Turn off karma for users, keep it for new posts, problem solved.
(posts get the karma, not people)
Auto submission bots on Hacker News
131–140 of 172 posts
Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News
#132The bots are doing nothing 'wrong' as such. There are certain feeds from where >90% of the material ends up on HN. If somebody writes a bot to auto-submit items from that feed, it's helping HN be faster in accessing new and (mostly) relevant posts. What is not relevant should (in principle) not reach the home page. The problem is that submission is winner takes all, i.e. first submitter reaps all the upvotes. Also, H…
The bots are doing nothing 'wrong' as such.
Not really... because they just add to the noise on the new page when it isn't something for HN. HN is curated by hand (with votes) for that reason.
Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
" If this is true, then the problem is with the users of the site, not with bots that correctly submit stories garnering upvotes. " But bots do the bidding of humans ;) As well as sheep-like behaviour, we're often also egotistical and care deeply about the tokens that are used to pass judgement on our place in the world; tokens such as karma. I think that there's a lot of content on HN that isn't about interesting id…
As well as sheep-like behaviour, we're often also egotistical and care deeply about the tokens that are used to pass judgement on our place in the world; tokens such as karma. I think you're right, but don't forget the irresistable temptation of playing the game. Imagine you build a box with an LED display that shows a number, let's say 42. On the box are various switches, sliders, levers, knobs, &c. You place the bo…
I think you're correct; we are talking about a game.
But then, success == triumph == a satisfied ego.
I think it's foolish to forget that ultimately ego often fuels people's motivation.
Quite a lot of the time, if ego can be singled out as a motivator - the activity in question probably has dubious value.
Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Definitely not. I just figured that since I submitted this article myself it would be pretty silly to stay out of the comments. Don't take it as a religious thing, I've cut down the time spent on HN by over 90%, I have lots more time to write about other stuff now and I have more time for the people around me. On top of that my out-of-band contacts with HN'ers seem to have only strengthened. Win-win.
So quitting was partly a PR stunt? ;)
I think you are missing the point entirely.
But that's ok.
Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, the hope would be to reduce the signal to noise ratio, so, in the event that something less popular comes up, it should have more time to be seen and appreciated. I would also venture that 'cutting edge' is HN's bailiwick, and therefore, it's really hard to get ahead of the tech curve here.
Ha. Don't tell the guys at Lambda the Ultimate that ;) Incidentally, i submitted a link ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2386915 ) about an hour ago, and after watching it depressingly fall off the first page of the new list, i think i'm giving up on ever submitting a link to HN again. What's so frustrating is that i can identify content that is good, and relevant (the link above is about open data, citizen acce…
> i submitted a link ... about an hour ago, and after
> watching it depressingly fall off the first page of
> the new list, i think i'm giving up on ever submitting
> a link to HN again.
> What's so frustrating is that i can identify content
> that is good, and relevant (the link above is about
> open data, citizen access to data, and information
> management), which are obviously relevant to the
> hacker news community.
That doesn't mean it's of zero interest to everyone. That doesn't mean it should be of zero interest to everyone. It does mean that you are mistaken in your belief that founders and hackers would be interested, if only they'd seen it.
Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
The very best submissions get virtually no discussion. One measurement to make might be the votes divided by comments. Let V = votes Let C = comments Let IT = 1.0 Let R = V/C If R > IT then the article is "worth IT" Let "the paper it's written on" be 0.1. If R But all this is tinkering around the edges, and doesn't feel like it's significant. Perhaps a new model of how a site like this works at all is necessary.
"The very best submissions get virtually no discussion." I'm not sure I agree with you on that. The best stories produce a high volume of high-quality discussion. Your proposed algo punishes submissions that generate discussion, which seems to be the opposite of what's desirable.
I have to agree with RiderOfGiraffes -- an article with a high number of comments relative to points usually indicates that the article is more opinionated than informative, since most everyone who upvoted it posted their personal reaction to it. Although they are popular, I feel these are usually low-value articles and discussions.
Additionally, it's very hard to have a high-quality discussion that is also high-volume. Once an article's comments get over several pages long, you can be sure that most commenters are not reading everything before commenting, so you get a lot of similar comments. Sometimes this is valuable (e.g. "Ask HN"), but most of the time it just worsens the signal-to-noise ratio.
Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ha. Don't tell the guys at Lambda the Ultimate that ;) Incidentally, i submitted a link ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2386915 ) about an hour ago, and after watching it depressingly fall off the first page of the new list, i think i'm giving up on ever submitting a link to HN again. What's so frustrating is that i can identify content that is good, and relevant (the link above is about open data, citizen acce…
> i submitted a link ... about an hour ago, and after > watching it depressingly fall off the first page of > the new list, i think i'm giving up on ever submitting > a link to HN again. > What's so frustrating is that i can identify content > that is good, and relevant (the link above is about > open data, citizen access to data, and information > management), which are obviously relevant to the > hacker news commun…
I appreciate the POV. At the risk of litigating a separate issue, i think you're wrong. Aside from people who care about big data, information gathering and management by the government is a big deal for journalists, people who interact with the government, and ultimately tax payers.
You're going to fall into at least one of those categories, and i think that hackers in particular are going to fall into multiple of those categories (that i happen to know from personal experience).
But if you didn't think it was relevant, then i certainly don't think you're obligated to upvote. :)
Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News
#138There are also user accounts that have been created just to spam HN, eg:
Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News
#139Are there indications that this is a wider spread problem beyond jacquesmattheij.com or the two individuals that have already been caught doing it with his site? One is an anomaly, two independent occurrences is a trend?
Yes, but I can't actually prove those.
Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
> i submitted a link ... about an hour ago, and after > watching it depressingly fall off the first page of > the new list, i think i'm giving up on ever submitting > a link to HN again. > What's so frustrating is that i can identify content > that is good, and relevant (the link above is about > open data, citizen access to data, and information > management), which are obviously relevant to the > hacker news commun…
I appreciate the POV. At the risk of litigating a separate issue, i think you're wrong. Aside from people who care about big data, information gathering and management by the government is a big deal for journalists, people who interact with the government, and ultimately tax payers. You're going to fall into at least one of those categories, and i think that hackers in particular are going to fall into multiple of t…
I think you misunderstand me. What the Government does with your data, and what it doesn't do, is big news, of great interest, to everyone.
And that's my point.
It should be of interest to everyone, and it's got nothing specifically related to being a hacker, being a founder, running a project, or other technical issues that are the point, purpose and focus of this community.
Or once were.
And before someone trots out the "satisfies intellectual curiosity" line from the guidelines let me just say no, it doesn't, and if you think it does then you have a very different concept of "intellectual" from mine.
So I'm not saying it's uninteresting in general, I'm saying it's uninteresting to this community as I understand it ought to be.
And in consequence it's clear that you have a different understanding about with this community ought to be. Maybe I'm now out-of-date, and it's changed into something with which I don't share significant overlap.