Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Proposal To Improve Hacker News

sridattalabs.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 193 posts

Re: A Proposal To Improve Hacker News

#2

Post by benologist »

I think this lays the real issue out but buries it:

> The only way to guarantee any visibility is to time very carefully using HNPickup, be a celebrity like John Gruber or Dustin Curtis, organize an up vote cabal, or write sensationalist content.

HN has become mainstream and it's subject to all the spam, pandering, submission strategies, power users and all the other bullshit that comes with that territory.

I'd start by getting rid of every user who's submission to comments ratio is ridiculous and every website that would be better suited to digg or reddit.

Re: A Proposal To Improve Hacker News

#3

Post by dmlorenzetti »

Reward users for browsing "New"

This is an interesting suggestion.

I think of looking at new submissions as a kind of "service to the community"-- more specifically, to the community I want HN to be. If the front page is filled with links I don't value, then it's partly my fault if I've failed to upvote submissions I would rather see on the front page (this, of course, means browsing "new" is a reward unto itself, but it's a somewhat abstract reward nonetheless).

Sometimes I wish HN wouldn't track average karma. That discourages me from commenting on new submissions that I believe won't get many eyeballs. Intellectually, I know my average karma shouldn't mean anything to me, but the fact that it's there for all the world to see exerts a gravity of its own. "You get what you measure."

Re: A Proposal To Improve Hacker News

#5

Post by ninetax »

benologist wrote: post #2

I think this lays the real issue out but buries it: > The only way to guarantee any visibility is to time very carefully using HNPickup, be a celebrity like John Gruber or Dustin Curtis, organize an up vote cabal, or write sensationalist content. HN has become mainstream and it's subject to all the spam, pandering, submission strategies, power users and all the other bullshit that comes with that territory. I'd start…

Sorry, for clarification, do you mean get rid of users who have a high submission/comment ratio, or low?

Re: A Proposal To Improve Hacker News

#6

Post by leed25d »

The title of your piece suggests a satirical tone and I was ready for a delicious morsel. Alas, I could not detect the slightest hint of sarcasm or of a darker, ulterior aim. It could still be there, mind you, but on subtler wavelength than my resonant cavity can detect. It might as well have been titled "HN Considered Harmful", I suppose.

Re: A Proposal To Improve Hacker News

#7

Post by jhuckestein »

I think showing veteran users in another color would really help a lot to set the tone. If the community rewards snarky posts with many upvotes, this alone will not be enough though.

Perhaps marking up veteran users by karma and/or seniority and weighting upvotes by the same metric?

Re: A Proposal To Improve Hacker News

#8

Post by dwwoelfel »

While not all of us can spend the time to become an HN celebrity, there are many of us who have worked to get a high karma over time. HN should highlight the names of such users in purple, similar to the way it highlights newbies with green.

PG tried that (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=467181), except with orange instead of purple.

Re: A Proposal To Improve Hacker News

#9

Post by majormajor »

dmlorenzetti wrote: post #3

Reward users for browsing "New" This is an interesting suggestion. I think of looking at new submissions as a kind of "service to the community"-- more specifically, to the community I want HN to be. If the front page is filled with links I don't value, then it's partly my fault if I've failed to upvote submissions I would rather see on the front page (this, of course, means browsing "new" is a reward unto itself, bu…

"Sometimes I wish HN wouldn't track average karma. That discourages me from commenting on new submissions that I believe won't get many eyeballs."

Maybe some sort of comment karma normalization based on the upvotes for the topic as a whole or the total number of votes on the topic, to try to adjust for popularity of the topic vs quality of the comment...

Post reply on HN