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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

#71

Post by debacle »

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…

I think Karma being invisible is a huge factor. While I understand the idea behind the decision, I think it prevents the community from really seeing what its broader sentiments are.

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

#73

Post by stonemetal »

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.

reddit has a /compsci that is pretty good, and /programming gets pretty much all the same technical articles hn does without the entrepreneurship ones.

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

#74

Post by e03179 »

Some HN members know other HM members in real life. You have business or personal relationships with others that also read, post, and comment on this forum. Some of you have never met any other HN member in real life, but do consider some HN members as friends and acquaintances.

I, on the other hand, have met none of you and don't carry on a virtual relationship with any other HN member. I consume your news and up-vote articles that I want to see more of on this forum. And on rare occasion I will post a comment.

All that said, besides PG, I absolutely don't care what the USERNAME is of the original poster.

I do scan the front page to see if there is any article is an extraordinary number of POINTS or COMMENTS. POINTS and COMMENTS are probably 75% of the reason why I click on a link of the front page. And the more comments a link has, the most likely, I will click on the COMMENTS thread before I even read the article. 25% of the time I will click on a link because it contains a keyword (to include the URL snippet) which is in regard to something I care about.

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

#75

Post by brown9-2 »

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-…

It seems like there should be some sort of corollary to "endless September" - an endless parade of suggestions on how to "fix" a community and nostalgia for the past.

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

#76

Post by ImprovedSilence »

shin_lao wrote: post #12

The downward spiral feeling comes from after reading HN for a while, you start to reread the same articles and same comments. It does not mean HN gets worse and worse, it means you extract less and less value.

I couldn't agree more. Also, there are plenty of run of the mill "news" articles from tech crunch et. al. But there are still more than plenty of interesting programming/hacker articles and nuggets of goodness posted.

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

#77

Post by epo »

Metafilter is on of the very few internet forums which maintains high quality. It costs you $5 to join and if you abuse your membership you will have your membership cancelled without refund or appeal.

It is actively moderated by 'staff' who delete egregiously off-topic posts (and their followups) and you can't post new topics for a week after joining.

Some of this doesn't apply to HN but penalties only work if they hurt. I mean who cares about losing karma? It only appears when someone checks your profile and it confers no advantage whatsoever (that I know of, perhaps I don't have enough).

And really, isn't some of this just people getting old who should have moved on? Like your grandpa going to the bar he frequented years ago but complaining about all these young people and their loud music. Perhaps the complainers should reflect that HN is no longer for them.

What are cost free impediments to trolls and spammers? Impose a time delay between joining and being able to reply, and a longer delay before being able to post new topics.

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

#78

Post by mistercow »

I think the karma penalty for commenting is not a bad idea, but I think taking away the ability to comment is untenable. As others have pointed out, it's too easy to game by making a new account.

A possible alternative would be to take away voting privileges if the karma score drops too low, but even this should be done as a local drop rather than a global one. Otherwise, established members with lots of karma can slide into mediocre commenting without penalty.

However, if you take away voting privileges for losing karma too quickly, then new users must not be able to vote. Otherwise, once again, it is simply too easy to create a new account when you lose your privileges.

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

#79

Post by jcr »

On the bottom of every page is a clearly defined link for everyone to make whatever "Feature Requests" they want:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363

The owner of this site, pg, helpfully provides that thread for feature/meta discussion, and kindly requests for feature/meta discussion be placed there.

If you had searched for and read all of the previous meta discussion on potential HN features, then you'd know your suggestion has already been proposed many times and debated to death in near endless variations.

The only important question is why you decided to ignore the polite request of the person who created and pays for this site with your attempt to grab attention for your feature request proposal?

You probably had good intentions, and were overly excited by your idea, but you just didn't stop to do the needed homework and think things through completely. Don't feel too bad, everyone has "Fire Aim Ready" moments.

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

#80

Post by talmand »

iand wrote: post #69

Am i missing something? If it costs karma to comment and you have no karma, how are you supposed to earn enough to start commenting again?

Not that, how are you supposed to comment the first time? I guess a new signup gets 10 karma or something.

But then if your karma is reduced to a certain threshold and you can no longer comment, how are you supposed to build your karma back up to comment?

What's stopping this bad apple from just creating another anonymous account? It's not like you're losing money if your HN account becomes useless.

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