Out of curiosity, what language is HN programmed in?
It’s programmed using ARC
When you download ARC you get a HN example inside.
What I've Learned from Hacker News
81–90 of 126 posts
Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News
#82I think a lot of the growth problems might have to do with the devaluation of karma. The solution to this might actually raise the quality of comments and front page stories. When I posted a comment here a year and a half ago, I felt like each vote was a real, actual smart person praising or agreeing with what I had said. Each point had a lot of meaning, and back then 5 points was considered a pretty good score. Now…
I agree, and I think that the solution is simple: limit people's ability to give out upvotes. Maybe restrict people's weekly upvotes to c * ln(karma) + d or something. (Make d small!) Or have upvotes actually cost you like a tenth of a karma point. (Dunno if karma should be turned into currency, though, since then I could imagine people trying to game the system.) This solves another problem that really bothers me: a…
I think, rather than a quota, the right to vote should be earned, for example by a history of quality submissions (determined by either of the algorithms described by PG). This is already partly so with the (more simplistic) karma threshold.
In the same vein, addressing the problem of too many comments, the extent of right to comment could somehow be earned. Say an unproven user can only comment in particular circumstances, maybe on threads that aren't already heavily commented on?
Let new users prove themselves in the lesser leagues, so to speak, before allowing them free reign on the site proper.
Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News
#83I was living in New York when Giuliani introduced the reforms that made the broken windows theory famous, and the transformation was miraculous.
I would like to remind you here of the analysis made in the book "Freakonomics" regarding the "miraculous" reduction in crime at that time. Namely, lots of individuals that would have been in the social situation leading to crime were not born. The suspected cause being an abortion case won some years before in court.
Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News
#84Hear, hear: if you have a solution for detecting stupid comments, let Paul know. I liked the two ideas Paul mentioned: length of comment is related to stupidity, and not using the same words again. Just make those fall toward the bottom of the page and we'll all be happy. While any algorithm can be gamed, length is still pretty good. If I have to go through the extra effort of adding two paragraphs each time I write…
Having length as an indicator of quality intuitively (i.e. I don't have statistically significant counter-examples) seems wrong to me. It goes directly against what hacking stands for (quick, dirty and yet elegant solutions).
Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News
#85I have a little idea too. May be it will be useful for users of this site to view little icons (pictures) of country flags, based on geoip (like in most torrent clients), OS based on browser version - the major ones - osx, win, linux, bsd, iphone, symbian. And may be browser icon - safary, ff, chrome, etc.
If those ideas does not confront with privacy policy, they would be simple but useful tricks.
Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News
#86Hacker News is one of the places I go to "spin plates." In some ways it's a productivity enhancement inasmuchas I keep my mind active when otherwise needing a quick break.
HN is also my primary tech portal. While I still visit slashdot, I've found HN to be faster on stories that appear there, and I've also found more relevant items here.
For instance, there was recently a thread here regarding list copying in Python. Though I've used Python for years, I'd never known the information that was in the linked article. It's now a part of my personal Python knowledge base.
I like HN. I read it regularly, whether at work, at home on the computers, or on the go through my iPhone. It's that good. Thank you!
Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News
#87I think a lot of the growth problems might have to do with the devaluation of karma. The solution to this might actually raise the quality of comments and front page stories. When I posted a comment here a year and a half ago, I felt like each vote was a real, actual smart person praising or agreeing with what I had said. Each point had a lot of meaning, and back then 5 points was considered a pretty good score. Now…
Sounds like a textbook example of Dunbar's number. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number Maybe a good solution is to break the community down into neighborhoods of ~150 people.
Nice. A more scientifically plausible version of the "monkeysphere."
http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html
It felt weird that a satirical website would have such a profound article; it's good to know that more serious consideration into the underlying concept has been made. (The above wiki article once made heavy reference to the term monkeysphere, but had it edited out over time. There's still quite a bit of text about it on the discussion page.)
Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News
#88One way to avoid meanness is to apply a principle known colloquially as "Miller's Law." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Armitage_Miller
To understand what another person is saying, you must assume that it is true and try to imagine what it could be true _of_.
That is, when you see someone wrong on the internet, instead of trying to force them to agree with you, identify what they know that makes them believe their assertion.
Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News
#89I was living in New York when Giuliani introduced the reforms that made the broken windows theory famous, and the transformation was miraculous. I would like to remind you here of the analysis made in the book "Freakonomics" regarding the "miraculous" reduction in crime at that time. Namely, lots of individuals that would have been in the social situation leading to crime were not born. The suspected cause being an a…
I love Freakonomics, it's a large part of the reason I'm studying economics but that chapter is a catastrophic pile of wrong. Two articles picking it to pieces
http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/wp/wp2005/wp0515.pdf http://islandia.law.yale.edu/donohue/Joyce%20%282004%29.pdf)
Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know most of the highest karma users and I'm pretty sure they're not using scripts. I also have lots of code watching voting patterns (e.g. for voting rings) and though it's common for a user to submit many stories from one site, the evidence suggests nearly all of them are doing it to drive traffic, not game karma.
though it's common for a user to submit many stories from one site... Hmm, looks like 15 of my 21 submissions have been from my blog. ... the evidence suggests nearly all of them are doing it to drive traffic... Ouch. Any chance that I can convince you that I honestly think that the articles I submit are of interest to hackers? After all, I don't submit all of my blog posts here... just almost all.
I submit my own posts from time to time, and I've only had one killed (to my knowledge). And that one was easily explained: somebody else had beaten me to submitting my own post with a slightly different URL!