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Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

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Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#401

Post by gasull »

pg wrote: post #114

It's a genuine problem and has been growing gradually worse for a while. I think the cause is simply growth. When a good community grows, it becomes worse in two ways: (a) more recent arrivals don't have as much of whatever quality distinguished the original members, and (b) the large size of the group makes people behave worse, because there is more anonymity in a larger group. I've spent many hours over the past se…

Paul, what about making votes have values diferent of +1|-1 depending of who is voting?

People who have been longer in the community and have a good kharma would have the power to vote +1|-1, while people who have less kharma or have joined the community recently would be able to vote, say, +0.1|-0.1, and there would be a lot of people in between (+0.3|-0.3, +0.5|-0.5, etc.)

It just makes sense that your upvotes/downvotes should have more voting power than the ones coming from, say, myself.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#402

Post by larrys »

chc wrote: post #294
scoot wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I please be the first to say "WTF"? I know who you are, I know what you contribute, but... WTF?

It's an old joke. You make a request and somebody acquiesces more easily than you expected, so you follow up with an absurd request like "Also, can I have a million dollars?" And now I went and explained it. Sorry, tptacek.

To add to your thought when negotiating it's always important to offer nominal kickback generally. Lest the person feel they left money on the table.

If I am selling something and asking $1000 and the person comes back with an offer of $500 and assuming I am willing to take that offer (because I was shooting high) I need to offer some "kickback". This could be as simple as saying something like "well, if I accept can you pay within 5 days?" Or perhaps, "can't do $500 but I'll consider $600". Otherwise the buyer feels perhaps "hmm wow that was to quick and to easy" and might back out of the deal. Strictly my experience over many years.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#403

Post by chris_wot »

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #331
brianto2010 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a neat idea. -1 doesn't mean much without a comment explaining why. I do have a concern, though. If this system is implemented, doesn't that mean that the "new kids" will also have access to this system and may use it to exasperate HN's "new kids" problem? What about modifying the existing HN guidelines to include comments and promote the guidelines more? For example, cite a downvote with an appropriate quote…

If the current rule applies that says you don't get to down-vote until you reach N karma, the "new kids" don't really get to do much. I for one would value a system that forced a down-vote to be accompanied by some sort of explanation of why. I suppose at less than a year old I am still a "new kid" so I will say in my infancy (a few months old) I had a comment down-voted for reasons that were not obvious to me. I was…

The tone of that comment came across badly. You pointed out they had made a typo - that was your only feedback. You suggested they might not be a human. You used the word "regret", but you clearly have no regret.

There is no irony as to why you were voted down. It was entirely justified.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#404

Post by larrys »

jedberg wrote: post #142
pg wrote: post #114

It's a genuine problem and has been growing gradually worse for a while. I think the cause is simply growth. When a good community grows, it becomes worse in two ways: (a) more recent arrivals don't have as much of whatever quality distinguished the original members, and (b) the large size of the group makes people behave worse, because there is more anonymity in a larger group. I've spent many hours over the past se…

One possible solution (that you might already be doing) is to make the value of the vote proportional to how long the user has been a member, especially down-votes. That solves the problem of more recent arrivals not having the same qualities as the original members. To be very clear so as to prevent conspiracy theories, this is something that we never did on reddit because we didn't want to put that much power into…

Interesting because I'm experiencing part of the problem that others are discussing here. You see I disagree with your idea but there is no way to indicate that w/o downvoting (which I didn't do). And to simply reply by saying "I disagree" isn't appropriate either. And maybe I don't want to take the time to detail exactly why I disagree but would like you to know that? But you don't because all you see is a net number positive or negative.

(By the way I would summarize why I disagree now that I've written the above as simply that it seems like a "last man over the bridge" advantage. I mean it's entirely possible that some distinguished person whose vote should count would be greatly disadvantaged by the weighting system you propose.)

I hate to complicate things but there doesn't appear to be anyway to solve this issue w/o the ability to indicate more clearly what you feel is positive or negative about a comments. One up/down button simply can't cover everything.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#405

Post by larrys »

gasull wrote: post #401
pg wrote: post #114

It's a genuine problem and has been growing gradually worse for a while. I think the cause is simply growth. When a good community grows, it becomes worse in two ways: (a) more recent arrivals don't have as much of whatever quality distinguished the original members, and (b) the large size of the group makes people behave worse, because there is more anonymity in a larger group. I've spent many hours over the past se…

Paul, what about making votes have values diferent of +1|-1 depending of who is voting? People who have been longer in the community and have a good kharma would have the power to vote +1|-1, while people who have less kharma or have joined the community recently would be able to vote, say, +0.1|-0.1, and there would be a lot of people in between (+0.3|-0.3, +0.5|-0.5, etc.) It just makes sense that your upvotes/down…

There is no agreement on exactly what a vote in either direction means as there is no restriction on anyone doing either for any reason. And to different people it means different things.

