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An Update on Hacker News

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Re: An Update on Hacker News

#241

Post by etherael »

gohjo wrote: post #236
etherael wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst I ever do is respond rudely to people who have already attacked me, and even there I try to avoid doing so. As for using other names that's just flatly false, as is any gloating about baiting people into flamewars and laughing when they get banned. I haven't even used irc in over a year. Basically I have no idea what you're talking about.

Your post history has multiple occurrences of you calling people retarded. You're so full of shit it's fucking ridiculous. Just fuck off back into your whole, you professional troll.

> respond rudely to people who have already attacked me

I didn't deny that

> and even there I try to avoid doing so.

I just said that, like for example right now.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#242

Post by krapp »

PavlovsCat wrote: post #233
existencebox wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what its worth, validity of the hellbanning aside, I do agree with the points he brought up re: emergent problems in scored boards. The karma system does tend to contribute heavily to the echo-chambery nature of many of these discussion forums; and while I certainly think HN is in a much better state than any others that come to mind, it's not immune. (Mentioning because to me, this point is far closer to home th…

Maybe sorting options would help? I'd prefer to sort responses by time (and maybe some javascript to mark new comments since last visit on the page, but I dream..), or even sorted randomly because why not. Maybe serve that from a static cache that only gets refreshed every 5 minutes or so? I would still use it, gladly.

I think account-level filters might alleviate a number of problems users tend to complain about here.

Just imagine how useful people might find it to simply block posts by keyword, or not show threads with a certain ratio of upvotes to downvotes, or be able to train their own Bayesian filter.

They wouldn't even have to change the UI (which they seem to not want to do) apart from what a particular user sees.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#243

Post by stock_toaster »

etcet wrote: post #222
stock_toaster wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I wish the up/down vote links were on opposite sides (I would prefer they were bigger too, but at least spacing them would be preferable). Something more like this.. ▲ cs702 31 minutes ago ▼ | link note: they are supposed to be the same size.. oddly unicode down triangle is rending larger for me.

I actually don't agree with this from a UX perspective. The downvote arrow is currently in a predictable position. If you move it after the timestamp, it will be in a variable position. Although, I can imagine how you could argue that the downvote arrow should not be easy to hit.

I guess in addition to raw usability perspective, how you view downvoting in general has an impact on the layout. If you want to place downvoting on equal footing with upvoting, placing them together does make some sense. If, however, you feel downvoting should be a more rare occurrence, it makes some sense to relegate downvoting to a worse position, especially in light of the seemingly frequent issues with accidental clicking.

I also find the single leading upvote to be a bit more consistent, as you are not able to downvote replies to your comments, only upvote. So in that regard, the UI would be a bit more uniform regardless of whether the comment was a reply or not.

Another straightforward possibility could be replacing the arrows with words, and making the time a link to the comment (removing "link" from trailing actions as gojomo suggested). This may result in better support for screen readers, in addition to mobile users, as well.

  etcet 5 minutes ago | upvote | downvote | flag | parent

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#244

Post by stock_toaster »

gojomo wrote: post #157
stock_toaster wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I wish the up/down vote links were on opposite sides (I would prefer they were bigger too, but at least spacing them would be preferable). Something more like this.. ▲ cs702 31 minutes ago ▼ | link note: they are supposed to be the same size.. oddly unicode down triangle is rending larger for me.

Also it's sufficiently typical to have the timestamp be the permalink to the post/comment, that the "| link" could be eliminated.

great idea!

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#245

Post by selmnoo »

gohjo wrote: post #231
dang wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who hold the opposite ideology believe fervently that HN is biased the other way (liberal, politically correct, socialist, etc., are some of the terms they use). I realize it's a bit facile to say "both sides claim bias therefore we must be doing something right". But for what it's worth, no, we don't consider ideology when banning people, we consider incivility.

Which is why many toxic people have perfected the art of being an enormous asshole while being "civil". Because they know that you allow that to happen. As to your claim that you aren't soft on Libertarians... LOL. I've actually A/B tested this, saying the same toxic shit but with the positions swapped. Upvoted in one case, banned in the other. Part of the mechanic might be that you never even see the Libertarian ver…

> No offense kid, but you're fucking delusional. And HN is worse because of your inability to self-reflect.

Even if you had a point, you just lost it. Because when you present a point in this way with this kind of language and in this kind of behavior, you just lose everything.

