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Lobsters

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Re: Lobsters

#161

Post by seanalltogether »

subsection1h wrote: post #64

I want a site for discussing software development news that has the equivalent of a kill file. There are a handful of prolific users at Hacker News who post multiple low-quality messages every day. I avoid Hacker News because of users such as these. I honestly believe that at least a few of these users are secretly employed by the companies that they promote and defend daily. I don't know if they're paid to post here…

I see this idea pop up on every community I've been involved in, and the simple answer is that it's extremely taxing to build individual comment pages for individual users. So this type of thing usually gets passed back to end users in the form of "build a browser plugin to hide these people on the client side"

Re: Lobsters

#162

Post by inuhj »

1gor wrote: post #72
inuhj wrote: post #34

My favorite forum feature is 'the blender'. I first saw it on nuclearphynance.com(and not since). Once a critical number of people blend a thread it gets deleted so as not to pollute the list of threads. In practice it worked very well. The overwhelming majority of blended threads were from new users who were still getting a hang of the quality standards for posting in the forum.

What are 'blended threads'?

When speaking about forums each topic and its associated posts are referred to as a thread.

Re: Lobsters

#163

Post by [deleted] »

1gor wrote: post #72
inuhj wrote: post #34

My favorite forum feature is 'the blender'. I first saw it on nuclearphynance.com(and not since). Once a critical number of people blend a thread it gets deleted so as not to pollute the list of threads. In practice it worked very well. The overwhelming majority of blended threads were from new users who were still getting a hang of the quality standards for posting in the forum.

What are 'blended threads'?

[deleted]

Re: Lobsters

#164

Post by eloisius »

roryokane wrote: post #113
rauljara wrote: post #41

Explanation for the site being invite only: "Not for exclusivity, but rather, invitations will be used as a spam-control mechanism. New users must be invited by a current member and invitations will be unlimited (unless scaling problems temporarily prevent new accounts). If spammers are invited to the site and banned, the user that invited them may also be banned, going up the chain of invitations as needed." Seems b…

I’ll invite you, but you’ll have to put your email address in the “about” section of your HN profile first. (The address in the “email” section of your profile is not publicly viewable.) Or you can just write your email in a comment reply if you’d prefer.

May I? zgstewart from gmail dot com

Re: Lobsters

#165

Post by jasonkester »

slurgfest wrote: post #160
jasonkester wrote: post #150

Nice. Notice how it so neatly slices off exactly one demographic from here and transplants it over there, without anything that would distract them. It's focussed just on one topic: Software development stuff for Software Developers. There are four main camps here at HN: - "Software Entrepreneurs", building Big Important Startups or quaint little "lifestyle businesses" that let them drive their cute little "italian s…

I am puzzled - why do you want computer programmers to leave HN?

Same reason I'd prefer "Apple Sued Somebody! Better post it!" guy to leave. Not because he's a bad person or anything. Just that he clogs the homepage with things I don't care about.

Take a quick spin through the articles on the Lobster homepage. Lots of (presumably) good articles there, but not one that I'd consider clicking on because it doesn't interest me in the slightest (even though I make my living programming computers).

That sort of article tends to occupy about a third of the homepage here at any given time, likely pushing things that might actually help me build a software business out of the way. If they were gone, it'd make my life a little easier. That's all.

I definitely like computer programmers. I've spent the last 20 years working with them (and being one) every day. I'm just not all that interested anymore in hearing about how they configure their text editors. Or rather, I'd prefer they discussed that elsewhere. This site we're discussing seems like a great place for that.

EDIT:

Actually, thinking it through a bit more, I don't think that's my actual reason. It occurs to me that most of the "programming" talk that goes on here is actually quite good.

The thing is, there's a certain type of rank & file developer, who we're all familiar with, that is just plain no fun to be around. He's the super negative guy with a few "social issues" who's always complaining about how much things suck (and how stupid everybody is for not just doing X, which is obvious).

