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Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

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Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#41

Post by PaulHoule »

james33 wrote: post #3
gus_massa wrote: post #2

I usually read the newest page, but usually it has a lot of 1-point stories, and many of them are almost-spam or almost-dupe. Another user proposed a newest page with a >2-points filter (someone else think that it’s interesting). See for example http://hnapp.com/filter/d3a308f2ac9a071c0bf174e0c1a8fd22

How does anything get on that list then if nobody ever sees the 1-point submission (without asking for votes).

exactly. that's the true terror of pagerank -- not that spammers are putting in millions of junk links, but that it makes legitimate people stop linking.

Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#42

Post by webhat »

Mz wrote: post #21

On a full sized monitor, most titles go only about halfway across the screen. I think with a little tweaking, you could have two columns on the front page: One with the current front page code, one with the newest stories. You might have to have titles wrap for longer titles or make some other tweaks to make this work. But that might cut back on the need to ask folks to look at new stuff. Generally speaking, if you c…

I did something similar for an RSS reader I was building based on bayesian filtering, a col-4 column on the right with the "live" feed and a main col-8 column with the filtered feed, meaning all the matches. It looked pretty good in landscape mode.

Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#43

Post by Timsalabim »

huhtenberg wrote: post #13
simonsarris wrote: post #6

Sam I think you have great power to give /newest more views if you'd consider minor redesigns. Perhaps you could dither stories so the front-page list goes top/new/top/new/top/new, etc, but that is potentially very messy. Or perhaps instead, the front-page can show 30 top stories, then a line break, then 30 new stories, all on the front page. Long-scrolling pages are in fashion, after all. These aren't well-developed…

Just splice a random /newest entry into a front page on every load. This gets extra eyes on them and helps float good stories up. Optionally mark them green, just like HN currently marks noob users.

This is a great suggestion. Or the bottom 5 are newest or something like that.

I check the front page a couple of times a day but don't take the time to go any further.

Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#44

Post by pbhjpbhj »

yesimahuman wrote: post #4

I'd be curious to hear more about how YC companies handle voting so they get their content on the front page. From what I've heard, they get a lot of help to promote content. Totally makes sense seeing as HN is built around YC, but in that light makes it a bit disingenuous to ask the community to not solicit help from their group to promote content.

Perhaps promoted content should be labelled as such, eg an orange 1px border around the listing. If adding a new story in to the mix that could have a green 1px border to highlight it was out of normal flow too.

Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#45

Post by DanBC »

chrisdevereux wrote: post #20
simonsarris wrote: post #6

Sam I think you have great power to give /newest more views if you'd consider minor redesigns. Perhaps you could dither stories so the front-page list goes top/new/top/new/top/new, etc, but that is potentially very messy. Or perhaps instead, the front-page can show 30 top stories, then a line break, then 30 new stories, all on the front page. Long-scrolling pages are in fashion, after all. These aren't well-developed…

I like the idea of adding a sample of new stories to the front. It would guarantee a number of extremely low quality submissions on the front though, which might affect the overall percieved quality of HN. It also might be a problem if simply submitting to HN guarantees a decent number of pageviews.

Perhaps new, but filtered to exclude certain sites that get a lot of attention here anyway.

Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#46

Post by kogir »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #44
yesimahuman wrote: post #4

I'd be curious to hear more about how YC companies handle voting so they get their content on the front page. From what I've heard, they get a lot of help to promote content. Totally makes sense seeing as HN is built around YC, but in that light makes it a bit disingenuous to ask the community to not solicit help from their group to promote content.

Perhaps promoted content should be labelled as such, eg an orange 1px border around the listing. If adding a new story in to the mix that could have a green 1px border to highlight it was out of normal flow too.

Job listings are the only promoted content. They're distinguished by the lack of vote arrows.

Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#47

Post by ColinWright »

gus_massa wrote: post #16
ColinWright wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that would mean that stories with only one point never get seen, and hence never get up-voted, and hence nothing gets to the 2-point page. It seems necessary that people should read "newest" and up-vote things they think are of value.

I agree. I usually read the (unfiltered) newest page, but sometime this is useful to find a story that was submitted 12 hours ago and only got 2 points. Perhaps the problem is that there are 928 stories submitted in the last 24 hours.

There is much to read, especially things that only get one up-vote, or even none at all. I simply click through the "More" link on the "newest" page gestalting the titles - there's nothing I can think of that would substantially improve on that.

Of course, that might simply be my lack of imagination.

Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#48

Post by zt »

yesimahuman wrote: post #4

I'd be curious to hear more about how YC companies handle voting so they get their content on the front page. From what I've heard, they get a lot of help to promote content. Totally makes sense seeing as HN is built around YC, but in that light makes it a bit disingenuous to ask the community to not solicit help from their group to promote content.

Other than "jobs" we get no help promoting content.

I actually think being a YC company can hurt you because all your YC buddies vote for you and then it appears that your cohort is a voting ring. I actually have to tell people NOT to vote for my posts sometimes, lest I trigger the HN Gods' wrath.

Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#49

Post by jkbyc »

privong wrote: post #9
simonsarris wrote: post #6

Sam I think you have great power to give /newest more views if you'd consider minor redesigns. Perhaps you could dither stories so the front-page list goes top/new/top/new/top/new, etc, but that is potentially very messy. Or perhaps instead, the front-page can show 30 top stories, then a line break, then 30 new stories, all on the front page. Long-scrolling pages are in fashion, after all. These aren't well-developed…

Another option is a 2-column layout (for non-mobile devices). The normal front page on the left, with the blast of new articles in the right column. Perhaps for mobile devices the new articles could go under the top stories, with some sort of obvious demarcation between them.

It's even already implemented as the Hacker News UX extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-ux/chn...

I like it a lot, it would be great to have it that way by default.

Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#50

Post by kenrikm »

yesimahuman wrote: post #4

I'd be curious to hear more about how YC companies handle voting so they get their content on the front page. From what I've heard, they get a lot of help to promote content. Totally makes sense seeing as HN is built around YC, but in that light makes it a bit disingenuous to ask the community to not solicit help from their group to promote content.

Just everyone in the office independently voting on something can trigger it, which is unfortunate since it was not even planned.
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