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

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#281

Post by RubenvanE » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 11:04 PM UTC

zwarag wrote: post #142

RubenvanE wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! I mainly build it to learn GraphQL and Postgres for myself. But if people are interested, I could share the source in the future.

I'd like to express interest. I really like your take on how to group the information available and think that you design is very pleasant. There is even a movement that thinks building a HN reader is "A spiritual successor to TodoMVC".[1] I don't know if that is of any interest to you but I thought leave that here. [1] https://hnpwa.com/

I will start looking into how to make the code open source before launching the project officially!

Unfortunately I won't be able to submit the project to https://hnpwa.com since they only allow (more or less) direct copies of HackerNews to their directory. [1]

[1] https://github.com/tastejs/hacker-news-pwas

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#282

Post by krapp » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 11:16 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #275

krapp wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just odd and a bit frustrating that there never seems to be enough people to flag certain politically-charged subjects, whereas there is always someone at the ready to flag others, regardless of the relative merit of the discussions being had.

It would be interesting to see links to the highly meritorious politically-charged discussions that were flagged.

Adding the purely subjective qualifier "highly meritorious" makes it seem as if you intend to make me waste my time searching for links only to categorically dismiss them all out of hand. That's a common form of trolling that should be beneath you. Most stories or comment threads here wouldn't meet the bar for "highly meritorious" so there's no reason political stories should as well. Anyway, you should know of some examples since you unflagged them. You mention sometimes doing so here[0].

I found a couple of examples, as well as comments by others who've noticed the same issue. I'm not trawling through the archives to try to make an exhaustive list, though.

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24296079

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24504297

[2]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24667006

[3]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24610890

[4]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22147116

[5]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24291582

[6]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23677740

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#283

Post by winwhiz » Thu, Oct 08, 2020, 11:30 PM UTC

peejfancher wrote: post #240

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…

I've had -3 karma for about 6 years now. Kind of proud of it. My only comment was trying to be helpful with a link but it got downvoted a bit.

That has happened to me.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#284

Post by mncharity » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 12:02 AM UTC

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #280

mncharity wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 am not sure your idea works for my goals. My goal of reading others is to discuss with my "antiself" to quote CS Lewis and the linked OP. I would fall into an echo chamber, amplifying and reinforcing what I already think. That is not good for me. Alternatively if externally I continue to grow and change, depending on the rate of change, the pattern would provide more and more mismatching results. In essence we are…

"Only show me quality comments with which I'm likely to disagree"? Just enable the bubble-buster policy plugin and check the antiself option?

As one grows, one's taste in say book selections changes, so why not in filter patterns and associated readings?

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#285

Post by namelosw » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 1:40 AM UTC

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…

> this is not an HN problem, but a perennial challenge of any large community.

It seems to be many people could agree on this. When a community grows, most of the time old members would start to struggle about the problem.

I wonder, could there be a design where it is a typical community, then when enough old or hardcore members realized this and believe this is no good it would trigger a threshold, they can vote to fork or diverge to a new community? This is a repeatable process, and then there would be multiple communities with different vibes where everyone can enjoy.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#286

Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 2:55 AM UTC

krapp wrote: post #169

m463 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was surprised that trump being hospitalized for covid hadn't been posted and submitted a link, but it was flagged. Puzzled I checkd the FAQ, which led me to the guidelines and there I found the magic: Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's p…

>So politics is mercifully off-topic by design. And yet, in spite of Hacker News' disdain for both politics and repetition, any story about Julian Assange, including daily posts about his hearing, will remain untouched[0]. What's really off topic isn't politics, but politics HN doesn't agree with. [0] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Odds of any given submission or story landing is highly variable and arbitrary.

I land a fair bit of content on the front page, but also submit a lot. Many of my successful items are surprises, much of what I'd like to see take hold doesn't. I'll submit certain ‘beats‘ of interest regularly (different items), hopefully without becoming too polemical. I also scan 'new' upvoting items of interest frequently. I'll nominate items from others for the 2nd chance queue (email the mods).

The Assange story is complex, has always been inherently political, and those politics have dhifted, as has awareness of interactions and consequences. Assange was always controversial. Many who'd once admired his work, and who can point to specific good acts and valuable releases, are also now skeptical of his intentions and connections. Myself among them.

But items concerning him and his case(s) can still be submitted.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#287

Post by AnonsLadder » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 3:13 AM UTC

Personally, I've just come to terms HN is good for tech news. There's always some good people calling out any bullcrap in the comment sections which is wonderful, but when it comes to sharing opinions, it just feels like a karma battle. A similar reason why I ditched Reddit years ago.

I've often shared genuine questions and thoughts before on HN with other accounts and always found myself getting absolutely karma destroyed. It was very discouraging, so now I just really don't bother engaging anymore. This was my same issue on Reddit. I (shamefully) admit I find myself even reading discussions on 4chan where there is no point system, but I see the problems with that: mass trolling

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#288

Post by m463 » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 3:16 AM UTC

krapp wrote: post #169

m463 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was surprised that trump being hospitalized for covid hadn't been posted and submitted a link, but it was flagged. Puzzled I checkd the FAQ, which led me to the guidelines and there I found the magic: Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's p…

>So politics is mercifully off-topic by design. And yet, in spite of Hacker News' disdain for both politics and repetition, any story about Julian Assange, including daily posts about his hearing, will remain untouched[0]. What's really off topic isn't politics, but politics HN doesn't agree with. [0] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

maybe I should have said "TV politics"? I think assange/snowden/etc kinds of stories are more computer politics.

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#289

Post by m463 » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 3:20 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #286

krapp wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So politics is mercifully off-topic by design. And yet, in spite of Hacker News' disdain for both politics and repetition, any story about Julian Assange, including daily posts about his hearing, will remain untouched[0]. What's really off topic isn't politics, but politics HN doesn't agree with. [0] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Odds of any given submission or story landing is highly variable and arbitrary. I land a fair bit of content on the front page, but also submit a lot. Many of my successful items are surprises, much of what I'd like to see take hold doesn't. I'll submit certain ‘beats‘ of interest regularly (different items), hopefully without becoming too polemical. I also scan 'new' upvoting items of interest frequently. I'll nomin…

> highly variable and arbitrary

I think it might be that a few upvotes around submission time might be the deciding factor.

It would be interesting if there was an algorithm that would statistically separate upvotes from "number of eyeballs on the site" somehow.

maybe something like:

- 100 people saw this subject - maybe toward top of page = more likely count as "see" - of that x% upvoted it - make it more visible

Re: Why I stopped reading HN (2010)

#290

Post by onecommentman » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 3:42 AM UTC

gherkinnn wrote: post #15

LeCow wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditto. On Reddit even a percieved differing opinion results in hate mail, insulting and shouting. It's one of the reasons I never signed up to Twitter.

Twitter has to be the worst major platform. It is a rollercoaster of misery, disgust, and annoyance. And there isn’t even a proverbial nugget in the turd to make it worth it.

I read Twitter for one thing: comments during a major disaster, but only for the first 24 hours or so of the event. It’s easy to filter the OMG posts and you get immediate relevant information.