You can see that guy near the bottom of most threads here these days, with his snarky one line comment. Every once in a while he'll have the top comment on a thread or get in a loud fight with somebody. I wouldn't be surprised if he's the guy who really likes all those terrible distracting articles from camps 3 & 4. He's probably having a great time. But he's making the place worse. Making his behavior seem less unacceptable by virtue of it being visible as an example.

My hope was that he'd leave with the rest of the programmers, but I bet you're right that he would be the one guy who'd get left behind. So you'd still get the snarky negativity piled onto every launch announcement, but we'd lose a bunch of smart people.

So yeah, scratch that part. You're right.

Re: Lobsters

#166

Post by thomasjoulin »

jasonkester wrote: post #165
slurgfest wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am puzzled - why do you want computer programmers to leave HN?

Same reason I'd prefer "Apple Sued Somebody! Better post it!" guy to leave. Not because he's a bad person or anything. Just that he clogs the homepage with things I don't care about. Take a quick spin through the articles on the Lobster homepage. Lots of (presumably) good articles there, but not one that I'd consider clicking on because it doesn't interest me in the slightest (even though I make my living programming…

But this website name is Hacker News. Configuring text editors is closer to hacking than talking who got funded no ? I think the combination of the two groups makes HN interesting. We probably all agree that the two last groups are the one we want to avoid.

Re: Lobsters

#167

Post by thaumaturgy »

thomasjoulin wrote: post #166
jasonkester wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same reason I'd prefer "Apple Sued Somebody! Better post it!" guy to leave. Not because he's a bad person or anything. Just that he clogs the homepage with things I don't care about. Take a quick spin through the articles on the Lobster homepage. Lots of (presumably) good articles there, but not one that I'd consider clicking on because it doesn't interest me in the slightest (even though I make my living programming…

But this website name is Hacker News. Configuring text editors is closer to hacking than talking who got funded no ? I think the combination of the two groups makes HN interesting. We probably all agree that the two last groups are the one we want to avoid.

It was originally called Startup News.

Re: Lobsters

#168

Post by Hates_ »

roryokane wrote: post #113
rauljara wrote: post #41

Explanation for the site being invite only: "Not for exclusivity, but rather, invitations will be used as a spam-control mechanism. New users must be invited by a current member and invitations will be unlimited (unless scaling problems temporarily prevent new accounts). If spammers are invited to the site and banned, the user that invited them may also be banned, going up the chain of invitations as needed." Seems b…

I’ll invite you, but you’ll have to put your email address in the “about” section of your HN profile first. (The address in the “email” section of your profile is not publicly viewable.) Or you can just write your email in a comment reply if you’d prefer.

Anyone able to invite me?

Re: Lobsters

#169

Post by Lazare »

pbiggar wrote: post #159
Lazare wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first account was hellbanned for no obvious reason. I had a bunch of karma, hadn't been downvoted, hadn't trolled. I asked pg for an explanation/reconsideration...nope! One of the dirty secrets of hackernews is that you can be hellbanned at any moment without rhyme or reason, and you'll likely never know why. I assume it serves some purpose OTHER than driving away helpful contributors, but I'm not sure what that m…

I think it's fair to say that hellbanning is done to improve the site, rather than for the nefarious purposes you're trying to ascribe for it. Clearly, there are problems with it's application and transparency, but that's not the same as suggesting there's some plot here.

No, it's not fair to say that hellbanning - as implemented on HN - is done to improve the site. It's arbitrary, capricious, and hugely non-transparent.

No, I'm not suggesting a plot, but there's no natural law that says tech news sites must have a hairtrigger hellban (nor, as far as I'm aware, does any other site have anything remotely like HN's policy). Concious or not, it's a policy that HN has adopted, and it's a terrible policy.

Re: Lobsters

#170

Post by robotmay »

citricsquid wrote: post #100
ilaksh wrote: post #85

Looks cool. But what about people like me who don't have any friends but still have interesting ideas?

I would like to see an invite only site that had an application process where an inviter can pick out applications they like from the pool. This way the people of value but without networking are fine.

I think that's how Dribbble works, and it's quite a good way of doing it.
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