Reddit vs Hacker News vs Twitter • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit vs Hacker News vs Twitter

#51

Post by stanmancan » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 6:50 PM UTC

radicalbyte wrote: post #3

> A comment on HN is going to be mature and reasoned; often expanding or exploring technical issues raised That's what I love about HN : the content of comments here are of a very high quality. It's something that I've noticed with my own posts - well reasoned comments attract a lot of positive karma. Even if you're taking a controversial stance on an issue.

At least 50% of the time I don't even read the article, I just read the comments. I tend to be more interested in the conversation the posts generate than the posts themselves.

Re: Reddit vs Hacker News vs Twitter

#52

Post by eogas » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 6:54 PM UTC

willvarfar wrote: post #49

eogas wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you care to elaborate on this? Are you referring more to the removal of posts that have made it through the filter, or the lack of approval of posts that are stuck in the filter? I think we do a pretty good job. No choice is as clear cut as people would like it to be (especially when it is their own content on the line). I've heard feedback from people who think we do an amazing job at moderating, keeping the e…

Lots of my posts never get through the spam filter, yet I think they are programming related. http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/16399069781/googl... for example http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/13264962223/sum-o... and http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/13265364121/popen... are two others that I would like to share wider I don't think they ever got through :( (I've lost track of what I've t…

That first one was submitted to /r/programming by a user who has a really bad history of incessantly spamming his/her own blog and nothing else. The user has 2 comments in 4 years, and only 2 submissions which are not self promotion (one of which is yours).

I couldn't find a trace of the other two, though looking at your account (or what I think is your account) I am seeing a slew of filtered posts, some of which are on topic, some of which are not. I just approved a couple of your most recent on-topic posts, however I can tell you that you will need to keep a good ratio between your own site(s) and other good content for the spam filter to go easy on you. It filters really heavily against people who submit the same domain a large part of the time, and we (moderators) tend to stick to that as well.

I will comment on your other points in a little while.

EDIT: Okay, now for the rest.

I think the warm fuzzy memories you have of proggit are akin to the warm fuzzy memories a lot of people have of reddit as a whole 3 or 4 years ago. But with a larger userbase comes a lot of noise and idiocy. In my opinion, /r/programming was one of the first subreddits to take real action against quality decay. There was a period of time, after the heyday, but while /r/programming was still a default, when rage comics and advice animals were rampant. Maybe not quite as rampant as the rest of the site, but it was pretty bad. There were lots of people who were not programmers submitting and commenting, so lots of stuff ended up being off topic.

I think the quality has improved immensely since then, and I think this is in part due to strict moderation and the disabling of self posts. I will allow that it certainly isn't as great as reddit as a whole was in its heyday, but it's getting better.

There's not much we can do about the comments. We can't moderate comments for stupidity (because that would be pretty messed up). The only thing I've ever moderated comments for is spam and personal info.

A reboot, unless it's in the form of a different sub, is probably not going to happen, but I'd certainly be interested in hearing any ideas for improving the subreddit in its current form.

Re: Reddit vs Hacker News vs Twitter

#53

Post by erickhill » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 7:08 PM UTC

stanmancan wrote: post #51

radicalbyte wrote: post #3

> A comment on HN is going to be mature and reasoned; often expanding or exploring technical issues raised That's what I love about HN : the content of comments here are of a very high quality. It's something that I've noticed with my own posts - well reasoned comments attract a lot of positive karma. Even if you're taking a controversial stance on an issue.

At least 50% of the time I don't even read the article, I just read the comments. I tend to be more interested in the conversation the posts generate than the posts themselves.

I would venture to guess I read the comments 90% more than the actual posts. The discussion (or the subject) will occasionally lead me to read the article in depth, but more often than not the discourse here is more enlightening overall. I can easily say HN is the only community where my behavior follows this model.

Re: Reddit vs Hacker News vs Twitter

#54

Post by diminoten » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 7:52 PM UTC

There is something systemically flawed with Reddit's moderator system which precludes it from ever being an unqualified success as a social news aggregator.

The primary issue revolves around the selection process for moderation. To become a moderator for a subreddit, you need to have thought of the name of the subreddit. That's it. This nomenclature designation act grants any user absolute power within that domain space, and the ability to grant any other user the exact same powers.

The person who created the "programming" subreddit has no qualifications, no resume by which to judge their aptitude for the moderation job, and no process exists by which to vet newly added moderators.

