Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN? • Hacker News Board

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

#351

Post by tlrobinson » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 10:43 PM UTC

SandB0x wrote: post #62

pg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do like that idea. I think I tried it a while ago, but users complained that without comment scores it was too hard to figure out what were the most interesting comments in a thread. Is there some other way to show what the most interesting comments in a thread are? How about if I displayed the point totals for subtrees, but not for individual leaves? Would it solve the problem if you could follow other users, and…

You could show a simplified indicator of Great Comment, Good Comment or Bad Comment (or a similar set of values) so that users can skim a thread effectively. It's hardly a model community, but I think Engadget used to have a system like this.

This is basically an extension of limiting the display of negative votes to -4. I like it.

Perhaps there should be a "best comment in thread" indicator or something as well?

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

#352

Post by jp » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 10:44 PM UTC

Display percentages instead of points relative to sub-tree total. This way points are hidden but relevance stays intact. Then use colors instead of numbers to indicate "good" sub-trees so that people have to convert hexadecimal values to extract the relative karma. Then add a hidden karma-boost mode where a up-voting "short term good commenter" indicates the presence of another "short term good commenter". Add another view called "contested" where down voted links can get a second chance. This might reduce group-think and content-shaping. Let "short term good commenter" double vote on contested links. Add a content merge option to reduce or group duplicates.

I think people are mean because they get down voted a lot by people who "play" HN like WOW and everyone non-omg-erlang is a target. And lots of people here think KARMA == FREE TRAFFIC SPELL. Because spending most of your life on HN showcases how busy you are making money. Although.. nobody will ever read this comment because the thread is already two hours old and the in-crowd has already started writing meta posts that will take over the front page two hours from now.

Or maybe this is all about.. hello TechCrunch readers !

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

#353

Post by bmelton » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 10:44 PM UTC

Tycho wrote: post #285

bmelton wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Forgive me, I didn't mean to imply that your suggestion doesn't have merit. It does.

I just think that it's far too easy to game.

Another big issue with comment quality, of course, is in the general vagueness of it all. Jokes, for example, are almost always discouraged. Almost. On some occasions, it's quite appropriate.

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

#354

Post by anthonyb » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 10:44 PM UTC

The main issue seems to be that comment quality is decreasing, so you could always try my honeypot idea: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2352247 :)

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

#355

Post by trobertson » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 10:45 PM UTC

SandB0x wrote: post #141

chc wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kind of a "my amp goes up to 11" kind of thing, isn't it? You're just changing the label for "no votes either way."

No, it assigns a cost of 2 points to commenting.

The problem with this is new users. When you join the site, you have 0 karma, and so would go negative if you posted a comment (assuming, of course, that you can go negative. I'd rather not experiment with that).

Of course, pg could make new users come in with 10 or so karma, just to get them started.

Now that I think a bit more about it, this could be a really good idea. It would limit new user's ability to comment and influence things until they have gained community approval of their comments and thoughts. And if they don't get that approval... too bad. If they aren't adding anything worthy of some upvotes, they are adding noise, which detracts from the experience of everyone else.

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

#356

Post by Jarred » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 10:46 PM UTC

I'm fairly new here, but I've been in a lot of different internet communities for several years now. This seems to happen to every major growing internet community and maybe this is a way to both filter out the bad content and encourage the good content.

What if user's had the option of investing karma into a submission/comment? If a user wants to comment or send a submission then they have to spend some of their karma points in order for other people to see it. This would bring the submission/comment more default points but would be negative points toward the submitter. That means it will appear higher on the page dependent on the amount of points they invest in the post. When/if a submitter's post is upvoted enough to pass the amount he invested, the submitter would gain karma.

I think this would work better because right now people can basically post what they want without worrying about their karma going down very much. This would do two things, firstly it would reduce the karma inflation, and secondly it would encourage higher-quality submissions and discussions.

I originally said this here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403085, but I think this would be a better place to say it.

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

#357

Post by codingthewheel » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 10:49 PM UTC

pg wrote: post #172

b_emery wrote: post #155

3 words: Bayesian Comment Filter. Just does the opposite of what the spam filter does. Use the corpus of great comments from the past to find great comments of the present. I'm only half joking. Fundamentally, the thread is about a filtering system.

That could work, actually. Instead of focusing on discouraging bad comments, maybe the answer is to promote good ones. Plus I have some code I could use for that.

Paul, could you please delete this account when you get a chance? Thanks.

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

#358

Post by staunch » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 10:50 PM UTC

Plenty of good suggestions here. I just want to add one thing: I've been here since the very early days and still think the site is great.

Yeah, it's become a much bigger community and there are more of every kind of post (good/bad/ugly). Overall it's still a great site and it has been successfully maintained.

So please do tighten things up some, but avoid any drastic change for now. The system is working pretty damn well.

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

#359

Post by RiderOfGiraffes » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 10:51 PM UTC

A final thought: If you don't discriminate between the actions of the vast majority, and the actions of those identified as being aligned with your desired intentions for the site, nothing will work. I can probably "prove" that.

I think any solution will require the identification of individuals whose actions are "more trustworthy," and giving them greater weight, or more powers.

Anything else can and will be swamped by the majority, whose intentions you have no control over, and no reason to trust.

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

#360

Post by hugh3 » Sun, Apr 03, 2011, 10:52 PM UTC

jeromec wrote: post #335

Tycho wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there is something unsavoury about that sort of elitist/privilige system I think. Perhaps, however, the word-count restriction could apply only to the 'top-nodes' of the comment threads, ie. if you're replying to the submission itself. That way, things are started off on the right foot, and snidey one-liners never get upvoted to the top of the whole thread.

I know what you mean, but is it really elitist if it's only a time requirement? It's like admission to a club, anyone can get in but everyone past the current site size pays their dues (in this case by sticking around). If the goal of the site is to not die from popularity, this may be understandably necessary. On your other point, I'm thinking that short unwanted quips can rear their ugly head anywhere along threads…

The thing about elite prestigious clubs is that a large portion of the discussion and activity inside the club turns out to be about membership -- who wants it, to whom we should give it, who is unworthy of it, how worthiness should be decided, and how awesome we folks inside the club are compared to all those folks who aren't inside the club.

(Or at least, that's what I assume it's like -- I don't know, I've never been invited into any elite prestigious clubs...)

Even if you say "Oh, it's just a time requirement", what are you gonna do if Big Name Smart Person shows up wanting to comment? Surely you're going to let them in. So now you have an elite line and an unwashed line and you're arguing about who should be in the elite line.