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Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#31

Post by krapp »

_alternator_ wrote: post #11

Devils advocate take: I think the quality of the ShowHN projects are in fact getting higher, at least the ones that land in the front page. The issue is that projects that used to take weeks, months, or even years of work now can be done in a weekend or so. It’s been democratizing, but it also means that when we look at these posts we (rightly) see that these new projects aren’t that much effort _with AI assistance_.…

Except the quality hasn't been getting higher. Most of those projects wouldn't be considered HN worthy if a human being had made them, they only get the praise they do because they were generated by an LLM and as such they aren't projects so much as demonstrations of the latest model's capabilities.

Also the purpose of Show HN along with HN in general is to spark intellectual curiosity and create interesting conversation, and nothing about LLM generated code does that, because the person who prompted the AI to make it doesn't understand it and can't discuss it in any depth.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#32

Post by cindyllm »

delichon wrote: post #28

There is an epistemic silver lining. This is in fact a Red Queen's race that cannot be won. So in the end the only solution is to evaluate the text on its own merits without reference to the writer's status, because that status can no longer be reliably detected. For a public feed like this one, the only alternative is to ignore it. The fire hose of data will inevitably become ever more fecal. We can only walk away f…

[dead]

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#33

Post by mapontosevenths »

heavyset_go wrote: post #24
BalinKing wrote: post #7

I furthermore wish that "posting an LLM-generated comment (i.e. and passing it off as your own)" was worthy of an instant ban, because I see this sort of behavior from non-green accounts as well. EDIT: I meant (but totally forgot) to qualify that my "proposal" would only apply when the LLM-ness is self-obvious—idk, make up a "reasonable person" standard or something. Presumably, the moderators would err on the side o…

Do this with submissions, too. Or at least put some indicator that it's AI generated.

I am more annoyed by the anti-AI luddites filling the comments with low value complaints than I am by quality content written partially by an LLM.

Those low value complaints add nothing to the conversation, and the content didnt make it to the front page because it was bad. If the sole objection is "AI bad", keep it to yourself....its boring.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#35

Post by Springtime »

Oras wrote: post #25
castral wrote: post #16

I don't understand how this is supposed to solve anything, and I've seen it suggested as a solution multiple times. If you restrict comments to older accounts, all it's going to do is make the bot creators speculatively open and proactively age accounts for future use.

I wish for karma based too if we managed to get filters. I want to see posts only by accounts with {x}+ karma points.

Would be fine for a personal filter but if used globally would incentivize karma gaming. You can get high karma from reposts of past popular submissions (an author who was in prison who reached the front page even half-joked/resented once how many common Wikipedia articles land on the front page for the nth time).

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#36

Post by saulpw »

delichon wrote: post #28

There is an epistemic silver lining. This is in fact a Red Queen's race that cannot be won. So in the end the only solution is to evaluate the text on its own merits without reference to the writer's status, because that status can no longer be reliably detected. For a public feed like this one, the only alternative is to ignore it. The fire hose of data will inevitably become ever more fecal. We can only walk away f…

"cannot be won" "only solution" "only alternative". sorry, no, that's too black and white. There are other solutions, even if they will only work for a couple of days/months/years.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#37

Post by alabhyajindal »

100%. Not sure what the solution is but I have lost interest in Show HNs these days. Part of it is because when someone posted before, it usually meant they spent a fair amount of time thinking, and found it worthwhile to spend energy on the project. This was a nice first filter for bad ideas and now no longer exists.

Even for posts that are interesting to me, I get the feeling that it's not worth looking at because it was probably made using LLMs. Nothing against them, but I personally thought of Show HNs as doing something for the love of it, the end result being a bonus.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#39

Post by andai »

castral wrote: post #16

I don't understand how this is supposed to solve anything, and I've seen it suggested as a solution multiple times. If you restrict comments to older accounts, all it's going to do is make the bot creators speculatively open and proactively age accounts for future use.

Several of the posts I've seen are from autonomous AI agents, which don't currently seem to have that kind of long-term planning.

Re: Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting

#40

Post by dom96 »

castral wrote: post #16

I don't understand how this is supposed to solve anything, and I've seen it suggested as a solution multiple times. If you restrict comments to older accounts, all it's going to do is make the bot creators speculatively open and proactively age accounts for future use.

My prediction is that nothing short of human verification is going to solve this.
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