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A Proposal To Improve Hacker News

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Re: A Proposal To Improve Hacker News

#101

Post by kapitalx »

dwwoelfel wrote: post #8

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.

Considering that the post is 3.5 years old, it makes me wonder if this problem has always been around. I wonder if this problem is cyclic and peaks at different times during the year or during certain events, such as summer or demo days.

Re: A Proposal To Improve Hacker News

#102

Post by dhimes »

polyfractal wrote: post #41
rauljara wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm someone else who refrains from commenting in order to protect my average karma. The thing is, that it isn't as irrational as you are making it out to be. Posts from users with higher average karma are sorted higher. Presumably you are posting because you want your post to be read. Either you want it to influence people or you want your question answered, or whatever. If you didn't want it to be read, you wouldn't…

Wow, I had no idea average karma sorted people higher/lower. But you actively try to protect your karma? After my karma hit 1000 I basically stopped caring anymore. What incentive do you have to protect your karma (serious question, I'm not sure I understand why it matters)?

I didn't know this, either. This idea will only work if karma measures what we want it to measure. If karma isn't associated with quality but with site-gaming, or snarky commenting, or other bad stuff, this system creates a positive feedback loop for sending the site in the wrong direction. Yikes!

Re: A Proposal To Improve Hacker News

#103

Post by vacri »

evolve2k wrote: post #28

The 'more' link regularly fails to render on my IPhone 4 leading to a further long term aversion to going there. Not sure if anyone else has had the same experience? Just saying if it's affecting many devices this Is just compressing the issue further.

I have a different problem in that the 'more' link uses some crazy key instead of 'page=2'. If you press it a relatively short time after being loaded, you'll get 'unknown or expired link', meaning you need to backtrack, reload the page, scroll again, click... it's trained me out of bothering to do it anymore.

Re: A Proposal To Improve Hacker News

#104

Post by catastrophe »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #51

This, and many of the suggestions in the original thread, and pg's default response, are all falling into the same trap: they are attempting to fix a people problem using technical solutions. Technology can make community management easier. Better algorithms and visual design and so on can improve the way that a community polices itself. But, I think eventually you'll run into vanishing returns from that kind of stuf…

This, and many of the suggestions in the original thread, and pg's default response, are all falling into the same trap: they are attempting to fix a people problem using technical solutions.

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Re: A Proposal To Improve Hacker News

#105

Post by panacea »

gcv wrote: post #47

How about this: charge a subscription fee to perform "destructive" actions on HN. This means posting comments and voting, including upvotes. Perhaps submitting stories can remain free — the paying users will determine the quality of the submissions. Some of us (used to) get a lot of value out of HN, so $10 or $50 a year would be a bargain.

Metafilter's $5 entrance fee and active human moderation contributes to it being a polite and intelligent community.

Re: A Proposal To Improve Hacker News

#106

Post by michael_fine »

I find that paradoxically, the biggest problem with Hacker News right now is the hot algorithm we use. It's great for bringing good stories to the attention of the community and having a burst of short lived discussion over those stories, and then dying out. What it's not great for is long term discussions.

For example, with Quora, when someone answers a question, or posts a comment, you never care how long ago it was posted, because there are notifications, and the front page is based on what you follow, not how popular the questions are.

This is a hard problem to fix, but a couple suggestions I have are to improve the threads feature, such that it resembles a real notification bar. Secondly, I think a new page should help, a mixture between the front page, and the saved stories, which shows active discussions, and an emphasis on one's that you have upvoted.

I think those might help reduce the ephemerality of the discussions here.

Re: A Proposal To Improve Hacker News

#107

Post by jimmytucson »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #51

This, and many of the suggestions in the original thread, and pg's default response, are all falling into the same trap: they are attempting to fix a people problem using technical solutions. Technology can make community management easier. Better algorithms and visual design and so on can improve the way that a community polices itself. But, I think eventually you'll run into vanishing returns from that kind of stuf…

    >they are attempting to fix a people problem using technical solutions
That's catchy but isn't that what a large handful of pg's startups are doing?

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad we're not throwing "technology" at the problem. But I'm glad for a selfish reason. I think adding features and modernizing the site would draw attention and users, probably the "wrong" kind.

Re: A Proposal To Improve Hacker News

#109

Post by [deleted] »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #51

This, and many of the suggestions in the original thread, and pg's default response, are all falling into the same trap: they are attempting to fix a people problem using technical solutions. Technology can make community management easier. Better algorithms and visual design and so on can improve the way that a community polices itself. But, I think eventually you'll run into vanishing returns from that kind of stuf…

[deleted]
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