Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#121

Post by ahuth » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 6:29 PM UTC

ahuth wrote: post #113

I'm interested to try out participating... but I cannot get an invite, despite talking with folks in their irc, posting my homepage, some projects, github profile, etc. Meanwhile, other folks are coming into the channel and getting invites. That's annoying...

Maybe this is for the better, though. I totally understand why they'd want to restrict membership and keep things focused and civil. But there is also something that feels off about excluding people who are probably qualified to be there.

Sort of like interviewing at tech companies, there may not be a good solution. I imagine they're willing to put up with false negatives as long as false positives are minimized.

And that does make sense. But being on the other end of it is weird.

Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#122

Post by gerikson » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 6:34 PM UTC

blocked_again wrote: post #112

Carpetsmoker wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got an invite by just asking nicely on IRC with some details about myself.

And spammers/marketers cant do that?

I’ve declined to invite a number of “growth marketers”...

Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#123

Post by a3n » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 6:45 PM UTC

ColinWright wrote: post #102

slg wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have scrolled through several pages and this post is no longer in the top 200 on HN. I have never seen the flame-war penalty hit anything close to that hard that quickly. I am pretty sure this is from user flagging.

It may be. I've also now read through most of this thread and I can say categorically that for me, this thread is now mostly full of dross, and I'd be tempted to flag it as being of negative value to HN. I haven't, but I can see why others would. Like it or hate it, the purpose of the voting system is to provide a direction for the content. You may disagree, but it's like elections - you get what "the community" deem…

> you have to accept that

Except for eating, drinking and breathing, that's almost never absolutely true. All human contrivances are malleable.

Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#124

Post by a3n » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 6:48 PM UTC

samatman wrote: post #46

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…

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…

> 5 at 500 karma

Wow, someone would use 5 downvotes in 24 hours? I think I may have downvoted all of 5 to 15 times in all my time here.

My "downvotes" are merely not upvoting, due to indifference or some flavor of distaste.

Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#125

Post by blocked_again » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 6:57 PM UTC

gerikson wrote: post #122

blocked_again wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And spammers/marketers cant do that?

I’ve declined to invite a number of “growth marketers”...

Why not ask some questions in the sign up form and make the process more straightforward instead of having users ask for invite in random places?

Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#126

Post by ColinWright » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 7:02 PM UTC

a3n wrote: post #123

ColinWright wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be. I've also now read through most of this thread and I can say categorically that for me, this thread is now mostly full of dross, and I'd be tempted to flag it as being of negative value to HN. I haven't, but I can see why others would. Like it or hate it, the purpose of the voting system is to provide a direction for the content. You may disagree, but it's like elections - you get what "the community" deem…

> you have to accept that Except for eating, drinking and breathing, that's almost never absolutely true. All human contrivances are malleable.

Go for it. Good luck.

Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#127

Post by oxnrtr » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 7:09 PM UTC

ColinWright wrote: post #90

slg wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

... and on Lobsters you would neither need to speculate what happened nor kneel in front of the mods to fix it, because moderation actions are publicly logged¹. :-)

¹ https://lobste.rs/moderations

Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#128

Post by oxnrtr » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 7:15 PM UTC

ddevault wrote: post #115

Carpetsmoker wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't recall ever seeing "hateful" content go unmoderated. Do you have any examples? Also not sure what you mean with "protect opinions outside of the mainstream"? What kind of opinions do you mean? And how should they be protected?

The hateful comments are all passive aggression in my experience. I don't mean anything anti-semitic content or anything along those lines of hate - I just mean bad faith arguments, ad hominem attacks, etc. As for non-mainstream, basically anything that the moderators don't agree with. Could be about technology or politics. Anything which dissents from the prevailing opinion of a comment thread is also at risk for be…

Can you link to such an action happening?

Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#129

Post by mr_woozy » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

digitalsushi wrote: post #54

solatic wrote: post #14

And HN is arguably better for not being invite-only. There are so many articles on HN where the top comment is by somebody with deep domain knowledge who provides some kind of original insight that fits into the low length and polish expectations of a comment, but would never have become a formal blog post. Invite-only communities intentionally give up on that kind of discourse for... what? Easier moderation?

I think that when our reputations are on the line, that we act much better but also discard the grit and sharp edges that are the catalyst for interest and growth. I believe that we begin to converge on a single, aggregate pseudo-personality that is the most accepted register for communicating within. Karma points enable this convergence because they are the only metric that we can do data analysis on comment quality…

you've accidentally hit on a strategy that might work well.

Have a site with one public user account that is linked to a reputation and a shadow one created simultanously for snark / sharp riposte's / unpopular opinions.

Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#130

Post by wink » Sat, Jan 25, 2020, 7:19 PM UTC

wenc wrote: post #27

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 Sl…

Good point. I only ever heard positive things about kuro5hin, but I never warmed up to it, no matter how hard I tried.

It's the same as some print newspapers. You know they are better than some others, but all of their content is just too... dry? for you. And no, I don't mean too high-level or non-boulevard. They just seem to have an air of something that doesn't suit you.