So who is willing to invite me? I am nice
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Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News
81–90 of 179 posts
Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News
#82The 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…
A better choice might be limiting upvotes or requiring a reason (as Slashdot did). There's already far too high a ratio of upvotes to downvotes IMO.
Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News
#83The 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…
hn should do away with the voting system.
i fail to understand why some comments get down-voted. sometimes i am thinking the same thing the commenter got down-voted for. i sometimes ask myself if there is no language barrier at play at times?
but i am usually not logged in, or on the phone, to comment. i seldom log in and yet has been around forever. i have accounts before that i forgot the password for. i think there are many of us that just hang around...
now, other times, i fail to understand why some posts get to the front page. and they never fail to get there. the first few replies on those are "see previous thread", "discussed before", and so on. and there is so kind of popularity thing going on that makes some people auto-magically get to the front page.
Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News
#84The 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…
I would agree that having to give a downvote reason is more relevant at bigger communities. But I'm usually surprised at how "lighter" moderation/voting works better in HN/Reddit
I remember the "Web 1.0" days of forums and slashdot where votes/moderation was more fine grained. But it seems cheap comments were more valued in these kind of environments than in the more modern ones (even if they're popular on Reddit, and I'm glad here it's toned down)
Yes sometimes the community here will disagree with you and there's a bit of "echo chamber" effect, though I find my comments will usually have an ok number of votes after a while (sometimes my opinions won't match the community, sometimes I'll have a badly worded comment that's misinterpreted and goes to have a low score, well, you can't get it right always)
Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News
#85[deleted]
Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News
#86One thing I noticed is that the search feature on there is far worse than HN's. Doing a side by side comparison, I have to go to the 2nd or 3rd page on Lobste.rs to get the results that I would have expected to be first.
I'm curious what you use search for that often on a forum whose posting activity is largely temporal. Are people using HN etc as an info repository?
Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
How so, it's a method for dealing with spammers/marketers and the like who would post low effort or off topic content regularly.
Its true that this system blocks spammers and marketers. At the same time it also prevents a large amount of genuine users who want to take part in the dicussions because its hard to get an invite. So overall the system does more harm than good.
There are like five people in this thread offering invites, it's not that hard.
Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News
#88I think the invite only aspect of it can be a problem. The invitee needs to get the invite from someone that they either know in real life or someone who can vouch for them online. The former isn't a great solution because it requires users to be linked to their real identity by at least one person. Real identities have some advantages, but requiring it bars a lot of good discussions that people don't want linked to…
I have to disagree with the false dichotomy you are presenting wrt to the invite system. Specifically, being forced to reveal your real identity to at least one other user vs. "inviting people that they don't know the real identity of" which you say means that "the invite system isn't really adding anything beyond making it slightly more complicated to join."
There are many people online whose real identities I don't know whom I consider thoughtful individuals more than capable of engaging in meaningful and respectful discourse. I'd be happy to vouch for them in an invite-only board.
Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that a better solution, at HN scale, would be to limit the number of downvotes in a 24 hour period. Not clear what the ideal number is; maybe 5 at 500 karma, and 5 more per 500, possibly up to some limit (25?). Otherwise, 'you must provide a reason' is trivially gameable, it just means downvotes are two clicks instead of one. I suspect that the recent trend to low-quality downvotes is because 500 is a relativ…
> Otherwise, 'you must provide a reason' is trivially gameable, it just means downvotes are two clicks instead of one. I’d think if your reply was something low quality you’d end up with more downvotes than the parent you just down voted. Or am I misunderstanding something? My experience on HN is that getting 500 karma was not easy; it’s quite hard to get submissions past “new” and comment karma takes some time to ac…
I'm not on lobste.rs, so I could be getting this wrong. But I believe the system is that you have to choose a reason for downvoting, which is shown to the person you downvote, but that you're not required to reply to the post, and the user doesn't know who in particular did the downvoting.
Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Downvoting isn't the problem - it's spam flagging. There's no better tool for suppressing ideas and viewpoints you disagree with than flagging it. Only on HN can a story occupy #1 on the front page due to overwhelming upvotes, and 30 seconds later be sunk to the depths of page 2 or 3 by a handful of flaggers who disagree with the content that's presented.
I have complained about this to moderators before. There are certain topics that are almost off limits on HN not due to the rules, but due to the heavy flagging they always receive. Articles by, about, and for women are one common example. These articles being flagged results in this community being pulled further into a dangerous realm of misogyny that already exist in some pockets of the tech world. EDIT: Another e…
I'm not a mod and I don't have any inside track, but I've been around a while. I suspect that this item has fallen not because of flags, but because it's got 80 comments and only 75 votes. There is a mechanism as a proxy to detect flame wars, and is not necessarily because of flagging.
If you think this has been sunk inappropriately then email the mods. They are quite open to getting honest, constructive comments and suggestions. If you think this item and this discussion is of value to the community, let them know and they might agree and remove the flame-war penalty.