A proposal for improving HN : it should cost a user Karma to post • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by edw519 » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 2:25 PM UTC

mixmax wrote: post #83

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-…

As an old-timer who used to be very active but isn't anymore I agree with you. When I first created an account 1883 days ago I thought this place was amazing, and that I'd never seen such high quality discussion on the Internet before. Now I don't find the quality to be quite as high, but after thinking about it I've realised what has changed: Me. It's been 5 years, and I've changed. I've become much more knowledgeab…

Or maybe it's more like this:

2007. edw519: blah blah blah. Community: You should speak less and build more.

2008. edw519: blah blah blah. Community: You should speak less and build more.

2009. edw519: blah blah blah. Community: You should speak less and build more.

2010. edw519: blah blah blah. Community: You should speak less and build more.

2011. edw519: blah blah blah. Community: You should speak less and build more.

2012. edw519, too busy building to comment. Community: Where have all the old timers gone?

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

#102

Post by nkohari » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 2:26 PM UTC

My Hacker News account is 1859 days old (just over 5 years). Over those 5 years, I've gone through several stages of my entrepreneurial career.

HN has been there from the time when I just was dreaming about launching a startup, through the gut check when I finally quit my full-time job to found a startup, selling that startup to another company, being fired by that company, and finally joining a friend's startup as CTO. I've changed throughout, and I've seen Hacker News change as well.

The problem I have witnessed with Hacker News is that over the years, it's transformed from a place where civil and intelligent discourse can be had to a place where each comment seems to be made for show. Rather than making solid arguments, each person seems to want to be seen as more intelligent than the rest of the commenters. This phenomena is the reason for what in my opinion is a breathtaking level of pedantry about the most mundane topics.

For example, there was a post on the front page yesterday about scalability at GitHub. It was an interesting and insightful article from a knowledgeable author. The top comment was something along the lines of, "I can't believe they wasted so much time making the UI look this good." HN used to be a place where insightful articles were rewarded with intelligent conversation and debate. What happened?

Another example. Someone launched a site earlier this week involving the sales of hobbyist electronics. The site was definitely interesting, and they experienced a large volume of traffic from HN and Reddit. The top comment? Something along the lines of, "when a startup can't keep its site up, it makes me question their abilities." HN used to be a site where you would be congratulated for launching. What happened?

It's this kind of stuff that has to go. I don't think Hacker News was ever perfect -- and maybe I'm just rooting for the site because of the potential that it has -- but it's definitely gotten worse over the past few years.

As a community, we need to stop the posturing and the pedantry, and get back to civil and intelligent discourse. We also need to act as the site's immune system, and stop promoting content that is clearly written to be seen but adds nothing to the conversation.

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

#103

Post by jlgreco » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 2:29 PM UTC

epo wrote: post #82

bane wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So, you don't seem to like posts about Apple but you do seem to like posts about Android. Isn't this the whole 'problem'? People only object to posts they don't want to see, so to a fandroid any post about Apple proves that HN is full Apple fanboys.

It seems to me his problem is was not so much with the Apple posts (except Gruber's which he calls out specifically), but rather the quality of the comments in Apple related discussion.

(I cannot say that I have noticed an increase in the number of Android posts here, but there does seem to have been a change in the tone of discussion.)

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

#104

Post by wensing » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 2:29 PM UTC

edw519 wrote: post #101

mixmax wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an old-timer who used to be very active but isn't anymore I agree with you. When I first created an account 1883 days ago I thought this place was amazing, and that I'd never seen such high quality discussion on the Internet before. Now I don't find the quality to be quite as high, but after thinking about it I've realised what has changed: Me. It's been 5 years, and I've changed. I've become much more knowledgeab…

Or maybe it's more like this: 2007. edw519: blah blah blah. Community: You should speak less and build more. 2008. edw519: blah blah blah. Community: You should speak less and build more. 2009. edw519: blah blah blah. Community: You should speak less and build more. 2010. edw519: blah blah blah. Community: You should speak less and build more. 2011. edw519: blah blah blah. Community: You should speak less and build m…

I've been around for 2,017 days. Number of comments has gone down steadily, but I agree with mixmax as for the reason.

Would any old-timer care to use the open-source HN code and create a vintage HN by automatically inviting anyone with an age of >N days?

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

#105

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 2:29 PM UTC

epo wrote: post #82

bane wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So, you don't seem to like posts about Apple but you do seem to like posts about Android. Isn't this the whole 'problem'? People only object to posts they don't want to see, so to a fandroid any post about Apple proves that HN is full Apple fanboys.

[deleted]

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

#106

Post by ChuckMcM » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 2:29 PM UTC

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 feel like this is closer to the root cause. People start out and everything is new, and they have this huge sense of wonder about what is going on around them in the valley, and then after a year or two you realize that bigger picture moves more slowly, a lot of people re-invent the wheel, Etc.

But the conversations are actually nearly the same quality, they are just re-hashes of conversations you already know the answers too. Sometimes you'll get someone who is quite disgruntled from the it and that will be a pain until they stop but for the most part it seems to be ok.

That said, if every submission only had one comment 'see link to previous discussions of this form' that would be pretty boring too.

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

#107

Post by pkamb » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 2:29 PM UTC

stonemetal wrote: post #73

koushikn wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are there any good subreddits for "patio11-esque" content? Not hard CS, not vc startups, not /r/SEO, but kinda the marketing/small-online-business thing?

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

#108

Post by dschiptsov » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 2:29 PM UTC

It should cost a user Karma to down-vote and up-vote.

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

#109

Post by jqueryin » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 2:29 PM UTC

mixmax wrote: post #83

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-…

As an old-timer who used to be very active but isn't anymore I agree with you. When I first created an account 1883 days ago I thought this place was amazing, and that I'd never seen such high quality discussion on the Internet before. Now I don't find the quality to be quite as high, but after thinking about it I've realised what has changed: Me. It's been 5 years, and I've changed. I've become much more knowledgeab…

Here's a proposal. Add the ability to filter out users based on their membership date. You could theoretically use this to associate yourself with people who have been around HN as long as you have. Even setting a minimum threshold to something like 100 days or a year would definitely reduce a lot of noise in the "new" section.

One of the best parts to me is the data is already stored and it has a very high cardinality, so it would work exceptionally well as an indexed field.

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

#110

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 2:30 PM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #92

Alex3917 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 reas…

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. I feel the need to point out that this is not, in fact, a problem with Wikipedia.

[deleted]