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Auto submission bots on Hacker News

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Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#161

Post by derefr »

jcl wrote: post #136
redthrowaway wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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-volu…

Maybe we just need a semantic distinction between editorials (opinion pieces) and articles (investigative/fact-laden pieces)? Perhaps make editorials count for less, in the same way self-posts currently do?

Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#162

Post by jwb119 »

RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #102
Tycho wrote: post #51

It kind if seems like a false alarm if one of the botters was just RiderOfGiraffes (whose motives I don't suspect), and there was only one other person, possibly equally innocent. One would hope nobody here is irrational enough to seek 'easy/automatic' karma ... I mean the nice thing about karma for submissions is it's basically a whole lot of smart people saying 'well done for finding this, it's definitely valuable.…

> the nice thing about karma for submissions is it's > basically a whole lot of smart people saying 'well > done for finding this, it's definitely valuable.' That doesn't really seem to be the case any more. There's a lot of stuff coming up on the Front Page now that I, personally, think is not valuable at all. It's not spam, so I feel disinclined to flag it, but I can't downvote it either. I think there are a lot of…

> People are upvoting things not because they are valuable, but because they are entertaining.

That's the biggest change I've noticed as well, and I would expand your observation to cover comments too. it seems like jokes get upvoted significantly more often now than they did a year or two ago.

Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#163

Post by knowtheory »

rhizome wrote: post #149
knowtheory wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

information gathering and management by the government is a big deal for journalists, people who interact with the government, and ultimately tax payers I think you're getting into a long-deplored mailing-list tendency for people to ascribe general attributes to their community based on personal preference. "I like ice-cream, lots of other people probably like ice cream, so it's a good post for HN." Journalistic feat…

Actually, i typically err far on the other side. There are many pieces of information that i read hours or days before they appear here or in other social media aggregators, and that has lead me to the impression that i should be contributing more.

Additionally, i do feel that i have some sense of the hacker news demographic having both been a part of it, and watching the sort of content that does generate discussion.

So i'm cognizant of the problem, and i'd like to think that gives me at least some ability to compensate from the bias.

Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#164

Post by knowtheory »

RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #140
knowtheory wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ou…

Well, i note that we joined hacker news within 40 days of each other. Given that, i'd hazard to say we at least have some similar sense of what the community is (although obviously there's an element of self selection in terms of what we read and contribute to).

At the same time, if you don't find the generalist argument persuasive, i'd fall back on the point i skipped previously, which is that this is of direct interest to data geeks. One of the major information brokers, which is interesting both as an individual instance, and as a representative of all large information brokers is fundamentally broken internally.

This is a data processing and scaling issue laid out in a way that should make us ask what's wrong, and what it is that can be done to fix these sorts of problems.

Put more succinctly, this is a problem in our domain.

Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#165

Post by knowtheory »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #158
knowtheory wrote: post #101

Earlier 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…

Please keep submitting. Honestly, what does well on the HN is stuff that grabs people. There are two ways to do that: 1) Match peoples' interests 2) Write really really well So, you can either submit articles like "BubbleTwit (YC '08) gets $14B in funding, announces Natalie Portman is new CEO" or you can just keep writing and writing and writing until you get really good. I'm mostly suggesting this because it's what…

Erik,

credit where credit's due, i didn't author the original piece, and there are several things i would change about it if i had.

But yeah. i should blog more too :P But self promotion is frowned upon at HN.

Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#166

Post by qeorge »

redthrowaway wrote: post #52
RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #46

Earlier 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.

FWIW, here is HN sorted by votes/comments, with a minimum threshold like RoG suggests:

http://www.upthread.com/

I made it for myself. I'm sure it misses some good stuff, but what does make it is almost always top-notch.

Note: there's a hidden span after the links with the score if you're curious. I have it hidden because it can be distracting.

Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#168

Post by piramida »

Always surprised me how advanced humans pretend to be and how simple-minded they actually appear en masse, with this race to "get my integer number higher" which is a basis of most social algorithms.

Really people? That is the only way to stand out from the crowd? An integer? :)

Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#169

Post by uxp »

robryan wrote: post #157
_pius wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't really contributed anything valuable, since good articles tend to find their way here on their own. Most people submit articles in some part because they receive karma points for interesting submissions. It's not just by magic that good articles "tend to find their way here."

The good articles arent the issue though, maybe we need some sort of penalty on bad articles that would prevent people posting anything and everything hoping at least something will catch on.

I'm not much one for game theory, but this just came to mind.

Maybe we shouldn't penalize articles that don't gain attention, but it should have a determined negative score in the back end, while displaying 0 or 1 to users on the front end. The initial score could be calculated somehow through the karma (or possibly comment karma average) of the submitter and length of time the submitter has been a member of HN.

When a newer, but established, user submits an article, it could need up to 15 upvotes before it actually starts gaining the user karma/points, for example. The score could then start to adjust to it's actual total as it becomes more active.

My only issue with actually penalizing articles that don't get attention is because some articles may be submitted a few times over the course of a day from different sources, yet the later submitted ones in what I have unscientifically observed seem to be the most active. The actual information in the article is completely relevant, but due to whatever probabilistic cause, they just don't get noticed. I don't think it's "right" to penalize a submitter because no one else was on the ball, so to speak.

Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#170

Post by robryan »

uxp wrote: post #169
robryan wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good articles arent the issue though, maybe we need some sort of penalty on bad articles that would prevent people posting anything and everything hoping at least something will catch on.

I'm not much one for game theory, but this just came to mind. Maybe we shouldn't penalize articles that don't gain attention, but it should have a determined negative score in the back end, while displaying 0 or 1 to users on the front end. The initial score could be calculated somehow through the karma (or possibly comment karma average) of the submitter and length of time the submitter has been a member of HN. When…

Your right, maybe it has to be about average score. People are going to submit good stuff that doesn't catch on. The only real behavior your trying to avoid is people submitting regardless of quality.
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