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Too much noise in HN? (Open question)

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61–68 of 68 posts

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

#61
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I thought the points was just a rating for the comment or submission. I didn't realize those points were transferred to the user that made the comment/submission. As for your down voting me, whatever. Enjoy. I don't even know what use karma can be on this website. Though at least now I know there is some.

If it's any consolation I felt bad about down voting you just after I did it but I thought you were trying to be obnoxious. Sadly, you can't undownvote (but I'll up vote this to try to supplement your newly discovered karma score)

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

#62

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…

Technically "2. ??? 3. Profit!" was a South Park-ism (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomes_(South_Park) ) And I realise that this comment was perhaps what you were complaining about - but it was worth pointing it out none-the-less. (And for the record: "1. Collect Underpants, 2. ????, 3. Profit" seems to be a more mature business model than some that are featured here on hn.)

Technically "2. ??? 3. Profit!" was a South Park-ism

I for one welcome our new television meme overlords.

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

#63
I think we can reduce bad submissions by prohibting new users and users with a karma less than 500 for example.

We can calculate a score based on user oldness and his score, so he can submit or not and the time between his submissions.

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

#65
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I thought the points was just a rating for the comment or submission. I didn't realize those points were transferred to the user that made the comment/submission. As for your down voting me, whatever. Enjoy. I don't even know what use karma can be on this website. Though at least now I know there is some.

Make that a second person - and I've been on the site for over a year. I knew that _comments_ added Karma, but I wasn't aware that a story submission's Karma is added to a person's total.

I've always wondered how someone who has been on the site for less than a year can have a Karma > 1000 points. I always thought they were posting a lot - but a dozen 50 Point submissions will get you halfway there pretty quickly...

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

#66
post #25

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" ?

I didn't even know we had karma here.

I'm sure you also "don't see race".

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

#67
I completely agree that there seems to be far too much noise on HN.

That's actually the reason why I haven't bothered checking this website for months, but got curious and decided to come back today to see if things have changed.

The thing that I find most noisy are the "ASK HN" posts. I wish there was a way to filter these out, so I only get news.

C'est la vie

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

#68
imo, yes, the quality/type-of/whatever of submissions has become very different from what it was 2 years ago. but then again, that's a subjective analysis.

but imho tags/categories are awful. there has to be a better solution to this.

i don't think filtering domains will do much good either.

editors like slashdot aren't exactly great (and require an editor staff).

voting schemes reflect the taste of the community (more specifically the percentage of people that vote - not taking into account bots/cheaters). there's always slashdot's semi-random karma system, but it's not really that great either.

so really, what's the solution? no effing clue..

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on the other hand, i'd really like to know the stats on the number of people who click on an article and the number of people who voted on the same article.. also, average points stories get and so on..

edit: oh yeah, nevermind that, forgot that only after some X karma you can downvote/flag

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oh well, information overload.. it's a joy

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