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A proposal for improving HN : it should cost a user Karma to post

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Re: A proposal for improving HN : it should cost a user Karma to post

#51

Post by Alex3917 »

tokenadult wrote: post #30

From the submitted blog post: "I have a suggestion for improvement: it should cost Karma to comment, and when your Karma drops below a certain threshold you can no longer comment. "My reasoning is that the trash comments we all hate are kneejerk criticisms with little thought put into them, which I suspect are largely made for the sake of saying something and collecting Karma." I agree with the rationale for the prop…

Heh Wikipedia is the worst. I feel like half the time I post something intelligent I basically get a bunch of people calling me a faggot for reading books, more often than not with 'references' to Wikipedia to explain why I'm wrong.

The problem with Wikipedia is that you're not allowed to plagiarize. So if there are three reasons to believe something is true, you'll get three of them listed. But if there are 100 reasons to believe something is true, you'll still only get three of them. Which essentially means the more reason there is to believe something is true, the less likely it is that Wikipedia will accurately reflect that. Digital Maoism indeed.

Re: A proposal for improving HN : it should cost a user Karma to post

#52

Post by thedeuce »

Jyaif wrote: post #39
bluedanieru wrote: post #34

Am I the only one who hasn't noticed this huge drop in quality that has everyone bitching and moaning lately? The signal-to-noise ratio has dropped slightly compared to when I started reading about four years ago, but this is still a great place for technical discussion. Comparisons to Reddit and other such nonsense are baseless. HN does not need any major overhaul or whatever else. I think a lot of this is just old-…

off-topic: I though it was called _Hacker_ News because it used to be a hacking oriented board. Apparently it has always been for entrepreneurs, so where does the name come from?

good question; it should be renamed to Entrepreneurs news then

Re: A proposal for improving HN : it should cost a user Karma to post

#53

Post by bane »

bluedanieru wrote: post #34

Am I the only one who hasn't noticed this huge drop in quality that has everyone bitching and moaning lately? The signal-to-noise ratio has dropped slightly compared to when I started reading about four years ago, but this is still a great place for technical discussion. Comparisons to Reddit and other such nonsense are baseless. HN does not need any major overhaul or whatever else. I think a lot of this is just old-…

I feel like there was a fast slide to content-free echo chamberism a while ago. HN was starting to become painfully predictable if it didn't talk about:

- Apple in glowing terms

- a LISP

- how massive overvaluations were not a bad sign

Certain HN rockstars would receive hundreds of upvotes for the most minor of comments and the fanboyism towards a few specific companies, products and people was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Anything that even smelled like dissent was downvoted until you couldn't even see the comment with a flashlight and a 100' rope.

Then a few things happened and it seemed to slowly wind down and I think even reverse. The quality and content of HN seems remarkably improved in the last year:

- Karma became invisible

- Steve Jobs passed away

- Gruber posts started getting flagged

- Android came neck and neck with iOS then surpassed it, then Apple started suing

- a few overhyped, overvalued, overinvested-in companies popped in very public ways

In fact the discussions about the above things have been some of the most spirited, invigorating discussions on HN in a long while. But the other posts and discussions on other topics started getting better as well. Sure the focus of HN has somewhat changed a bit since the old, small community, days. But a few internal and external factors seems to have kept the ship upright.

Re: A proposal for improving HN : it should cost a user Karma to post

#54

Post by tomrod »

bane wrote: post #53
bluedanieru wrote: post #34

Am I the only one who hasn't noticed this huge drop in quality that has everyone bitching and moaning lately? The signal-to-noise ratio has dropped slightly compared to when I started reading about four years ago, but this is still a great place for technical discussion. Comparisons to Reddit and other such nonsense are baseless. HN does not need any major overhaul or whatever else. I think a lot of this is just old-…

I feel like there was a fast slide to content-free echo chamberism a while ago. HN was starting to become painfully predictable if it didn't talk about: - Apple in glowing terms - a LISP - how massive overvaluations were not a bad sign Certain HN rockstars would receive hundreds of upvotes for the most minor of comments and the fanboyism towards a few specific companies, products and people was so thick you could cut…

> Certain HN rockstars would receive hundreds of upvotes for the most minor of comments

Oh! To be one of the principate! What networking that would lead to ;-)

Re: A proposal for improving HN : it should cost a user Karma to post

#56

Post by nicholassmith »

The people who leave comments that spoil hacker news don't care for karma, they'll just sock puppet to get their way. I don't think there's an especially large issue here, bad comments get down voted to the pits anyway.

Plus getting a down vote is often useful to help keep in the community guidelines.

Re: A proposal for improving HN : it should cost a user Karma to post

#57

Post by evolve2k »

koushikn wrote: post #48
Jyaif wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

off-topic: I though it was called _Hacker_ News because it used to be a hacking oriented board. Apparently it has always been for entrepreneurs, so where does the name come from?

Is there a compsci oriented discussion forum with comaparable quality as HN in terms of discussions without the entrepreneurship bias? I would love to know and start following if a such a thing exists.

Is this the moment to reflect on Slashdot? I have a few nontrepeneurial geek friends who still swear by /.

Re: A proposal for improving HN : it should cost a user Karma to post

#58

Post by aquateen »

Jyaif wrote: post #39
bluedanieru wrote: post #34

Am I the only one who hasn't noticed this huge drop in quality that has everyone bitching and moaning lately? The signal-to-noise ratio has dropped slightly compared to when I started reading about four years ago, but this is still a great place for technical discussion. Comparisons to Reddit and other such nonsense are baseless. HN does not need any major overhaul or whatever else. I think a lot of this is just old-…

off-topic: I though it was called _Hacker_ News because it used to be a hacking oriented board. Apparently it has always been for entrepreneurs, so where does the name come from?

Originally it was called "Startup News". PG announced he was making a new site not focused on startups, since that got kind of dull. Instead he changed the name of this site and nothing really changed. My memory is kind of vague, but I believe that is more or less accurate.
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