49 PM UTC

What's the point of "flag"? By killing legit RMS posts from low-point posters, you're creating a lot of ill will, particularly when they follow up with "Why was this thread killed?" posts.

Re: "Rate My Startup" Post Policy

#29

Post by _b8r0 » Tue, Nov 02, 2010, 6:50 PM UTC

markkat wrote: post #2

I don't think it is unreasonable to ask people to invest time in the community before they can request the community to invest time evaluating their product.

I agree, but it's important that what qualifies as investment matters. Perhaps a function of comments, votes, submissions and time the account has been around.

As an aside, how would we distinguish between RMS posts and regular posts? Would the spammers simply revert to normal posts? I think if this is the case then perhaps we should reconsider the goal.

If the goal is to stop spam masquerading as RMS, then it seems to me that accounts should require more longevity or community contribution to post an RMS post than a regular post. As long as we define etiquette for posting an RMS post, then it should be feasible to use a combination of following that etiquette, and flagging posts that don't follow said etiquette.

If the issue is stopping spam, then perhaps that's separate to RMS posts and should be considered as a wider whole.

Re: "Rate My Startup" Post Policy

#30

Post by noodle » Tue, Nov 02, 2010, 6:50 PM UTC

pg wrote: post #23

noodle wrote: post #19

how about you just disallow all frontpage submissions until a certain karma level? make people comment before they're allowed to submit links or text content, since those are the easiest to game. comments are easier for the community to moderate and its easier to pick out spammier ones, since they're clearly off topic or include random inappropriate links.

Because then spammers would start to post comments instead, and those are harder to catch.

are they? we kind of tend to smash down comments that are even slightly off topic or non-contributory.

they might sneak in on the less popular submissions, but i kind of feel like it won't get by any more of a problem than it already is. if comments were more a effective way to spam, they'd already be a problem.

alternatives: disallow links in comments until a certain karma/age. disallow both comments and submissions (ha) until you've voted on enough statistically different things. make it a game by creating a new metric that people can be measured on based on the number of spammers they've sought out and identified via flagging, and create a new top list for it.