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"Rate My Startup" Post Policy

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: "Rate My Startup" Post Policy

#71

Post by AgentConundrum »

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.

I wouldn't, actually. I've got comparable karma (221) after about two years, and I can't even consistently downvote items. I noticed down arrows a while ago for comments, but recently I've noticed that they only appear on certain comments, and others are upvote only. My assumption has been that there is some sort of inflation at play.

Not that I'm complaining of course. I think I've only used my downvote powers once normally. The only other time I've used such powers was when I noticed some spam comments, and chose instead to flag them on the noobcomments list.

I honestly think that something like my level of karma is too high a limit for posting things like an RMS. This place isn't reddit, so I take my comments on here a lot more seriously. As such, I don't comment nearly as often since I don't usually feel I have a comment of sufficient intelligence to contribute.

Really, I'm quite amazed anytime I see my karma increase here. I have a definite inferiority complex when reading some of the great comments here.

With experience like that, building any measure of karma could be a slow and arduous process for the typical new user. Unfortunately, I'd imagine a lot of people working on their first project would have the same sort of inferiority complex, yet they would be exactly the sort to benefit the most from an RMS sort of post.

In fact, I'm building (very slowly, thanks to inexperience and a bit of RSI) my first "major" project, and I had hoped to show it off here first, but now that same "I'm not worthy" feeling is making me feel like it wouldn't be welcome.

Re: "Rate My Startup" Post Policy

#72

Post by mark-r »

I signed up for HN over 2 years ago, made one post, then promptly forgot my login. I've tried on a few occasions to remember, but this is the incentive I needed to finally figure it out - thanks.

Re: "Rate My Startup" Post Policy

#73

Post by metachris »

moe wrote: post #11

But how are "rate my startup" posts different from any other posts? I mean, if you invent special treatment for RMS-posts then why wouldn't the spammers simply go back to submitting their stuff without that prefix?

Reviewing of startups and providing various perspectives is something very special this community offers for starting entrepreneurs. We should take care to keep that interesting and not to devalue it by too many / spammy posts.

Re: "Rate My Startup" Post Policy

#74

Post by yesimahuman »

nowarninglabel wrote: post #70
yesimahuman wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about just requiring a certain number of active days being signed up? Is there data that shows spam is ever posted by long running users?

Poor for stopping spam. It's pretty easy to write a little bot that just logs in to ycombinator on an active basis. Data would be good though.

Sorry, I meant days since signup, not time since last login. I haven't see any data that suggests spammers are using old accounts, but I'm not sure.

Re: "Rate My Startup" Post Policy

#75

Post by LiveTheDream »

pmjordan wrote: post #46
pg wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

An option might be to send RMS posts from users with low karma into a slashdot-esque crowdsourced moderation. Randomly show it to 10 users with a high enough karma on any of the list pages (frontpage, newest, classic, etc.). It's then only made public if a high percentage of such "moderators" approve of it (not necessarily counting "approval" as an upvote, just meaning "this is legit"). The percentage could be pretty…

Rating without looking at the underlying content is horrible. Perhaps it could be mitigated by tracking if the link was followed, weighting authenticated upvotes more heavily than unauthenticated ones (where "authenticated" means a click-through to the content was observed).

You could track a link click either by setting a cookie client-side with javascript, or by linking to a trampoline page on HN that tracks the click, then redirects to the real URL.

Re: "Rate My Startup" Post Policy

#76

Post by markitechtMA »

wushupork wrote: post #42
RealGeek wrote: post #10

So a hacker who has been reading HN everyday while coding his product, but does not post often; is not allowed to post RMS anymore?

I'm in your boat. I read HN pretty religiously but don't have much time to comment or follow up on comments. Every time I even think about doing that I'd almost always rather spend more time obsessing about my product. Thus I barely have any karma points. But every once in a while, I like to post my latest project.

Ditto. I'm building, grinding on customer discovery, reading HN to stay informed (and maybe a little entertained). Also, most of what I read on HN is stuff that is outside my comfort zone, and therefore I am not as able to comment as I would be if I stuck to reading topics with which I am already very familiar.

Re: "Rate My Startup" Post Policy

#77

Post by LiveTheDream »

djtumolo wrote: post #24
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.

How do you stop spammers from building up their karma by reviewing that moderation queue by upvoting their own spammy submissions?

Re: "Rate My Startup" Post Policy

#78

Post by iamjpg »

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 completely agree. I am a HN newbie and wouldn't expect people to care about any of my projects until I spent time offering analytical and positive contributions here first.

Re: "Rate My Startup" Post Policy

#79

Post by techbio »

trustfundbaby wrote: post #20
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'm sure number of votes and length of membership could be incorporated into some sort of algorithm to determine that?

How about a simple Bayesian classifier for legitimacy? Parameters: account open date, date of first comment, date of last comment, karma, std dev of time between comments.

Good for drawing crooked lines between accounts of a similar age, eg. there is a signature for legitimacy that appears on short (two day) and long (two year) time scales. Talk about specific thresholds seems misplaced when it can be computed from a small training sample.

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