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Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

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Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#281

Post by joshfraser »

goodside wrote: post #152
pg wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately I know that won't work because I've already tried that experiment. For about a year I've been annotating such comments, but when I analyzed who upvoted them, the upvotes were very broadly distributed.

Would it be possible to make public a data set of heavily up-voted comments that suck and challenge the community to come up with algorithms that can predict whether a given popular comment sucks or not? I'd think you could get a fair amount of mileage just by measuring frequencies of certain technical noun phrases. I paused for a second at the privacy implications of this, but honestly all comments are submitted her…

Even the best of us have been tempted to toss out a snarky comment or mean response from time to time. There are comments I've made that I wouldn't have posted if I had been challenged to improve it before posting. Since there seems to be a correlation between one sentence comments and snark, perhaps a "Are you sure you want to post that?" prompt would help for short comments. Maybe show the same prompt for comments that contain certain words?

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#282

Post by Alex3917 »

randall wrote: post #97
geuis wrote: post #31

Make voting on comments cost karma. Alternately, make new story submission require at least 100 minimum karma level. I suspect the effect here would be to reduce the number of frivolous and spammy submissions. When more high quality submissions are the topics of conversation, the quality of comments will go up.

Slippery slope... I think Digg is the ultimate example of where the "elder statesmen" become the only people that matter. Anyone who's smart should be able to contribute w/o passing some sort of exclusionary bar.

"Anyone who's smart should be able to contribute w/o passing some sort of exclusionary bar."

The difference is that to get even one or two stories a week on the front page of Digg, you basically had to devote your entire life to the site. Whereas getting 100 karma doesn't take more than a couple weeks of casual use.

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#283

Post by solipsist »

The problem lies within the deeply nested threads that continuously go back and forth between a few select people. Most of the mean/dumb comments on the first level thread are downvoted or flagged and moved to the bottom. This makes it easy to read the high quality comments - just look at the top.

The problem occurs when you start reading into a nested thread of comments. Users will sometimes argue 4 or 5 times back and forth, often becoming mean and uncivil. What results is a somewhat personal discussion among a few people that doesn't fit in with the rest of the thread. While the quality may actually increase the deeper you go into a thread, the relevancy to the original thread decreases (which matters most).

I think that this behavior is what is hurting HN's overall quality. Uncivil and deeply nested threads like these are hard to keep track of and deeply get out of control.

The solution:

  - hide deeply nested threads (greater than 3 or 4 comments deep) and
    let the users choose to show them

  - promote commenting in higher threads (this will come as a result 
    of hiding deeply nested threads) 

  - hide or lessen the visibility of threads consisting of comments
    from only 2 or 3 people

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#284

Post by Daniel14 »

tptacek wrote: post #25
scythe wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politics, I'm definitely with you. "Current events", though, is an extremely broad term -- what exactly did you intend it to mean?

The guidelines currently say "if they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off topic". The predicate should be clarified, and the word "probably" removed.

Wouldn't that ban a lot of tech companies' current actions? Ie, isn't everything happening now in Silicon Valley etc a current event?

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#285

Post by Tycho »

bmelton wrote: post #275
Tycho wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, you just gave me a great idea (I think). The problem is mainly snide remarks, right? So make it impossible to make snide remakrs. How? Minimum comment length of ~50 words. This would A) get rid of casual snideyness, as those sorts of people wouldn't put in the effort to formulate a longer post; B) discourage crowd-pleasing one liners, which while enjoyable have a long term negative effect; C) still allow jo…

Short and snide are by no means mutually exclusive. I can spend all day writing a post that has no substance, garners upvotes (in today's HN climate) and is as long as the day, but that doesn't make it good, or worthwhile. Many of my short remarks are actually more to the point, or are asking a relevant question, or are politely correcting errors. It takes considerably fewer words to do this sort of thing than it doe…

Valid points, but I think for any worthwhile comment it's easy to 'extend' the content beyond a single line. For instance, if you're asking a sincere question, you could provide some hypothetical answers, or state your reasons for asking - basically increase the level of mutual comprehension in the entire discourse.

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#287

Post by dolinsky »

Tycho wrote: post #238
strlen wrote: post #104

Cap the score that is displayed with a comment e.g., past 10 points, just display "10+". Don't display karma and average scores of users, again, past a certain point: this prevents (subconscious) game incentives which lead to e.g., posting comments that say something stupid or mean but which tend to agree with general tendencies of the site. For example, I can post a comment decrying Blub with a snide remark (e.g., "…

Actually, you just gave me a great idea (I think). The problem is mainly snide remarks, right? So make it impossible to make snide remakrs. How? Minimum comment length of ~50 words. This would A) get rid of casual snideyness, as those sorts of people wouldn't put in the effort to formulate a longer post; B) discourage crowd-pleasing one liners, which while enjoyable have a long term negative effect; C) still allow jo…

I downvoted you because I have found this to not be the case in practice, and I find that setting some minimal comment length is not correlated to increasing the quality of submission. Casual snideness will still occur, and one-liners are not a problem in and of themselves. The context of that one-liner is, and a minimum comment length should not considered a judge of quality or context.

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#288

Post by oswiego »

euroclydon wrote: post #63

When tptacek flags a front page article (and tells us he did), I can't think of a single time I have disagreed with him. Yet, the story usually remains, for hours or indefinitely. So, find more people like tptacek, and give their flags more weight. In other words: Moderators who enforce the spirit of HN and have the ability to just kill stuff. I'm really surprised this isn't happening already. If I go post some derog…

Strong moderation is the key to a successful online community. The number of high quality users on HN, it should not be difficult to find a few that would be willing to do a good job of strong moderation.

a group benevolent dictators is needed

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#289

Post by jeromec »

tptacek wrote: post #273
Tycho wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, you just gave me a great idea (I think). The problem is mainly snide remarks, right? So make it impossible to make snide remakrs. How? Minimum comment length of ~50 words. This would A) get rid of casual snideyness, as those sorts of people wouldn't put in the effort to formulate a longer post; B) discourage crowd-pleasing one liners, which while enjoyable have a long term negative effect; C) still allow jo…

You just banned 10 out of 12 of the 'pg comments on this thread. :)

I was thinking the same thing which is why I didn't mention the length idea. However... what if users over say 1 year and with a high comment average were exempted?

To add to that, lionhearted posted a comment about inevitable site decline because of open membership and equally weighted voting. What if only accounts over 1 year could vote (or diminish their vote weight)?

Wouldn't instituting a min. length requirement and taking away new user voting improve the problem significantly?

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