What I've Learned from Hacker News • Hacker News Board

Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News

#111

Post by chandler » Fri, Feb 27, 2009, 6:21 AM UTC

>> The stories on the frontpage now are still roughly the ones that would have been there when HN started.

Subjectively, the frontpage and discussions have grown quite bland here; without necessarily corresponding to a reduction in the quality of each article, it feels as if the range of content linked has become homogenized.

Objectively, however, it's quite clear that the range of content hasn't strayed much at all (witness archive.org). This failure to change lends a certain banality of tone to the site that is almost unbelievable.

Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News

#112

Post by spc476 » Fri, Feb 27, 2009, 7:41 AM UTC

dcurtis wrote: post #42

I 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…

"The most dangerous thing for the frontpage is stuff that's too easy to upvote. If someone proves a new theorem, it takes some work by the reader to decide whether or not to upvote it. An amusing cartoon takes less. A rant with a rallying cry as the title takes zero, because people vote it up without even reading it."

When I read that, I was immedately struck with the idea that story votes have a "velocity in voting" and that a story with a "high voting velocity" is probably fluff, while one that has a "slow voting velocity" may be significant and perhaps some measure of this could be taken into account, kind of like the personal shields in _Dune_.

Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News

#113

Post by bodhi » Fri, Feb 27, 2009, 9:47 AM UTC

albertcardona wrote: post #105

barry-cotter wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 )

Interesting, had no idea their point had been put to such a scrutiny. Thanks for the very interesting links.

I was interested as well, I discovered this:

http://www.law.yale.edu/documents/pdf/Faculty/Donohue_Measur...

Down the rabbit-hole we go!

Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News

#114

Post by gstar » Fri, Feb 27, 2009, 11:55 AM UTC

physcab wrote: post #46

vlad wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Years ago, I figured that I could get lots of karma by creating an auto-submit script to submit stories from techcrunch and paulgraham.com. Best of all, if another auto-submit script submitted the same story a bit later, they would actually be voting up your story, so the more auto-submitters existed, the better. Sure, more competition from other scripts and users sounds like it's bad. However, I calculated that the…

I'd like to offer my perspective as a relatively new HN user. First, I stumbled upon Hacker News by searching for information related to angel and vc investing. I found Y Combinator naturally. As I was reading the application (just to see what the process entailed), I read one line about how good applicants come from HN. My impression at the time was that applications were screened for high karma points--even though…

I wouldn't read too much into how other people behave on here.

I'm argumentative, rambling and usually off-topic, and most likely to satisfy my requirement for cognitive dissonance, I've carefully ignored my karma so that my personality on HN isn't beholden to my karma score. Obvious results, I might add!

Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News

#115

Post by tigerthink » Fri, Feb 27, 2009, 6:47 PM UTC

My solution to the news-site addictiveness problem was to install LeechBlock:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4476

and put up barriers to visiting reddit or hacker news after 11:00 in the morning.

Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News

#116

Post by twopoint718 » Fri, Feb 27, 2009, 7:02 PM UTC

calambrac wrote: post #100

twopoint718 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I agree completely that it isn't a nice assumption; it is just a simplifying one (like the proverbial spherical cow) that's mostly wrong. But I don't think it is entirely wrong, and the ways that it is right may be useful, as an experiment. Maybe I shouldn't have used the word bad . But new users may not know the established traditions of a group, maybe they haven't even bothered to read the FAQ. The articles that…

Okay, but why should votes cost more for a user with more karma? I would think the opposite should be true, that if karma is an indicator of a user's value to the site, someone with more karma should pay less to vote up a newer user.

The way that I'm thinking about it is this: that it is relatively unusual, from the standpoint of the community, for a high-karma user to upvote a low-karma user.

Karma is a measure of the norms of the community, parceled out to users.

Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News

#117

Post by davi » Fri, Feb 27, 2009, 11:38 PM UTC

trominos wrote: post #66

dcurtis wrote: post #42

I 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 don't think the problem is with upvote inflation as much as dilution of individual-to-individual recognition. Limiting upvotes wouldn't address that.

Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News

#118

Post by Roberto57 » Sat, Feb 28, 2009, 1:51 AM UTC

Paul, I really hope you don't decide to shut down or limit access to HN. While I'm not at the programming skill level that HN is targeting, I'm learning a great deal from the articles I find here and I think I'm becoming a much better programmer as a result. HN is my first read every day and I appreciate being able to access it. Thank you very much.

Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News

#119

Post by inanutshell » Sat, Feb 28, 2009, 11:41 AM UTC

pg's essays give a lot of insight into practical things in life. The corresponding comments are also good, but sometimes not good.I am a regular reader of these essays. So who posts the comments can be restricted, but sustaining HN will be good for the people like me, who learn a lot from it.But it is quite natural that one wants to just post some comments, just for the sake of being a part of the discussion.Once you keep reading good things for quite some time, your fingers itch to type in some comments. Yes, I agree that this is not good and one should observe some control.But please keep up HN, it is very good.

Re: What I've Learned from Hacker News

#120

Post by SapphireSun » Sat, Feb 28, 2009, 3:37 PM UTC

spc476 wrote: post #112

dcurtis wrote: post #42

I 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…

"The most dangerous thing for the frontpage is stuff that's too easy to upvote. If someone proves a new theorem, it takes some work by the reader to decide whether or not to upvote it. An amusing cartoon takes less. A rant with a rallying cry as the title takes zero, because people vote it up without even reading it." When I read that, I was immedately struck with the idea that story votes have a "velocity in voting"…

On the other hand, certain things that have an extremely high voting velocity might be necessary. Emergency posts from pg, news of some incredibly major political event on the order of 9/11 making it on the front page. Perhaps high velocity items should be referred to moderators?