This applies surprisingly well to Twitter and most of online communities I met. The logner and less elitist they are the more the conversation quality deteriorates, it is after all a sign of popularization or vulgarization, which ironically both words used to mean the same but nowadays the last one is definetely pejorative.
Why I stopped reading HN (2010)
221–230 of 302 posts
Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)
#222> It’s gotten to the point now where I sometimes think about writing a comment to “send it out to gain karma” in the same way that I think about “sending off a unit to collect resources” in an RTS. This was an extraordinarily poignant quote that I empathize with greatly. The only reason I’m sharing it as a comment is because I believe that I can now also gain some karma with it as well. What does this mean? Are these…
This is why I think the future is actually in smaller action-based forums. Like, if you want to achieve something, you would join a group based on that goal, and it would not be structured around posts/news, it would instead be structured in a way that would break down the goal into finer and finer chunks, that people could collaborate on and actually submit/assign/judge tasks to perform.
All this karma circlejerking is getting boring. Nothing gets done.
Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)
#223The fact that this was posted ten years ago underscores that this is not an HN problem, but a perennial challenge of any large community. I don't think most people grok exactly how difficult moderation is, and how that difficulty doesn't just scale, but rather evolves fundamentally as a community grows. Moderating a smaller community is sort of like setting a certain tone within your group of friends and figuring out…
Why isn't there a greater emphasis on filtering controlled by readers?
"Don't show me anything said by someone who joined after I did". "Show only pairs with historical ratings above this threshold from raters in the weighted set generated by crawling thusly from this seed set." "Prioritize anything on topic X which multiple people from this set like." At 8am: "Don't show me anything this classifier thinks is a pun"; 8pm: "Show me puns, please". "Show me anything the author thinks is good, if their self-evaluation rating on the topic meets the following criteria." "Don't show me anything dang rates as not meeting criteria X".
Even USENET 30 years ago had people sharing kill files (don't show me comments whose headers match [patterns]). They weren't sufficient to check eternal September, but we can do better now. It seems like there's a rich design space available here that we've not been exploring. What am I missing?
Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)
#224These sentiments are quite familiar to me. That's why I've been building my own HN copy ( https://hackerdaily.io ). It shows all posts per day, which has a few benefits: 1. It doesn't become an addictive slot machine that updates every minute. 2. The conversations have already happened, which makes it easier to see which threads are interesting and informative and which are not. It also uses an outline.com like style…
Great job! It really fits the way I consume HN which is just once per day usually. I like the outline.com article style, and also discovered outline.com in the process. I am not a huge fan of the layout for the comments, it feels a bit too big for me and a bit hard to follow along, as it switches between authors and so on, but that might just be a personal preference. You should probably consider making it open-sourc…
I use this one... https://hckrnews.com/
Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)
#225> It’s gotten to the point now where I sometimes think about writing a comment to “send it out to gain karma” in the same way that I think about “sending off a unit to collect resources” in an RTS. This was an extraordinarily poignant quote that I empathize with greatly. The only reason I’m sharing it as a comment is because I believe that I can now also gain some karma with it as well. What does this mean? Are these…
This is why I think the future is actually in smaller action-based forums. Like, if you want to achieve something, you would join a group based on that goal, and it would not be structured around posts/news, it would instead be structured in a way that would break down the goal into finer and finer chunks, that people could collaborate on and actually submit/assign/judge tasks to perform. All this karma circlejerking…
Totally agree. We could even give it a name, like Usenet or sth?
Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)
#226> It’s gotten to the point now where I sometimes think about writing a comment to “send it out to gain karma” in the same way that I think about “sending off a unit to collect resources” in an RTS. This was an extraordinarily poignant quote that I empathize with greatly. The only reason I’m sharing it as a comment is because I believe that I can now also gain some karma with it as well. What does this mean? Are these…
The same author has a post from 2013 (3 years after "Why I stopped reading HN") addressing what is lost when programmers chase internet points.
https://sealedabstract.com/rants/hey-programmers-we-need-to-...
It resonates with me because I often find myself scrolling HN when I was meaning to be working on a project, both at work and at home.
Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it is expectations failure "the more the merrier" is not the case. Having tight 10 person group is so much better than having 100 people group. You probably don't want to get new ideas directly from 100 of sources but new ideas filtered trough trusted people. From time to time it is good to get someone new and give it a shot, but most of the time it is better to stick to known group. Unless your group is abou…
The Evaporative Cooling Effect hits hard. https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2015/10/14/the-evaporativ... ... and, more generally, "Wherever something is wrong, something is too big" (L. Kohr).
The link referenced there is 404. http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/social-software-sundays-2-the-...
Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)
#228> It’s gotten to the point now where I sometimes think about writing a comment to “send it out to gain karma” in the same way that I think about “sending off a unit to collect resources” in an RTS. This was an extraordinarily poignant quote that I empathize with greatly. The only reason I’m sharing it as a comment is because I believe that I can now also gain some karma with it as well. What does this mean? Are these…
I gave you an upvote.
I think it’s dangerous to make comments just for karma. Then you will be less likely to take risks.
Karma is nice to have for me. If I post something, and see my karma go up by 10 points, I think “oh that’s nice”, but I don’t then go to “how do I get 20 the next time”? Likewise if it goes down 10 points, I think “wow some people didn’t like my comment, oh well”. In the end my karma is generally trending up, which I take to mean I’m generally adding more than I’m detracting. If it was generally trending down, I might consider if I’m coming across wrong / being misunderstood , or maybe something is wrong with the people here!
Also if you want more karma, just repost old posts that got a lot of votes, like the OP did :D. Likely to at least some votes esp if still relevant.
Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)
#229One thing from diving into the code of early release of HN (it was running on racket) seems there are quite bit gatekeeper, and the people who has the power to downvote. That seems like an issue of top of the head.
Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)
#230The fact that this was posted ten years ago underscores that this is not an HN problem, but a perennial challenge of any large community. I don't think most people grok exactly how difficult moderation is, and how that difficulty doesn't just scale, but rather evolves fundamentally as a community grows. Moderating a smaller community is sort of like setting a certain tone within your group of friends and figuring out…
Why isn't there a greater emphasis on filtering controlled by readers ? "Don't show me anything said by someone who joined after I did". "Show only pairs with historical ratings above this threshold from raters in the weighted set generated by crawling thusly from this seed set." "Prioritize anything on topic X which multiple people from this set like." At 8am: "Don't show me anything this classifier thinks is a pun"…
Perhaps something like the Nest thermostat approach might be best: have something that learns your preferences based on time, day of the week, and other factors. Maybe it attempts to see what kind of mood you're in?