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Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

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Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#21

Post by Jaygles »

sondr3 wrote: post #12
ringzero wrote: post #5

Ah, the what.cd strategy. Minus the exclusive content.

Man, I miss what.cd, not just for the content but for the obsessive users they had and the collections they made. Want all albums with a shoe as the cover? They have a collection for that. Want good music to start a journey into classical music in the 1800s? They have a collection for that. I mostly used it to discover great music, and the void that what.cd left has yet to be filled for me.

I don't think I'm ever going to get over what.cd getting taken down. After it disappeared my new music discovery has plummeted.

Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#23

Post by laumars »

The down-vote feature (for those who didn't read the article: you have to provide feedback to down-vote) is something I've spent years saying HN badly needs.

These days I just don't bother posting most of the time because while I shouldn't be bothered by abuse of negative rep; you can't help be pissed off when you've spent a short while including detail only for someone who doesn't understand the subject or has a personal bias in the subject to react with a knee-jerk down vote. It's not as bad when people reply because at least you gain context into their point of view (even if you don't agree with them) but it always felt, dare I say, "rude" to effectively fine a comment karma without explaining why you've done so.

Also HN's model actively encourages burner accounts where people will say something they know to be contentious with an anonymous account so they don't burn their own karma. The problem with that is that can then sometimes lead to trolling too. After all, why sensor your opinion if you're now a burner account?

There used to be so much good content posted in the comments but the quality seems to have diminished over the years and I honestly think that's in part due to more people reaching the karma threshold for down-voting. The more times a genuinely thoughtful or informative post gets a knee-jerk negative vote, the less people will feel inclined to give up their time writing thoughtful or informative comments.

Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#24

Post by suifbwish »

fortran77 wrote: post #11
smoyer wrote: post #2

The invite-only nature will only benefit the site while it's small. It will either stay small or suffer the same users as other sites. The down-vote with reason feature is nice.

If someone on the top of a user-invite tree gets "cancelled" will all the people he referred and their descendants be cancelled, too?

that’s some vampire shit there sir

Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#25

Post by rowathray »

Jaygles wrote: post #21
sondr3 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, I miss what.cd, not just for the content but for the obsessive users they had and the collections they made. Want all albums with a shoe as the cover? They have a collection for that. Want good music to start a journey into classical music in the 1800s? They have a collection for that. I mostly used it to discover great music, and the void that what.cd left has yet to be filled for me.

I don't think I'm ever going to get over what.cd getting taken down. After it disappeared my new music discovery has plummeted.

Ever heard of Apple Music? Spotify? Youtube?

Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#27

Post by wenc »

tluyben2 wrote: post #15

Why do we need to do this kind of comparison? They are both quite nice. I think HN is better for what I look for (but r/programminglanguages and a few others are even better) as there are just a lot of people here who actually have experience with the topics discussed. PL experts, formal method experts, cancer experts, etc everyone is ready to write quite a nice explanation for nothing. The volume on Lobste.rs for so…

> The volume on Lobste.rs for some topics is just not large enough to get an insightful convo going.

I get that sense too. I looked at the titles of the links on Lobste.rs and this is a purely subjective opinion, I feel the content appeals to a specific demographic. I struggled to find a link there that would interest me (not that my opinion matters terribly).

10-15 years ago, we experienced something similar with Slashdot and Kuro5hin. Kuro supposedly had much higher quality content, but I couldn't help but feel the site only appealed to certain kinds of people. I appreciate high quality content yet could not bring myself to care about Kuro. (I'm sure many here have the opposite experience, so I'd be interested in your counterpoints).

I very much believe in curation, but without volume, curation seems like pre-mature optimization, it seems to me.

Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#28

Post by marcinzm »

ColinWright wrote: post #13
nkelly31 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be interested to see how they leverage the user tree. I'm no expert in social media bots, but it seems like the user invitation tree could be important to identifying not just networks of bots that are generating low-value content and trying to amplify certain viewpoints, but the people inviting those bots into the network in the first place.

I think the point here is that if someone starts spouting rubbish, the person who invited them loses "face" - it reflects badly on them. So invitations aren't hard to come by, provided you have a reasonable reputation for saying things that are sensible. This is a throwback to an early age when you would never talk to someone in social circles without first being introduced. If someone turned out to be a "bad sort" t…

Doesn't that just cause a massive filter bubble effect?

Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#29

Post by [deleted] »

laumars wrote: post #23

The down-vote feature (for those who didn't read the article: you have to provide feedback to down-vote) is something I've spent years saying HN badly needs. These days I just don't bother posting most of the time because while I shouldn't be bothered by abuse of negative rep; you can't help be pissed off when you've spent a short while including detail only for someone who doesn't understand the subject or has a per…

[deleted]

Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#30

Post by Existenceblinks »

laumars wrote: post #23

The down-vote feature (for those who didn't read the article: you have to provide feedback to down-vote) is something I've spent years saying HN badly needs. These days I just don't bother posting most of the time because while I shouldn't be bothered by abuse of negative rep; you can't help be pissed off when you've spent a short while including detail only for someone who doesn't understand the subject or has a per…

Down-voting sometimes increased my incentive to do trolling. I felt like they attacked me first for no good reasons.
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