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Too much noise in HN? (Open question)

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Re: Too much noise in HN? (Open question)

#31

Post by travisjeffery »

321abc wrote: post #18
travisjeffery wrote: post #8

I was going to comment last night on the post on how to sleep better in the Summer, but I didn't in hopes that sort of thing would stop itself. But all-in-all that sort of stuff doesn't belong on Hacker News, after all the site is Hacker News.

What solution do you propose? I don't think merely saying "let's keep things topical" is going to work. People are going to keep submitting articles they find interesting, and upvoting articles they find interesting, regardless of the topic. In the interests of full disclosure, I was the one who submitted the "How to Sleep Comfortably on a Hot Night" article. Yes, it's not topical. However, I'm not ashamed! I thought…

The way I see is that this is how things start: one article like this is submitted and then each week another one is added, like a Fibonacci sequence until you have how Proggit or Digg is today.

And you can say that Hacker News will stay pure or whatever but this is exactly how things began with other sites and then slowly but surely things became less and less relevant. I do think that it will take quite some time before Hacker News gets that way but I'd rather be strict now and nip it in the bud before regretting it later.

With the analogy of tags I would say that if you had the two most basic tags: "hacker-related" (programming, science, tech and related fields) or "non-hacker-related" (ie. sleep habits) Then I would only have hacker-related tagged material here.

Now I realize that in the case of Digg they did purposely branch out to expand their community. And I doubt pg would do the same. Thus the speed at which Hacker News would descend in quality would be much slower, but in my mind it's not a sense of speed it's a sense of direction. And right now Hacker News is descending from the direction and the kind quality we had.

Re: Too much noise in HN? (Open question)

#32

Post by 321abc »

sorbus wrote: post #30
321abc wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't even know we had karma here. I just submit articles I find interesting in hopes that they'll be interesting to the community. Also, I'm not quite clear on what you're having problems with. Why can't you "go the the new page and up-vote more interesting stories" ?

Upvoting a submission also adds it to a list of saved submissions. Thus, if one uses that list to remember interesting articles, discussions, or things that one wishes to read, upvoting many articles which one does not necessarily want saved would dilute that list.

Oh. I guess I never used that feature. I just either bookmark the link in my browser, keep a tab open with that article, or just keep the original link to the story in my RSS reader.

Re: Too much noise in HN? (Open question)

#33

Post by 321abc »

travisjeffery wrote: post #31
321abc wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What solution do you propose? I don't think merely saying "let's keep things topical" is going to work. People are going to keep submitting articles they find interesting, and upvoting articles they find interesting, regardless of the topic. In the interests of full disclosure, I was the one who submitted the "How to Sleep Comfortably on a Hot Night" article. Yes, it's not topical. However, I'm not ashamed! I thought…

The way I see is that this is how things start: one article like this is submitted and then each week another one is added, like a Fibonacci sequence until you have how Proggit or Digg is today. And you can say that Hacker News will stay pure or whatever but this is exactly how things began with other sites and then slowly but surely things became less and less relevant. I do think that it will take quite some time b…

So you propose we "be strict now". Could you elaborate on just what you mean by that?

If I could be so bold as to take a guess at what you mean, it seems you're suggesting that the HN community submit only topical links.

I think that suggestion will generally simply be ignored by those people who want to (for whatever reason) submit non-topical links because only a small fraction of HN submitters will even read your suggestion, and most of those that read it aren't going to care (or they wouldn't have submitted off-topic links in the first place).

In order to reach all submitters, we could have some sort of global notice reminding everyone to only submit topical links. Maybe a stern and clearly worded warning on the submission page itself.

But say we do that and people continue to submit and upvote off-topic links. In my opinion, this is precisely what's going to happen. So then what?

I think there is no solution to keeping HN pure short of having the site be moderated by people dedicated to keeping it pure. But clearly that's not the model HN wants to pursue.

As long as HN is self-moderating it will not stay pure, and the more popular it gets, the further away from purity it will drift (witness what happened to Slashdot and Kuro5hin).

