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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

#111

Post by recursive »

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.

Lambda the Ultimate is pretty good. If anything, I'd say the quality is higher than HN.

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

#112

Post by javery »

johnleppings wrote: post #93
kghose wrote: post #24

I think we should concentrate on 1. Submitting better articles 2. Upvoting better articles 3. Posting better comments 4. Upvoting better comments 5. Add to the signal 6. Stop worrying about the noise

This approach didn't work for Slashdot, Digg and Reddit, which are all fallen civilisations. If we don't try anything new to solve the problem, this civilisation will fall as well.

Reddit actually has extremely high quality subreddits - it is just the main tags that have degraded.

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

#113

Post by andrewhillman »

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…

You are seeing the quality go down because YC requires applicants to join HN so now you have thousands of applicants who would have never joined if YC didn't required it. I believe this plays into the quality going down but I could be wrong.

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

#114

Post by DanBC »

brown9-2 wrote: post #75
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.

This must exist! Meatball wiki has "insincere goodbyes" (http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/GoodBye), they also have the life-cycle of wikis (http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/WikiLifeCycle).

They must have something to describe the continual suggestions for a "fix".

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

#115

Post by utopkara »

Why is karma any significant to the quality of a post?

It already costs enough to create a post (in time and effort); if that doesn't have any effect on the quality, it is not clear why an additional cost in karma would make a difference.

HN is not a personalized news feed. If a story has been upvoted sufficiently to float up the ranks, that means there is sufficient community interest in the subject. Given the way HN works and the size of its audience, there is simply no way you can magically fix the posts to fit a particular definition regarding the topic, quality or the tone without strict monitoring; and if you do add admins, etc. that wouldn't be HN anymore.

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

#116

Post by DanBC »

jre wrote: post #25

An alternative solution would be to hide (by default) posts that have no response and that have been made by users with karma below a certain threshold. It would also be possible to compute the average number of upvotes for each comment thread and show the threads with the most upvotes first.

An interesting idea.

I'm not sure how well it'd cope with vote rings.

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

#117

Post by think-large »

nkohari wrote: post #102

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 C…

I am new to Hacker News. I have to say that I too despair at some of the comments posted on the site. I believe that open discourse and communication is great, but when someone posts in jest it belittles what we all desire from a community like this.

I find myself filtering comments on HN. I still go and read them (as opposed to Reddit where I don't read comments), but this is a location where comments should be meaningful and less of the "Herpty Derp" we get on YouTube. I don't believe HN is comparable to YouTube, but at the same time I can see where content in comments could be improved.

I would be in favor of a system that taught new recruits to listen and watch the community before commenting, much like what this article suggest.

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

#118

Post by larrys »

wensing wrote: post #104
edw519 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

And what might that "n" be that lets the last man over the bridge?

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

#119

Post by jameswilsterman »

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-…

HN is definitely still a great place for discussion. I think the main problem right now is how impossible it is for the average user to get good feedback on their startup using HN. Many people on this site remember the old days when anyone could post a 'Show HN' and it would almost surely receive some really thoughtful, interesting feedback. When it comes down to it, that is what people are truly lamenting.

Today, 'Show HN' posts quickly fall out of the newest page (buried beneath an avalanche of a lot of useless link spam).

See my post yesterday, which fell off the newest page in under 10 minutes:

http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=opscotch

Or when people do comment on these posts, sometimes it is done so in a passive-aggressive way, more like a 'take down' than a thoughtful comment with advice and constructive criticism. This is not always the case, but it does seem more common than it did in the past.

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

#120

Post by larrys »

andrewhillman wrote: post #113
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…

You are seeing the quality go down because YC requires applicants to join HN so now you have thousands of applicants who would have never joined if YC didn't required it. I believe this plays into the quality going down but I could be wrong.

Perhaps a clarification from anyone downvoting you as far as why you are being downvoted which I assume is because of this statement "quality go down because YC requires applicants to join HN"?

Or is it "now you have thousands of applicants who would have never joined if YC didn't required it." (sic)

For clarification, per PG:

"The first thing I notice when I look at an application is the username it was submitted under. If it's one I recognize for making thoughtful comments on Hacker News, I give the application extra attention."

http://ycombinator.com/howtoapply.html

So I can fully understand that while joining HN is not a dejure requirement to getting accepted to YC it certainly seems like a defacto requirement based on the above statement.

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