Lobsters

Post by pbiggar » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 6:21 PM UTC

jpdoctor wrote: post #210

pbiggar wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe YC messes with the algorithm or moderation to benefit YC companies. My YC startup got attacked on HN (2 years ago!), and I've seen many hostile articles and comments about other YC companies. [Edit: fixed ambiguous antecedent]

The antecedent of "this" is ambigous. You don't think it true that HN has significant financial incentive to censor or promote the links of YC companies? or you think there has been a lot of discussion about the HN conflict-of-interest? (perhaps I don't read regularly enough.) I suppose you could mean both.

Post by lwat » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 9:38 PM UTC

jcr wrote: post #131

lwat wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I DO blame PG for the mindless enforcement of the "Title MUST match the linked page's title" rule. Sometimes this is a good rule but there really are exceptions! EXAMPLE: This very post was actually submitted with the title Yehuda Katz launches HN competitor - Lobsters but then some mod just changed it to 'lobsters' which means absolutely nothing. How is that an improvement? EDIT: Please invite me to Lobsters!

Well, it's an improvement on the basis of stopping the spread of false information; Yehuda Katz did not create lobsters. jcs did. Sure, the edit could have been both more correct and more informative, but most people have better things than endlessly (re)correct trivial and inconsequential stuff like titles that might matter for only a handful of hours. My question for you is, "When you're on your death bed with flee…

Post by lotharbot » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 11:45 PM UTC

plinkplonk wrote: post #94

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…

+1 for a kill file. I'd also love a 'follow' mechanism. Only a small subset of HN users post deeply insightful posts and if I could see only their posts and comments, that would be a great time saver.

Post by pbiggar » Fri, Aug 31, 2012, 12:33 AM UTC

Lazare wrote: post #169

pbiggar wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Post by sp4rki » Fri, Aug 31, 2012, 4:35 AM UTC

roryokane wrote: post #66

Can an existing user of Lobsters please send me an invite? (My email is in my profile.) According to https://lobste.rs/s/bkeYe9/about_lobsters , the only reason Lobsters is invite-only is to prevent spammers from signing up. So if you want to check that I’m not a spammer, just glance at my past comments ( http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=roryokane ) and submissions ( http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=ror…