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I think this part of the post answers your question. > Will I ever publicly write about how HN ranks posts if I am Dang (HN moderator)? No, because Pagerank can be manipulated by people despite its reputation. In fact, Pagerank is being exploited for years. Moreover, there are financial incentives for companies to get on the first page in HN.
With 100% certainty dang ("Dang") read this comment.
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If it works, don't fix it. You'll most likely break it.
Is it working? Post ranking works pretty well, but as far as discussions go I often see insightful responses sent into low-contrast oblivion whilst a glib comment or quip gets accolades.
In my experience, HN seems okay for reading and participating in meaningful discussion. Comments that don't contribute or are inappropriate don't stay in sight for long (possibly due to the community upholding the guidelines), whereas useful discussions and references to projects tend to stay towards the top. I don't always agree with what sits at the top, but if nothing else it's civilized and reasoned.
In some respects HN has the typical issue of most attention focusing on the first page posts and most discussion being in one or two top level comments, but that's just how people engage with the content, short of randomization there's no way around that. There will always be a top comment and everything else will receive slightly more lukewarm reception and activity.
Where I have more trouble with is with comment-ranking within an article. The interface makes it hard to understand conversational flow, and of course that flow changes over time according to whatever the algorithm does. This makes it very hard to catch up later on an article’s comments and get a view of what has changed since my last view. Maybe there is a way to do this via the interface, but if so it’s not obvious.
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I think product management across the industry needs to take this more seriously. In my personal experience, YouTube and Windows 11 are some recent examples of usability degradation due to unnecessary changes.
I would argue they are taking it seriously, just not in the way most of us would like.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it works, don't fix it. You'll most likely break it.
Is it working? Post ranking works pretty well, but as far as discussions go I often see insightful responses sent into low-contrast oblivion whilst a glib comment or quip gets accolades.
1. There seems to be a group of people that abuse the flag button to get stories downvoted. You notice this when highly upvoted stories with a lot of points suddenly drop from the top and fall quickly beyond older stories with many fewer votes. For instance, there seems to be a group that was mass flagging submissions about Rob Lee's recent death until one was made that didn't mention his cause of death and explicitly forbid discussion of it in the comments.
2. Partly because of #1, you can have a topic with a lot of votes at the top of the page suddenly drop to page 5 and disappear within a very short amount of time. This significantly lowers the incentive to spend any time writing a thoughtful response or researching useful information, because even spending 20-30 minutes on a response might mean that no one is going to see what you wrote.
I don't understand this blog post. The authors says that HN is great for discussions. Then they go on to suggest a different ranking algorithm? Why? To answer the authors question: I would change absolutely nothing about HN. It's great for discussions as is. Edit: I suppose there is some insinuation that HN doesn't really use the original algorithm, and this is the author's attempt to reconstruct what's going on. Is…
Yes, this is just a thought experiment, and the ranking algorithm is based on discussions. > Given that discussions are my favorite part, why don't we apply PageRank for every user based on the upvotes they receive for the comments they leave on any post, and replace the P (points) value in the current version of the HN algorithm?
Because that would lead to absolutely terrible longterm outcomes due to obvious reasons.
I think the article ranking is probably good enough. Where I have more trouble with is with comment-ranking within an article. The interface makes it hard to understand conversational flow, and of course that flow changes over time according to whatever the algorithm does. This makes it very hard to catch up later on an article’s comments and get a view of what has changed since my last view. Maybe there is a way to…
I think the article ranking is probably good enough. Where I have more trouble with is with comment-ranking within an article. The interface makes it hard to understand conversational flow, and of course that flow changes over time according to whatever the algorithm does. This makes it very hard to catch up later on an article’s comments and get a view of what has changed since my last view. Maybe there is a way to…
I don’t know the status of it, but it seemed like an interesting idea.
I think the article ranking is probably good enough. Where I have more trouble with is with comment-ranking within an article. The interface makes it hard to understand conversational flow, and of course that flow changes over time according to whatever the algorithm does. This makes it very hard to catch up later on an article’s comments and get a view of what has changed since my last view. Maybe there is a way to…
My biggest complaint related to this is that all threads are dead within 24 hours, which kills a lot of interesting discussion. And commenters have no incentive to reply to dead threads.
This discourages in depth back and forth conversation which I usually find is the most interesting.
> I can't find the official page on why Paul Graham created HN, but to me, HN is the place to find the most interesting links and have a healthy discussion about various topics. In fact, discussions are my favorite part, except for the useless comments. Is there an official reason? I’ve wondered this as well and sort of assumed it was because hackers like having some community aspect and are novelty-seeking so YC cre…
> Initially called Startup News or occasionally News.YC.
HN exists to serve the interests of YC. It’s a marketing/advertising tool. It’s great to believe that it’s a community, a place where interesting conversations happen, etc. (and those things may also be true) but remember what it is at its core.