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Ask HN: What's stopping HN going the way of Reddit/Digg/Slashdot?

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Re: Ask HN: What's stopping HN going the way of Reddit/Digg/Slashdot?

#41

Post by astine »

attack wrote: post #38
foulmouthboy wrote: post #22

I read all the answers, and I'm now convinced that there's nothing keeping this site from eventually going down that same path. Death. Taxes. Gentrification.

Yes, the majority of people here just support banning, harsher punishments, and locking out all outsiders. Those are very poor solutions! #1 and #2 cause strong negative backlash. As you would learn from marketing theory, a user that you have personally screwed with will likely cause 20x more damage to your brand than your best users improve it. #3 Locks out a lot of useful expertise. For sure, HN could use a lot mor…

"As you would learn from marketing theory, a user that you have personally screwed with will likely cause 20x more damage to your brand than your best users improve it."

I'd say that a jackass active on the site is more damaging than one banned. If you ban someone, you have only upset one user. If you allow a spammer/troll/flamer/etc to continue unchallenged, you have upset all of them.

The thing with online communities is, this is Web 2.0, your users are your product. The better the users, the better the product. If you have a good community, smart, helpful people will be attracted and will thus improve the community. If you have a bad one, they will be warded off. Scum breeds scum.

Think broken window theory.

Re: Ask HN: What's stopping HN going the way of Reddit/Digg/Slashdot?

#42

Post by kingkongrevenge »

gwc wrote: post #19
pg wrote: post #14

I don't think it's as hard to keep a site from sliding as one might think from the examples of previous sites where things went downhill as they got more popular. Slashdot, Digg, and Reddit were all companies. They wanted to grow. Whereas News.YC is a side project. We don't care about growth. It's much easier to do things to keep up the quality when you're willing to sacrifice growth.

Is it sufficient to simply not target growth as a goal? HN, if I'm not mistaken, has kept a general upward trend in number of users; presumably, this is accompanied by an ever-increasing variance in quality of those users and what they consider to be interesting news and good etiquette. Don't get me wrong; I certainly agree that it is easier to make changes with an eye towards quality when you're not concerned about…

Metafilter simply turned off new user registration for a long time when they didn't like where things were going.

Re: Ask HN: What's stopping HN going the way of Reddit/Digg/Slashdot?

#43

Post by attack »

astine wrote: post #41
attack wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the majority of people here just support banning, harsher punishments, and locking out all outsiders. Those are very poor solutions! #1 and #2 cause strong negative backlash. As you would learn from marketing theory, a user that you have personally screwed with will likely cause 20x more damage to your brand than your best users improve it. #3 Locks out a lot of useful expertise. For sure, HN could use a lot mor…

"As you would learn from marketing theory, a user that you have personally screwed with will likely cause 20x more damage to your brand than your best users improve it." I'd say that a jackass active on the site is more damaging than one banned. If you ban someone, you have only upset one user. If you allow a spammer/troll/flamer/etc to continue unchallenged, you have upset all of them. The thing with online communit…

If that could be achieved then, yes you would be quite correct. However, it is very hard to completely cut people off on the Internet. Furthermore, they can start disparaging you through other mediums (eg blogs) and influence people they still know to be using your site.

Re: Ask HN: What's stopping HN going the way of Reddit/Digg/Slashdot?

#44

Post by astine »

attack wrote: post #43
astine wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As you would learn from marketing theory, a user that you have personally screwed with will likely cause 20x more damage to your brand than your best users improve it." I'd say that a jackass active on the site is more damaging than one banned. If you ban someone, you have only upset one user. If you allow a spammer/troll/flamer/etc to continue unchallenged, you have upset all of them. The thing with online communit…

If that could be achieved then, yes you would be quite correct. However, it is very hard to completely cut people off on the Internet. Furthermore, they can start disparaging you through other mediums (eg blogs) and influence people they still know to be using your site.

So? Thats free publicity. If they something bad about you, all they're doing is informing people of your existence. People will judge for themselves whether you are worth using, usually by checking it out themselves. At least, the kind of people you want on HN will.

The problem isn't with them badmouthing you on your site, it with them polluting your product. If the product sucks, people won't use it, no matter how much you suck up to them.

Re: Ask HN: What's stopping HN going the way of Reddit/Digg/Slashdot?

#45

Post by jcl »

reazalun wrote: post #39

Limit the number of news submission per user in 24 hours. I suggest max 5 news/24 hours. That way, we can guard HN from spammers.

If this were actually a problem, they could circumvent this restriction by simply registering many accounts. A better solution -- as others have pointed out in the past -- would be a karma threshold for posting articles, but since it's not a problem yet, why bother?

Re: Ask HN: What's stopping HN going the way of Reddit/Digg/Slashdot?

#46

Post by jmatt »

Hexstream wrote: post #29
deepster wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as the desire for excellent content outweighs the desire for growth and the users vote down irrelevant stories, then we are good to go.

We can't downvote stories here...

You can when you get a high enough karma.

Re: Ask HN: What's stopping HN going the way of Reddit/Digg/Slashdot?

#47

Post by mixmax »

reazalun wrote: post #39

Limit the number of news submission per user in 24 hours. I suggest max 5 news/24 hours. That way, we can guard HN from spammers.

That would be a bad idea since submissions follow a powerlaw , meaning that the majority come from a relatively low number of users that submit a lot. Check http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=nickb for an example.

Re: Ask HN: What's stopping HN going the way of Reddit/Digg/Slashdot?

#48

Post by jmatt »

boredguy8 wrote: post #11
tstegart wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? there's no karma-whoring incentives? Damn! I totally thought I was going to get to change the color of the toolbar...

And polls! Why else would I post but to reach the HN Nirvana of being able to post polls?

for when that day comes...

http://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll

Re: Ask HN: What's stopping HN going the way of Reddit/Digg/Slashdot?

#50

Post by jmatt »

PieSquared wrote: post #49
jmatt wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can when you get a high enough karma.

Really? What's the number?

I'm not sure. But I have enough karma at 85. I think the number has changed over time, but I'm not sure.

Maybe PG will share it with us or someone has recently hit the magic number?

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