A moderator can, for any or no reason, decide to activate the "spam filter" on any submitted article, removing it from public voting and view. This is the only tool by which Reddit moderators are given to modify their respective domains, and when used for reasons other than spam, it "teaches" the filter to remove non-spam results. This is the cause of the "broken" spam filter on Reddit - moderator abuse.

Re: Reddit vs Hacker News vs Twitter

#55

Post by willvarfar » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 8:31 PM UTC

eogas wrote: post #52

willvarfar wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of my posts never get through the spam filter, yet I think they are programming related. http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/16399069781/googl... for example http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/13264962223/sum-o... and http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/13265364121/popen... are two others that I would like to share wider I don't think they ever got through :( (I've lost track of what I've t…

That first one was submitted to /r/programming by a user who has a really bad history of incessantly spamming his/her own blog and nothing else. The user has 2 comments in 4 years, and only 2 submissions which are not self promotion (one of which is yours). I couldn't find a trace of the other two, though looking at your account (or what I think is your account) I am seeing a slew of filtered posts, some of which are…

Thanks

I've tried to put moreSQL through again - is it on topic for proggit?

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/qklxn/google_mo...

I don't like the idea of having to scrape HN to find other people's content so I can hide my own content submissions in the noise.

Re: Reddit vs Hacker News vs Twitter

#56

Post by joejohnson » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 8:32 PM UTC

kijin wrote: post #8

> The per-page time is actually quite high; often over 5 minutes on average for a lot of my stories even when its a big crowd. I suspect some subtle misreading of Google Analytics on my part, or else people might actually be reading the whole thing carefully!? That might be because a lot of people do what I do: keep the article open while browsing comments on HN or Reddit, and switch back and forth between the two ta…

Is there a simple way in javascript to tell if a tab is currently visible in a browser?

Re: Reddit vs Hacker News vs Twitter

#57

Post by stanmancan » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 8:32 PM UTC

erickhill wrote: post #53

stanmancan wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least 50% of the time I don't even read the article, I just read the comments. I tend to be more interested in the conversation the posts generate than the posts themselves.

I would venture to guess I read the comments 90% more than the actual posts. The discussion (or the subject) will occasionally lead me to read the article in depth, but more often than not the discourse here is more enlightening overall. I can easily say HN is the only community where my behavior follows this model.

90% is actually a more realistic metric for myself as well. I was being generous leaving it at "over 50%"....

Re: Reddit vs Hacker News vs Twitter

#58

Post by oemta » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 8:51 PM UTC

eogas wrote: post #46

skeletonjelly wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I check by opening a Chrome Incognito tab (so unauthenticated) and view the "new" page for that subreddit. So http://reddit.com/r/programming/new If it's not there I assume it's in the spam queue and message the mods. It's a pretty crap UX but it works to keep out spammers I suppose.

You shouldn't have to use incognito, unless you've got the "don't show stories that I've liked" preference checked.

The point of using incognito is to be unauthenticated. Otherwise, wouldn't the post always be visible to the submitter, regardless of whether or not it is in the spam filter?

Re: Reddit vs Hacker News vs Twitter

#59

Post by TazeTSchnitzel » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 8:56 PM UTC

diminoten wrote: post #54

There is something systemically flawed with Reddit's moderator system which precludes it from ever being an unqualified success as a social news aggregator. The primary issue revolves around the selection process for moderation. To become a moderator for a subreddit, you need to have thought of the name of the subreddit. That's it. This nomenclature designation act grants any user absolute power within that domain sp…

Personally, I dislike how the moderator system for subreddits uses a oldest-first hierarchy, where older moderators can always remove newer ones. Hence, a subreddit has no such thing as equal moderators. There is always one "on top", as such.

Re: Reddit vs Hacker News vs Twitter

#60

Post by eogas » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 9:19 PM UTC

oemta wrote: post #58

eogas wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shouldn't have to use incognito, unless you've got the "don't show stories that I've liked" preference checked.

The point of using incognito is to be unauthenticated. Otherwise, wouldn't the post always be visible to the submitter, regardless of whether or not it is in the spam filter?

The post will show up for the submitter on their userpage and in their submitted links panel, however it will not show up in the new queue, not even for mods. This may be different for shadowbanned users, but I don't think it is.

Actually, I'm almost certain it's the same for shadowbanned users, because we got two modmail messages today from shadowbanned users asking to have their posts taken out of the spam filter because they can't see them in the new queue.