As far as "who is voting" for arguments sake a member of SCOTUS joins HN and decides to cast a vote. Or a member of SCOTUS joins HN and after a period of 2 years has low karma, because, they don't have much time on their hands. I'm not exactly sure why someone who has not been a member for a long time or doesn't have a high karma score isn't to be trusted with voting. And why someone who decides to spend a lot of time on HN should be given more privileges.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#406

Post by tptacek »

larrys wrote: post #396
tptacek wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also I should be allowed to veto at least one YC applicant per batch.

You of course are allowed to joke because more people know who you are and allow it (so your comments aren't greyed down for everyone to see). (I've noticed this a few times at least). So now the poor puppy of a newbie user thinks it's ok to tell a joke (because he doesn't know who you are) or be funny and then BAM he gets slapped with a newspaper full of downvotes and runs away yelping all confused with his tail bet…

Maybe overthinking this one a little.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#407

Post by dkarl »

kafkaesque wrote: post #150
pg wrote: post #114

It's a genuine problem and has been growing gradually worse for a while. I think the cause is simply growth. When a good community grows, it becomes worse in two ways: (a) more recent arrivals don't have as much of whatever quality distinguished the original members, and (b) the large size of the group makes people behave worse, because there is more anonymity in a larger group. I've spent many hours over the past se…

I'd like to make a somewhat unrelated observation as a new user and someone who is new to programming. I've noticed a submission might get a huge amount of upvotes yet the highest voted comment goes against the article/post submitted. I understand there are a few things that could be going on: you can learn from bad articles/posts; those who like the article/post submitted find it unfair to downvote just because they…

I suspect that people often post negatively about a submission and then upvote it so their negative comments will be seen and upvoted by more people.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#408

Post by mindcrime »

JEVLON wrote: post #340
wololo wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple questions: 1. Why not assign karma by running something like pagerank over the vote graph? I think giving overwhelming weight to high karma old-timers would make HN more like them, which would be an improvement, right? 2. What about assigning karma not by your comments, but by the responses to them? I figure karma-from-replies would shift the conversation to "what should we be asking about this", whereas kar…

(2) probably would not work. Commenters could troll, and then the community replying in disagreement would up-vote their comment. Here are my ideas: (A)Not showing someone their karma score ever, unless it is negative. (B)Leaving a line between the comment field and the reply button saying, "Stay constructive." (C)That line of text could link to the guidelines. (D)Detect if someone says 'idiot' and then change the li…

(D)Detect if someone says 'idiot' and then change the line to, "You said 'idiot', do you still want to post?"

I like this idea. In particular, I like the idea of analyzing content - but not programatically rejecting the post completely. Another forum that I frequent tries to keep things civil by banning certain words. Sounds good on paper, but then you try to use the phrase "knee-jerk reaction" and the system rejects your post because it has "jerk" in it. D'oh.

Pointing out the possible (but not definite) incivility, but allowing the post anyway (after a confirmation step) could be a nice way to remind people to be polite, but without being overly draconian.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#409

Post by SoftwareMaven »

phaus wrote: post #377
sigkill wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your experiment matches Dan Ariely's experiment very well. In his book, "Predictably Irrational" when people are made to remember the ten commandments or even the thought of ten commandments, or any such honesty pledge, their dishonesty level drops drastically. One of these days, I'm going to make a chapterwise summary of that book so that I can remember the experiments and behaviours at a glance.

I wonder why such a phenomenon occurs, when five of the commandments have nothing to do with morality. Also, in the Army we had the Warrior's Ethos, the Army Values, the Soldier's Creed, and the Creed of the Non-Commissioned Officer crammed down our throats daily. While are some awesome people in the Military, I've run into just as many dishonorable people as I have in the general population.

You are missing a control, so you can't really judge. Maybe it would have been a stinking, fetid den of iniquity and moral puss had they not.

Or, more likely, they might be somewhat worse, for some reasonable definition of somewhat.

Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..

#410

Post by niels_olson »

true_religion wrote: post #374
niels_olson wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posted a friend's start-up here (she wants traction), and her effort was summarily eviscerated. But not until after I'd already sent her a link to the thread. I feel terrible about that now. I think nasty comments tied with a product or site announcement might be a low-of-lows to look for? Or at least finding site announcements might be easier than finding "all nasty comments" and then evaluate that subset first?

I see exactly one comment on your friends post and its rational.

It seems rational from the outside, and when my brother and I played out customer #1, we provided similar feedback, but with a lot more nuance. It's quite a bit more demoralizing when a someone on HN dismisses it out of hand in one sentence. The tone was was not neutrally rational, it was dismissive. Not supportive. For example, lead with something positive, anything, then challenge her on why is the price what is is.
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