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Lobsters

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81–90 of 212 posts

Re: Lobsters

#81

I had an account here. I still do. Like some other people point out: Invitation-only means trolls are less likely to show up. But the higher end of quality is not significantly better than HN. If anything, it might be worse. My experience with the moderation there is that some people post clear self-promotion articles, but when I attempted to post my things, I get told that this content is not welcome on the site. Wh…

I've been lurking on Lobsters for a while, and have definitely noticed that the self-promotion rule is selectively enforced. Just pivot into exclusively writing content about an impractical docker alternative, and you should be golden. Snark aside, they could codify exactly what frequency of self-posting is allowed, and let the existing voting system dictate what rises to the top. I'm not sure Lobsters sees any issue…

I think the sweet spot is opening up x number of registrations every few months.

Re: Lobsters

#82

Any reason why HN source code is not published? The best I can think of is not to let people see the penalizing behavior, but having an open standard might actually help it improve rather than keeping it as a hidden secret that slowly gets discovered by independent malicious parties.

There's probably not all that much to see past the decade-old public release from the arc project. The parts of it that aren't public past that are non-public by necessity, like the voting ring detector stuff.

Re: Lobsters

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless you really need a specific version, let those gems be free A wet dream of anyone looking for a method to perform a supply chain attack.

that is what Gemfile.lock is for. You are not getting a new version unless you do ask for it explicitly.

Yeah, that’s actually true. I looked at it from a wrong angle.

Re: Lobsters

#86
I was always liked the idea of the site, but never got an invite. I lurk there occasionally when I see discussions around a topic that I find interesting that didn’t get traction on HN.

Re: Lobsters

#87
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They discuss under "invitation tree" how it's possible to get an invite if you want one. https://lobste.rs/about I don't have an account although a couple things I wrote got posted there, if I'd realized it at the time that apparently qualifies me. Overall I don't know if the quality is better than HN, even if the SNR is higher, there is just so much less total that the sum of good stuff is lower. It's almost complet…

If you want an invite, ask your friends if anyone has an account.

Will you be my friend?

Re: Lobsters

#88
post #78
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The other side of this story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36735833

One small note I'd add is that the Lobsters software has had at least one very unfortunate bug that led to pushcx claiming that I had "disowned all my comments"[1] when I left Lobsters. I had, in fact, not done so.[2] The bug was later fixed[3], but even today, over 2 years later, my comments remain disowned. They were never recovered. Textually, they're still on the site, but no longer associated with my account, which makes them very difficult to find. I'm still a little salty about that because I contributed a sizeable body of comments to Lobsters that would be at least nice to link occasionally.

Anyway, my point is, when pushcx says, "all banned users get an email notifying them of a ban with the Reply-To header set to my email," that's only true if at least the Lobsters software is behaving as it is intended to behave. It may not be.

[1]: https://lobste.rs/s/zp4ofg/lobster_burntsushi_has_left_site#...

[2]: https://lobste.rs/s/zp4ofg/lobster_burntsushi_has_left_site#...

[3]: https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters/issues/1004

Re: Lobsters

#89
post #41

I had an account here. I still do. Like some other people point out: Invitation-only means trolls are less likely to show up. But the higher end of quality is not significantly better than HN. If anything, it might be worse. My experience with the moderation there is that some people post clear self-promotion articles, but when I attempted to post my things, I get told that this content is not welcome on the site. Wh…

[flagged]

> Lobsters banned me for spamming and self-promotion along with every single person I invited to the site over the years.

From the admins:

> Inviting many spammers and helping them circumvent the restriction on unseen domains from new users for spam.

Seems justified.

Re: Lobsters

#90
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other side of this story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36735833

One small note I'd add is that the Lobsters software has had at least one very unfortunate bug that led to pushcx claiming that I had "disowned all my comments"[1] when I left Lobsters. I had, in fact, not done so.[2] The bug was later fixed[3], but even today, over 2 years later, my comments remain disowned. They were never recovered. Textually, they're still on the site, but no longer associated with my account, wh…

This is interesting, but I'm having trouble connecting it to the comment I just wrote, and I'm wondering if I'm missing a connection that would be more obvious if I paid more attention to Lobsters.
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