So, given that HN is not and probably will not stay pure, how can we improve the situation? I think the solution is clear: tags. Tags will let each reader more easily focus on what they find interesting, no matter how "impure" the site gets. It's an easy solution and one that should scale pretty well.

Re: Too much noise in HN? (Open question)

#34

Post by chrischen »

sorbus wrote: post #30
321abc wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't even know we had karma here. I just submit articles I find interesting in hopes that they'll be interesting to the community. Also, I'm not quite clear on what you're having problems with. Why can't you "go the the new page and up-vote more interesting stories" ?

Upvoting a submission also adds it to a list of saved submissions. Thus, if one uses that list to remember interesting articles, discussions, or things that one wishes to read, upvoting many articles which one does not necessarily want saved would dilute that list.

Yea I just found out about that feature. I was trying to figure out how to add an article to my saved list and was dumbfounded to find the one I wanted to save already in my list! I thought for briefly (for as long as my intelligence would allow) Ycombinator had read my mind and it turned out it was cause I voted it up. Yep, so intuitive!

Re: Too much noise in HN? (Open question)

#35

Post by JeremyChase »

321abc wrote: post #25
timtrueman wrote: post #10

I have one suggestion that would possibly help: separate out "saved" versus "up-voted". For me, I rarely want to save something but I would love to go to the new page and up-vote more interesting stories to get rid of the noise. But maybe that's just me--I'm also the type who never submits anything unless I want to see the discussion on it. I'm guessing there's a lot of karma-whores and hence all the TechCrunch artic…

I didn't even know we had karma here. I just submit articles I find interesting in hopes that they'll be interesting to the community. Also, I'm not quite clear on what you're having problems with. Why can't you "go the the new page and up-vote more interesting stories" ?

You know full well that karma is tracked on HN.

Re: Too much noise in HN? (Open question)

#36

Post by 321abc »

JeremyChase wrote: post #35
321abc wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't even know we had karma here. I just submit articles I find interesting in hopes that they'll be interesting to the community. Also, I'm not quite clear on what you're having problems with. Why can't you "go the the new page and up-vote more interesting stories" ?

You know full well that karma is tracked on HN.

No. I had no idea it was. Even now I'm not sure I believe you.

Re: Too much noise in HN? (Open question)

#37

Post by iamwil »

kirubakaran wrote: post #28
smhinsey wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did a quick search and didn't see anything too relevant. What is the difference between the classic and standard views?

Classic counts the votes of only the users who have been with HN for > 1 year.

How did you know about this? I seemed to have missed the boat on this one.

Re: Too much noise in HN? (Open question)

#38

Post by iamwil »

rms wrote: post #4

There is more noise by quantity because there are more links than ever, but the average quality hasn't gone down. It only seems like it sometimes, because the site has good and bad days. Also, if you just want programming links, read http://hackerhackernews.com/ . The topic here is much broader than only technical things.

When there are slow news days, the front page tends to fill with dribble. Sometimes that gets people to submit better stuff, so it balances itself out.

Re: Too much noise in HN? (Open question)

#39

Post by lionhearted »

One thing I'm seeing more of lately are internet-isms in comments like "Fail" and "2. ??? 3. Profit!" It seems to dilute the quality of the comments for two reasons - first, they themselves aren't that insightful. But more scary is that like five other people typically jump in and reply with more internetisms afterwards. The comments here have historically been the best I've seen, but seem to be slipping just a touch lately.

I don't know how that would be tackled exactly. I suppose just introducing new people politely to the culture here, and for current members to refrain from upvoting comments that are ok but have the pseudo-clever semi-snarky internet vibe to them.

Re: Too much noise in HN? (Open question)

#40

Post by TomOfTTB »

321abc wrote: post #36
JeremyChase wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know full well that karma is tracked on HN.

No. I had no idea it was. Even now I'm not sure I believe you.

Then I'm sure you won't mind me down voting you for being ridiculous (since "x points" is the first thing at the beginning of every comment/submission)
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