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Is Apple Building A Search Engine?

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Re: Is Apple Building A Search Engine?

#21

Post by allenbrunson »

sundeep wrote: post #20
unalone wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News has banned other URLs before, from what I know, largely based around the theme of "stories here are irrelevant/infactual/not hacker news." Valleywag was. TinyURL is. I think TechCrunch is similarly useless as a news source.

i dont really understand the point of a blanket ban on articles from a website. assuming the system isn't getting "played",aren't the articles that members deem interesting supposed rise to the top? So why a ban ? (if this discussion has already been had elsewhere,please point me to it)

pg and the editors hold the reins pretty tight around here. they have much more influence than the average reader. if a site tends to run nothing but articles that run counter to what's expected around here, it gets banned.

that sounds critical, but it's not. i agree completely with his decision. if this site were run as a democracy, it would eventually devolve into uselessness, as has every other site before it.

Re: Is Apple Building A Search Engine?

#22

Post by Raphael »

sundeep wrote: post #20
unalone wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News has banned other URLs before, from what I know, largely based around the theme of "stories here are irrelevant/infactual/not hacker news." Valleywag was. TinyURL is. I think TechCrunch is similarly useless as a news source.

i dont really understand the point of a blanket ban on articles from a website. assuming the system isn't getting "played",aren't the articles that members deem interesting supposed rise to the top? So why a ban ? (if this discussion has already been had elsewhere,please point me to it)

Maybe if there were a downward vote, people who dislike Techcrunch submissions could send them further down the page.

Re: Is Apple Building A Search Engine?

#23

Post by unalone »

allenbrunson wrote: post #21
sundeep wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i dont really understand the point of a blanket ban on articles from a website. assuming the system isn't getting "played",aren't the articles that members deem interesting supposed rise to the top? So why a ban ? (if this discussion has already been had elsewhere,please point me to it)

pg and the editors hold the reins pretty tight around here. they have much more influence than the average reader. if a site tends to run nothing but articles that run counter to what's expected around here, it gets banned. that sounds critical, but it's not. i agree completely with his decision. if this site were run as a democracy, it would eventually devolve into uselessness, as has every other site before it.

Yeah. HN is the first "social news" site I've been on with a strong editorial staff and with restrictions on users below certain levels of Karma. And I'd suspect that that's one of the things that keeps it at the level it's at.

The problem with democracy is that it is incredibly open to the possibility of quality and focus loss. Hacker News fixes those problems. And I'd argue that losing TechCrunch might be a good move.

Re: Is Apple Building A Search Engine?

#24

Post by jamongkad »

centuren wrote: post #18
unalone wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep! No question mark there. I'm still surprised HN hasn't banned TechCrunch stories. When they do have a good story, usually somebody else has the story as well. And TechCrunch attracts a lot of spam.

I've imposed my own ban on TechCrunch, with the BlockSite extension for Firefox ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3145 ). I actually installed it specifically to prevent getting lured to TechCrunch articles from sites like HN where I'm just looking at headlines. It's the only site I have listed, and the links show up as visited and unclickable, saving me wasting precious minutes everyday.

I use LeechBlock for FF, It's more comprehensive than BlockSite.

Re: Is Apple Building A Search Engine?

#26

Post by sundeep »

unalone wrote: post #23
allenbrunson wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pg and the editors hold the reins pretty tight around here. they have much more influence than the average reader. if a site tends to run nothing but articles that run counter to what's expected around here, it gets banned. that sounds critical, but it's not. i agree completely with his decision. if this site were run as a democracy, it would eventually devolve into uselessness, as has every other site before it.

Yeah. HN is the first "social news" site I've been on with a strong editorial staff and with restrictions on users below certain levels of Karma. And I'd suspect that that's one of the things that keeps it at the level it's at. The problem with democracy is that it is incredibly open to the possibility of quality and focus loss. Hacker News fixes those problems. And I'd argue that losing TechCrunch might be a good mo…

fair enough ..

Re: Is Apple Building A Search Engine?

#27

Post by sherl0ck »

jamongkad wrote: post #24
centuren wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've imposed my own ban on TechCrunch, with the BlockSite extension for Firefox ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3145 ). I actually installed it specifically to prevent getting lured to TechCrunch articles from sites like HN where I'm just looking at headlines. It's the only site I have listed, and the links show up as visited and unclickable, saving me wasting precious minutes everyday.

I use LeechBlock for FF, It's more comprehensive than BlockSite.

I use LeechBlock too, but It doesn't work perfectly in firefox+ubuntu, if I close the browser it loose all the previous setting. I have to import it again.

kind bit pain, but it works for me

Re: Is Apple Building A Search Engine?

#28

Post by mnemonik »

justindz wrote: post #16
mnemonik wrote: post #11

More visual way of searching, huh? Reminds me of that failure that was Cuil...

I used a lot of visualized search engine technologies being pitched by different research groups or startups in my last job. They were all pretty (well, okay, they were 50 footers) but they all had the same problem: horribly inefficient as search engines. Which is, you know, what they were supposed to be.

Horribly inefficient is still better than presenting porn in unrelated searches while safe mode is on.

Re: Is Apple Building A Search Engine?

#29

Post by ntoshev »

unalone wrote: post #17
Hexstream wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. We get it. We've read that kind of message hundreds of times. We know the reddit/digg/slashdot decline cautionary tale. It's enough. Just stop. No more. No more!

Of course we know it. But that doesn't stop it from happening. Sorry, I'm a bit of a worrywart. In the last week or so things seem to have noticeably declined. :-/ EDIT: Am I really harping on it that much? I didn't think I was. I'll try and tone it down a bit.

You are right - I thought the article is useless and the discussion is also useless as there is nothing to discuss but techcrunch/news.yc going downhill etc etc.

As there was nothing to dilute I posted the "No" comment just to see what will happen with it. Reflexive voting happened, but not too much (for the quality of the story and discussion).

Re: Is Apple Building A Search Engine?

#30

Post by 13ren »

ntoshev wrote: post #29
unalone wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course we know it. But that doesn't stop it from happening. Sorry, I'm a bit of a worrywart. In the last week or so things seem to have noticeably declined. :-/ EDIT: Am I really harping on it that much? I didn't think I was. I'll try and tone it down a bit.

You are right - I thought the article is useless and the discussion is also useless as there is nothing to discuss but techcrunch/news.yc going downhill etc etc. As there was nothing to dilute I posted the "No" comment just to see what will happen with it. Reflexive voting happened, but not too much (for the quality of the story and discussion).

There's a sort of Gresham's Law of trolls: trolls are willing to use a forum with a lot of thoughtful people in it, but thoughtful people aren't willing to use a forum with a lot of trolls in it. Which means that once trolling takes hold, it tends to become the dominant culture. http://paulgraham.com/trolls.html

I think this is also true of "diluting" comments. Once they become acceptable, the forum has had it. Everyone will say "it's already diluted, so what's the harm?"

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