Honestly I'd love to pay for a Hackernews account if it meant weeding out some rather distasteful people. Not saying that is the be all/end all solution to the problem though.
Solving The Hacker News Problem
161–170 of 284 posts
Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#162Why can't HN force categories on every posts? Have the community create and curate the categories, and select their own categories on HN to read. Just a blanket vote up/down button hardly measures how valuable anything is for any particular group if that group is not constant.
Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#163I think if we could see random frontpages from days a few years ago, we'd find that the top stories weren't that different, and that there was the same "jack of all trades, master of none" aspect to the site that Alex complains about. It may be that a site whose design spec is to satisfy hackers' intellectual curiosity would necessarily feel that way. Maybe I'll write something to regenerate past front pages, so we c…
The frontpage content is fine. I'm much more concerned about the comment quality.
That's always a serious concern. It's not surprising that many bloggers either heavily moderate or don't even allow comments on blog posts. It's a difficult issue to solve for sure. Better comments means you need better people offering thoughtful and insightful comments.
Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#164If sites want to claim some sort of community and continuity, they're going to have to place newbies into virtual reeducation camps. Want to see the newest links? You have to read through 10 comments from an '07 post first. Posted a link to an internet meme? Back to the virtual reeducation camp with you.
Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#165I think if we could see random frontpages from days a few years ago, we'd find that the top stories weren't that different, and that there was the same "jack of all trades, master of none" aspect to the site that Alex complains about. It may be that a site whose design spec is to satisfy hackers' intellectual curiosity would necessarily feel that way. Maybe I'll write something to regenerate past front pages, so we c…
A diff of past front pages would be interesting. Some historical front page entries: 2007AUG15 ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/1119991071/ 2008FEB08 ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/2250089864/ 2009JAN18 ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3205568708/ 2009MAR12 ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3347109733/ 2010JUN24 ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/4728476663
Political and other front-page-news posts with little "hacker" content, blogs by irrelevant magazine columnists, posts about how X product/market/phenomenon is dooooomed, random questions about how the site works because the FAQ is a tiny link in the footer...and lots of posts by people horribly concerned that those damn noobs will stink the place up.
I really haven't noticed HN get any worse in the two years I've been around.
Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#166If the crowd has cycled so much, I wonder if maybe this isn't the best solution for the desired outcome.
Granted, I haven't been visiting tech-specific boards for more than a few years, but I'd generally agree that the more technical articles are what I'm interested in.
I think I'd be interested in a board that was geared toward programmers/hackers, but didn't use a typical karma/point system. I'd like to see one that perhaps utilized karma, but under a collaborative filtering system. So, in a simple for-instance, if a small subgroup of people tend to upvote articles that I do, those articles would be given more weight, and similarly those who downvote articles I upvote would be, from my perspective, given less downvote weight, while at the same time there might be a different subgroup that was weighted to value their downvote more. Perhaps give people the ability to tweak the tolerances of their collaboration. Give them the ability to say "if this guy has X karma and ignores someone's articles and votes, then I want to ignore them too"
Of course, this might be 1. a completely naive idea, 2. an idea that's already been tried and failed 3. an idea that's already being used 4. something to time-consuming for people with real work to do or 5. an idea that's unworkable and that I'm only having because I just started reading books on, and experimenting with, machine-learning ;)
Though even if it existed, I probably wouldn't use it. I already waste half my day reading the few articles that interest me on hacker-news, heh
it sucks that when you design any system or any set of rules, and humans are going to interact with it, you have to think "how are these shady bastards going to subvert my beautiful creation?"
Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
What was the point of this comment? (I'm asking seriously; I want to know what it is you're specifically trying to communicate here).
It was an innocent observation: I was sharing an anecdote about my experiences on other internet communities. The mention of the fact that the higher-karma, "ingroup" members of HN seem more likely to communicate with each other on twitter and in private emails than the rest of the population reminded me of bad situations I had seen on other forums. I then thought how glad I was that here on HN it seems to happen on…
For all the newer people, I encourage everybody to come by the HN secret cabal IRC channel, #startups. I found that the term "secret cabal" really sounds much more exciting than the actual channel ;)I try to go by at least once a week, though. It's fun to be in more of a real-time discussion.
I would also encourage people to look up folks' email and email them with questions and such. Great way to make new friends. Many a time I've tracked somebody down from an HN discussion only to have it continue via email. (It also brings the noise factor down over here, which is always a good thing)
I know a lot of guys follow everybody they can from HN on Twitter. I don't know if I would personally go that far -- Twitter has a hecuva lot of noise and I get easily distracted -- but it works for some.
So yes, there's a lot of out-of-band chat going on, but as far as I know, none of it is exclusive. If you'd like to participate more, the same channels are open for anybody. I know I keep my Twitter, Facebook, and email addresses in my profile for just that very reason.
Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about, instead of a single community, the site runs as a set of "cohort" communities that each only allow direct sign-ups for their first year in existence, but then run a bit like leagues thereafter? If people like you on HN/2011, you might be invited into HN/2010, then HN/2009, etc. It could also be automatic/karma-based: if you earn enough karma on HN/2011, you start again on HN/2010 with 1 karma point (though…
I think this would just breed resentment, or at worst Lord Of The Flies/Robbers Cave style anarchy. [1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Realistic_con...
When you have two groups that have no reason to not be the same group, the fact that they're separated breeds resentment. When you tell them that there's a criteria they were ranked upon to put them into these groups (in this case, age + karma), they understand. For example, there's no big rivalry between grad students and undergrads; one graduated to become the other.
Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#169I've come to realize in my short time here, that dissenting opinions are dangerous. I've learned to respect the karma gods and pander or, post my opinion and delete it before taking too hard a karma hit. Its sad to see that an informed, but non-conforming opinion is taken as fact and karma-nuked.
Agreed completely.
Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#170In theory, centrally planned things make a lot of sense.
In practice, democracy usually comes to a better solution, even if it is not perfect.
HN is driven by votes, the community is getting what the majority wants right now. The only way to really improve HN is to change or limit the community. You can tweak the rules only to limit certain actions to high-kharma users, but if there is pent up demand for some kind of story it will make its way to the front page.