New users: Welcome. Please read the site guidelines. • Hacker News Board

Re: New users: Welcome. Please read the site guidelines.

#61

Post by Radix » Sat, Jan 31, 2009, 3:39 PM UTC

critic wrote: post #59

From all the downmodding of the linked comment, I gather a lot of people are going to disagree, but I actually think the comment may have been the most helpful one in the thread. Its message was: Prioritize, focus on things that are relevant to your success, not on things that only matter after you've succeeded, i.e. see the bigger picture. Perhaps the delivery could have been better.

The method a person uses to convey that idea is important. The way it was said, there was likely too much work to be done extracting that simple idea compared to the ideas worth to the parent poster. I think everyone's opinion is that the way we communicate our ideas on this board is also important.

Re: New users: Welcome. Please read the site guidelines.

#62

Post by davidw » Sat, Jan 31, 2009, 4:01 PM UTC

pg wrote: post #39

nailer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people may enter fake names, but asking for their first and last names at least sets expectations. As you've touched on, allowing people to find you on hacker news would also be a benefit.

Usernames consisting of people's first and last names feels corporate. It would be a bummer not to have any mechanical_fishes.

One thing that might help just a bit is to more prominently encourage people to add some contact information in their profiles. It is, unfortunately, fairly rare.

Re: New users: Welcome. Please read the site guidelines.

#63

Post by icey » Sat, Jan 31, 2009, 4:07 PM UTC

mikeyur wrote: post #49

zain wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody can downvote stories, but if they're violating the rules, high-karma users can flag them for deletion.

I would be cool with allowing high karma users the ability to down vote stories (people on the top 100 list for example).

I used to really want downvoting. Flagging really works much better. The stories that I would have ended up downvoting either don't belong here and get [dead]-ed, or they spawn a lot of fascinating conversation.

Fortunately, people haven't been doing a lot of gaming of the system yet. The biggest problem with upvoting only is that controversial posts garner the most votes (a thousand people love a subject and ten thousand people HATE it, so it gets a thousand upvotes and a TON of comments, even if most people disagree with the premise).

Re: New users: Welcome. Please read the site guidelines.

#64

Post by icey » Sat, Jan 31, 2009, 4:10 PM UTC

TooMuchNick wrote: post #11

kaens wrote: post #10

I'd personally like to say "Please keep HN civil, free from trolling, and intellectual." This site has been a great resource - and that's at least partially because the tone of the vast majority of the community here is pretty serious. I have an account on reddit as well, and my tone over there is different than my tone here. On reddit I make a decent amount of off-the-cuff remarks, occasionally troll a bit, particip…

And by "grown-up," we mean "like grown-ups who aren't from TechCrunch."

You really should re-read the top level of this post. It's directed squarely at you.

Re: New users: Welcome. Please read the site guidelines.

#65

Post by TooMuchNick » Sat, Jan 31, 2009, 4:56 PM UTC

icey wrote: post #64

TooMuchNick wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And by "grown-up," we mean "like grown-ups who aren't from TechCrunch."

You really should re-read the top level of this post. It's directed squarely at you.

I just learned the very hard way to never ever comment on HN after drinking.

Re: New users: Welcome. Please read the site guidelines.

#66

Post by igurari » Sat, Jan 31, 2009, 4:59 PM UTC

pg wrote: post #37

sh1mmer wrote: post #19

Curiously PG posting this gets 50 karma and counting, someone else posted a similar thing earlier in the week and got flagged dead. I don't want to see this topic regularly but maybe the guidelines could be made more prominent for new users?

Good idea. I should add some kind of welcome page.

An alternative to placing site guidelines on a welcome page or in the navigation header (where I believe they would eventually be glossed over) would be to link to the guidelines from within inappropriate comments. If a comment gets downmodded below a certain level, it could either be appended with a link to the site guidelines or altogether replaced by a link to the guidelines. This would probably be a better hint to the commenter that something he/she said may have violated the guidelines. This may also have the side effect of keeping people from abusing the downmod option.

This could be one approach to dealing with the "broken windows" issue: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=373356

Re: New users: Welcome. Please read the site guidelines.

#67

Post by jws » Sat, Jan 31, 2009, 5:15 PM UTC

pg wrote: post #37

sh1mmer wrote: post #19

Curiously PG posting this gets 50 karma and counting, someone else posted a similar thing earlier in the week and got flagged dead. I don't want to see this topic regularly but maybe the guidelines could be made more prominent for new users?

Good idea. I should add some kind of welcome page.

Displaying the policy before a low karma user can reply would be nice.

If you find yourself in that section of code, the little "help" link that shows after the edit box when "edit"ing could also be displayed when you are starting a reply.

Re: New users: Welcome. Please read the site guidelines.

#68

Post by paulgb » Sat, Jan 31, 2009, 5:38 PM UTC

siong1987 wrote: post #41

pg wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know (the web server doesn't keep track of referring urls), but it started on thursday.

Because Michael Arrington mentioned YC News in Techcrunch??? http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/04/2009-products-i-cant-li...

Hacker News is another Digg-like news site that focuses on tech that I visit daily as well.

Not only mentioned, but likened to Digg. People may have been expecting that what passes on Digg would pass here.

Re: New users: Welcome. Please read the site guidelines.

#69

Post by mst » Sat, Jan 31, 2009, 5:56 PM UTC

xenophanes wrote: post #25

> We're trying to see whether by asking people to be civil we can avoid the kind of nastiness that anonymity breeds by default. Plus liberal use of disabling people's accounts without notifying them let alone asking them to change something.

I think it basically boils down to:

Hacker News logins are a privilege, not a right.

Coming from a background of things like talkers where you needed to be explicitly invited by another user before you could get in, I don't really have a problem with that.

Re: New users: Welcome. Please read the site guidelines.

#70

Post by LogicHoleFlaw » Sat, Jan 31, 2009, 5:57 PM UTC

diN0bot wrote: post #56

adamc wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would long-time users that "haven't done anything" need the hint?

One may still benefit greatly from the experience of posting and commenting rather than observing. I was reading hn a while before I got an account, and never really thought about karma, submission titling or type, or comment voting. I have often wondered why the posting, submission, and voting guidelines haven't been more prominent. I appreciate Paul's active role in this community--I think it account's for much of…

Incidentally, having the page detailing the post-formatting capabilities on the Reply page would be handy, so people are aware of italics,

  code indentation

and so on.