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Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

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Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#81

Post by klibertp »

minimaxir wrote: post #70
bl4hblahblat wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And so now i'm being downvoted, because you know...disagreement isn't cool. How can I save this...Who wants to talk about Rust? Huh? Anybody? Bitcoin? That god damn NSA? Amirite?

Complaining about downvotes isn't cool either.

Not if what a downvote means changed that drastically recently. I never complained about downvotes, because I believed in the community collective wisdom. However, in the past few weeks, I've seen many cases of downvotes being used to basically communicate that "I disagree with you and your six-paragraphs, coherent, civil post, which is even on-topic, but I'm too lazy to write my own comment explaining why, so have a downvote."

I'm seriously thinking on putting some effort into collecting some examples and starting a discussion on the topic, because it's IMHO very bad tendency.

EDIT: Although in the case of your parent post downvotes are understandable.

Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#82

Post by coffeecodecouch »

sama wrote: post #25
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…

good ideas here and in the responses. we will consider.

I suggested[0] the same thing a few months ago with a visual example of what I had in mind. Here it is again as a reminder: https://i.imgur.com/ZNQTn7q.png (I still think it's a great idea!).

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7612737

Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#83

Post by smoyer »

bl4hblahblat wrote: post #63
gjm11 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never written a line of Go, and have only a casual acquaintance with Haskell. I'm not a Microsoft fan but spend approximately zero HN time bashing them. I would not attempt to write any sort of crypto anything in Javascript. I am not a libertarian. I am slightly interested in crypto-currency but have never owned any. I think Hayek is way overrated. My karma score is approaching 8000, and I promise it's enough…

Well congratulations on that, and I swear I'm not trying to be snide here, but you've been on HN for 6 years. If you are a new user and you actually want to communicate with people...and hold a minority opinion...you will be downvoted out of visibility.

I often disagree with other posters here on HN - sometimes just to play devil's advocate and stimulate conversation around a certain point or points.

I've been down-voted just a few times for expressing my opinion when I present a well-reasoned, logical argument. (Unfortunately I've been down-voted many times trying to be funny or posting a comment that's taken in an offensive way). I think you'll find that having a debate or even just a conversation with more than one side being taken is often the best way to see the whole subject.

Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#84

Post by lotharbot »

klibertp wrote: post #81
minimaxir wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complaining about downvotes isn't cool either.

Not if what a downvote means changed that drastically recently. I never complained about downvotes, because I believed in the community collective wisdom. However, in the past few weeks, I've seen many cases of downvotes being used to basically communicate that "I disagree with you and your six-paragraphs, coherent, civil post, which is even on-topic, but I'm too lazy to write my own comment explaining why, so have a…

pg has said many times in the past that it's OK to downvote for disagreement -- even if a comment is civil, coherent, on-topic, etc. (I usually prefer to voice disagreement in such a case, but don't always have the time/energy.)

It's usually self-correcting. A lot more people can upvote than downvote, and most people don't like seeing good comments in the gray.

Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#86

Post by lisper »

Some observations:

1. Almost no one reads the new page. For proof, go to the new page and count up the total number of votes that all the stories on the new page have received in the last hour.

2. There is a VERY short time window (typically about an hour nowadays) during which a story either gets enough votes to end up on the home page (half a dozen or so seems to be enough) or drops off the first new page, after which it will never be seen again.

3. Once a story arrives on the home page, there is a very good chance that it will stay there for a while (longer than an hour anyway).

4. As a result, there is an EXTREMELY strong incentive when one has posted a story to send out an email to one's friends saying, "I just posted this to HN, please take a look and upvote it if you think it deserves it." [1]

5. A story that gets a lot of votes as a result isn't necessarily a bad story. So a voting ring detector is likely to generate false positives.

6. Simply asking people to go read the new page isn't going to fix the problem. Figuring out what to do instead isn't easy.

---

[1] Last year I did an experiment where I wrote a series of six blog posts all related to a single topic. I posted all six to HN. Three of them I sent out an email announcement, and three of them I didn't. The first three all ended up on the home page, ultimately garnering many tens of votes. The other three never got a single vote.

Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#87

Post by pbhjpbhj »

kogir wrote: post #46
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So contrary to the discussion YC companies don't get any preferential treatment on HN?

Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#88

Post by 3rd3 »

willvarfar wrote: post #36
sama wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

good ideas here and in the responses. we will consider.

somewhat related, you could use collaborative filtering. I've blogged about my thoughts and experiments with it in the past: http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/15581427232/self-... You can show some random unrated stories at the very top of the list, and then stories sorted by collaborative filtering. In my prototyping it worked super-well.

I heard reddit tried that once but it didn't work well for some reasons. I can't find a link to the story at the moment.

Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#89

Post by jsnell »

lisper wrote: post #86

Some observations: 1. Almost no one reads the new page. For proof, go to the new page and count up the total number of votes that all the stories on the new page have received in the last hour. 2. There is a VERY short time window (typically about an hour nowadays) during which a story either gets enough votes to end up on the home page (half a dozen or so seems to be enough) or drops off the first new page, after wh…

Low vote counts on the new page don't prove nobody goes there. An alternative explanation is that 90% of the new page is crap that really doesn't deserve a single vote. (Just did this experiment, and only found one of the 30 submissions interesting enough to even click on).

It is true that you need to get something like 5-6 votes in the first hour to get to the front page. But that's not a very large amount, and it's definitely possible to get across that threshold without soliciting for votes, so clearly there are a decent amount of people reading /newest. (About a third of my submissions made the front page, and it's kind of obvious in retrospect why many of the others failed. I never asked anyone to vote for any of those submissions).

Re: Tell HN: Don't ask for upvotes

#90

Post by PhasmaFelis »

If legit submissions are getting booted by your voting-ring detector so often that you need to ask readers to take action to prevent it, then the detector is broken. It's not the readers' responsibility to change our habits to make up for your broken mechanisms.
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