Why I stopped reading HN (2010) • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#241

Post by strokirk » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 4:08 PM UTC

mncharity wrote: post #223

ChefboyOG wrote: post #175

The 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"…

I wonder how the defaults would be chosen on such a platform - especially for visitors that have no profile.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#242

Post by krapp » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

elorant wrote: post #108

benjaminjosephw wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, diversity is incredibly important when we're talking about different kinds of "intellectually curious" people. When diversity means letting in the trolls, the marketers and those less inclined to input constructively, that's when conversations start to degrade and loose value. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to encourage first type of diversity without becoming vulnerable to the second.

That's why we have voting. You start trolling, you're getting the boot.

Only if you're a low-effort and obvious troll, which unfortunately there seem to be plenty of.

However, smart trolls (of which HN also has plenty) learn to adapt to the local culture. HN will often permit trolling as long as it's civil, and the mods won't ban an account that posts frequent troll comments if it also sometimes posts high quality comments.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#243

Post by netcan » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

dash2 wrote: post #111

netcan wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> As a species, we're not fully evolved for big crowds I think we may be starting to overstate the "Dunbar argument." In some sense, including the position in "Sapiens," operating in large groups is the key trait of Homo Sapiens... That which eventually made us unique and allowed us to become what we are. It is in YNH's view what These aren't really opposing views. Large groups are suboptimal. We obviously struggle…

Think there's a missing chunk from this comment :-)

You mean my garbled sentences, or something else?

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#244

Post by sradman » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 4:15 PM UTC

mturmon wrote: post #234

DanBC wrote: post #156

Here's the front page from 10 years ago if people want to compare: https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2010-10-07

OP complains about being drawn to post comments to harvest karma. IIRC, 10 years ago, the comment karma was displayed next to the comment itself. This was removed because it was generating positive vote feedback loops (reinforcing both upvotes and downvotes). I'm not suggesting simple technical fixes can be enough to remove the objections such as OP -- rather, that both a continuous oversight of technical stuff, and…

Another technical fix might be separating Submission karma from Comment karma. I'm guessing that good Comment karma is associated with civility and adherence to community norms. That assumption could be validated by someone with access to the underlying data.

I agree that continuous oversight by quality moderators like dang are probably more important than technical tweaks.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#245

Post by M2Ys4U » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 4:16 PM UTC

karmakaze wrote: post #227

natmaka wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

The IA has an archived copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20160923123125/http://blog.bumbl...

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#246

Post by jerome-jh » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 4:16 PM UTC

I am quite at the opposite of the article author. I see HN as a news aggregator, especially through the excellent hckrnews.com. I do post a few comments, read answers, seldom answer back. I certainly receive enlightening answers and upvote them. I often receive downvotes, and generally ignore the noise. I do not thing it is possible to have a real followed argument on HN and possibly on any open forum on the web.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#247

Post by xab31 » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 4:16 PM UTC

mrfredward wrote: post #226

partingshots wrote: post #220

> 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.

Interesting because in the original post, he declares his resolve to quit HN and declares that he's not visited it in one whole month. "Yeah, right", I thought, and indeed in the intervening 3 years, he came back.

I'd wager most of us have needed a break at some point. I myself have gone through at least 4 accounts since 2006. I periodically "delete" them by setting minaway to 999999999. The act of starting over with a new account with zero fake internet points does help keep their value in perspective, though.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#248

Post by steveklabnik » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 4:22 PM UTC

dfxm12 wrote: post #239

partingshots wrote: post #220

> 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…

Are these the beginning signs of an addiction to fake internet points? Probably. I wonder if karma was hidden from us if it would do something to curb this compulsiveness. Seeing instant feedback, a number going up or down is very stimulating compared to nothing, or even a very broad "over 0/under 0" status as a middle ground.

Fun History Fact: HN used to show the karma of every single comment to every single user! This was changed for exactly this reason.

You can still get the "over/under 0" because posts under zero get progressively grayed out the farther under zero they go.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#249

Post by aaron-santos » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 4:25 PM UTC

partingshots wrote: post #220

> 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…

As someone who recently hunted for karma, it's pretty easy. First you have to decide if you want to slowly amass karma by comments, or try to get lucky by submitting links. Submitting links is easier if you have a source to draw upon. There is a newest links page on a certain crustacean-named website which is a good source for this. If you've been reading HN, then you should have a good idea which articles will appeal to this audience and curating these links (mostly based on the headline) is a 5-10 minute exercise. Think of it as link arbitrage.

Posting comments might be easier if you don't have a source for new links. Again, if you have a pulse on HN, it's not too hard. You don't even have to lie, just slant your take to appeal to the audience. HN loves clever hacks, cynicism, free speech, definite statements. Often times it's better to be a little bit wrong because your comment will attract a lot of rebuttals trying to correct you.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#250

Post by luord » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

HN collects links from sites I couldn't hope to think about. nor could I hope to know they existed (a good example is the site about the searchlights the other day), and also sites that I don't follow because in general I'm not interested in the topic except for the odd article that ends up in first page here. So to me, HN actually has a huge value as a news site.

As for the discussions, I make it a rule not to reply to comments—though sometimes, very rarely, I break it when I think I can truly contribute to the discussion. As for gathering the gist of the conversation, I usually read the three top comments to see what the most commonly agreed perspectives are, and the downvoted comments (with their replies, if any) to see what has caused dissent. It has worked for me so far in getting different perspectives of almost every article.