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

#211

Post by simon » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 7:41 PM UTC

cooldeal wrote: post #144

bane wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not posts about Apple per se. Apple makes fantastic stuff. It was the out of control community fawning and over reactionary responses to the slightest critical comment that was the problem. A year ago even commenting that anything was wrong with any Apple product was met with derison, scorn and a flock of downvotes. For whatever reason, the tone here has changed tremendously for the better so that this community…

I find it extremely funny how any small of hint of criticism of Groklaw's 'analysis' or the sacred PJ was met with instant whiting out of the comment, but now that Groklaw took Google's side against Apple, comments, critical of Groklaw comments get a bunch of upvotes or at least are not flagged to death. General rules I have noticed even after points stopped being show are (mostly regardless of the actual facts): Tak…

Mentioning religion is guaranteed downvotes, unless the thread is about depression or suicide. That's the reason that I am a 95% (or more) lurker rather than poster. I loved HN when it first came out, but the heavy anti-faith undercurrent is off-putting.

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

#212

Post by stcredzero » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 7:45 PM UTC

forrestthewoods wrote: post #208

Any solution relying on karma is doomed to fail imo. Karma is easy to min-max. I've gotten good at it. Only ~1200 karma but I'm averaging over 10 per post. It's easy with a bit of practice. None of my comments are particularly good. They typically express a mostly safe opinion in a mild manner. I don't like to make non-root posts as they rarely get upvotes and I hesitate to post in a large thread (like this one) as i…

I will corroborate this, from the POV of someone who has been here a long while. (> 13000) Commenting and downvoting has gotten less thoughtful around here of late. I especially note that there's a lot of knee-jerk downvoting by people who seem to read carelessly.

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

#213

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 7:50 PM UTC

cooldeal wrote: post #144

bane wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not posts about Apple per se. Apple makes fantastic stuff. It was the out of control community fawning and over reactionary responses to the slightest critical comment that was the problem. A year ago even commenting that anything was wrong with any Apple product was met with derison, scorn and a flock of downvotes. For whatever reason, the tone here has changed tremendously for the better so that this community…

I find it extremely funny how any small of hint of criticism of Groklaw's 'analysis' or the sacred PJ was met with instant whiting out of the comment, but now that Groklaw took Google's side against Apple, comments, critical of Groklaw comments get a bunch of upvotes or at least are not flagged to death. General rules I have noticed even after points stopped being show are (mostly regardless of the actual facts): Tak…

[deleted]

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

#214

Post by powertower » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 7:50 PM UTC

cooldeal wrote: post #144

bane wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not posts about Apple per se. Apple makes fantastic stuff. It was the out of control community fawning and over reactionary responses to the slightest critical comment that was the problem. A year ago even commenting that anything was wrong with any Apple product was met with derison, scorn and a flock of downvotes. For whatever reason, the tone here has changed tremendously for the better so that this community…

I find it extremely funny how any small of hint of criticism of Groklaw's 'analysis' or the sacred PJ was met with instant whiting out of the comment, but now that Groklaw took Google's side against Apple, comments, critical of Groklaw comments get a bunch of upvotes or at least are not flagged to death. General rules I have noticed even after points stopped being show are (mostly regardless of the actual facts): Tak…

TorretFreak post = front page

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

#215

Post by elviejo » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 8:00 PM UTC

simon wrote: post #207

wensing wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

2025 days! Woohoo! :-) Sorry about that ... back to your regularly scheduled programming.

I've been a leach for 2023 days :-)

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

#216

Post by tekacsYC » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 8:11 PM UTC

wensing wrote: post #202

tommi wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, as humans would say that, the cutoff could be the youngest of leaders. However, that really doesn't answer the problem when you don't define what a leader is. If it's the highest amount of Karma past 7 days, then the youngest leader could even be a day old user. Please respond with solutions, not http wrappers.

If you go to the URL in the code, it defines what a leader is: the 100 people with the highest karma. By define get_leaders I meant write the scraper, not come up with the definition. Heh!

574 days and it's llambda

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

#217

Post by aeontech » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 8:18 PM UTC

simon wrote: post #211

cooldeal wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it extremely funny how any small of hint of criticism of Groklaw's 'analysis' or the sacred PJ was met with instant whiting out of the comment, but now that Groklaw took Google's side against Apple, comments, critical of Groklaw comments get a bunch of upvotes or at least are not flagged to death. General rules I have noticed even after points stopped being show are (mostly regardless of the actual facts): Tak…

Mentioning religion is guaranteed downvotes, unless the thread is about depression or suicide. That's the reason that I am a 95% (or more) lurker rather than poster. I loved HN when it first came out, but the heavy anti-faith undercurrent is off-putting.

Are you saying that it was more religion-friendly in the "old days"?

I don't think I've ever seen a single religion-related comment on HN, so I'm not sure where you see a "heavy anti-faith undercurrent". Isn't it more likely that religious discussion is just off-topic here, so we don't see much of it?

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

#218

Post by zerostar07 » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 8:20 PM UTC

forrestthewoods wrote: post #208

Any solution relying on karma is doomed to fail imo. Karma is easy to min-max. I've gotten good at it. Only ~1200 karma but I'm averaging over 10 per post. It's easy with a bit of practice. None of my comments are particularly good. They typically express a mostly safe opinion in a mild manner. I don't like to make non-root posts as they rarely get upvotes and I hesitate to post in a large thread (like this one) as i…

Wow that is very insightful. I 'm surprised that even here people are willingly conformists to gain acceptance.

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

#219

Post by Karunamon » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 8:21 PM UTC

neilk wrote: post #201

larrys wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"HN rockstars would receive hundreds of upvotes for the most minor of comments" It would be interesting to test the same thesis that I have which indicates there is a halo effect on anyone considered a rockstar which allows them to get more upvotes than they would w/o the rockstar status. This is of course the way life operates. The only question is to what extent it happens. People tend to pay more attention to some…

Maybe there should be an "anonymous week" where usernames are hidden. Just to see if there are any different patterns.

This is one of the few things that 4chan has right - by removing names, you take ego entirely out of the question.

Then, to avoid turning into 4chan, you can have posts be anonymous on the front end, but accountable to a user id on the back end only visible to the user themselves and the site staff.

It would be an interesting experiment.

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

#220

Post by Rhino55 » Fri, Sep 07, 2012, 8:25 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…

Hah! HN has definitely gotten worse over the last 5 years. You may have gotten smarter, but HN is now a major news hub for a VERY VERY VERY FUCKING DESIRABLE DEMOGRAPHIC.

So there is about 1000% more spam and maybe 20% more useful posts. C'est la vie.