I'm a pretty skeptical person (see my skepticism on my last comment, for example!) who views most actions by most companies very skeptically and tries to see if there might be ulterior motives. And I've gotta say, you're wrong in this instance.

> As to your claim that you aren't soft on Libertarians.

They're not (they're not soft/hard based on ideological beliefs). For example, DanielBMarkham, perhaps the most outspoken libertarian on this site, is rankbanned. Now, I do have serious doubts about whether or not they're "soft" on folks saying negative things about YC companies/people.

Lastly, I've gotten to know etherael quite well -- he's got a sharp tongue, but he never quite struck me as an asshole. I do know that he's very talented at what he does, and almost always provides good, intelligent conversation about anything I bring up to him - and in that way, fits right at home here on HN. I guess though maybe you caught him in a bad time being especially rude? The best of us lose it sometimes. I hope etherael is more thoughtful in his future replies.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#246

Post by tptacek »

etcet wrote: post #234
tptacek wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a reasonable take on what downvoting is for, but the HN take is that it's better to downvote a disagreement than to write a noisy bad comment to express the same disagreement.

Wouldn't it be better to upvote the disagreements you agree with?

This isn't my argument, but you're missing its point. Think of disagreement downvotes as a pressure release valve for the downvoter. The idea is to prevent you from expressing your disagreement in an unproductive comment.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#247

Post by SilasX »

tptacek wrote: post #225
ars wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is that it's better to downvote a disagreement than to write a noisy bad comment to express the same disagreement No, quite the opposite. (See I wrote a comment explaining that I disagree, I didn't just click the arrow. Much more valuable to you and the reader.) And that's why you are wrong, by saying why you disagree you might (rarely) change the posters mind, or more likely change a 3rd readers mind about the top…

I don't know who you're arguing with, but I was making a positive statement, not a normative one.

I think it was helpful for ars to cite the problems with such a policy in a reply, even if you weren't advocating that policy.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#248

Post by astrobe_ »

doorhammer wrote: post #194
enobrev wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I figure that's up to the voters. Personally I upvote things I disagree with all the time, provided the comment presents a compelling argument worth considering. As for downvotes, it's never due to disagreement for me - only in times I find a comment to be unnecessarily negative, personal, or the opposite of "a compelling argument worth considering".

Yeah, this is how I generally approach it. I don't care if I agree with someone. I just want them to provide more information and add some value to the discussion. If the information is invalid, I just do what I can to provide counter resources. I also generally try to approach downvotes the way you're saying as well, though that brings us back to downvotes being "mini flags". I don't know that I disagree with that.…

AFAIK upvoting a story is the only way to save it in your profile. I believe that this 'bookmarking' side-effect can induce a good measure of the value of a comment as well (one would have to kill the personal comments history page for maximum effect, though).

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#249

Post by tptacek »

gohjo wrote: post #184
dang wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever notice how people who make claims about why they got banned never provide links to the posts in question? That's because their claims are nearly always false. If users could look at the actual record, their perennial sob story of perfectly reasonable behavior struck down by bullying censors would evaporate. So they make new accounts and post linkless statements designed to be unanswerable. We don't ban people be…

No, here's what you do: 1) you ban people who are rude and who you disagree with philosophically, while you do NOT ban the equally rude people who you agree with. For evidence of the above, look at users like etherael (and his other names; not sure if he tors/vpns or if you can find them), who are raging assholes on a semi-routine basis, but who aren't banned because Libertarian BitCoin Lover matches your values. And…

Dan is a libertarian bitcoin lover? I've spent several hours in person talking to him. I'm a statist liberal Democrat who believes bitcoin is a ponzi scheme. He did not set off my spidey sense. I think you might be attributing generalized fears and frustrations onto specific people you don't know.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#250

Post by facepalm »

dllthomas wrote: post #197
michaelochurch wrote: post #30

I still read HN. There's a good article or two per day. That said, the moderation needs work. (Or, more accurately, to be put out of work.) I've been under "rankban" for at least a year, if not longer. This means that my posts, even if they get a lot of upvotes, fall to or near the bottom. I don't really care, and while I could use sock puppets to get around that, I'm too old for that shit and I don't really care. St…

'I'm also on "slowban", as Hacker News performs worse when I use it while logged in than when I do so in incognito, logged-out mode.' While it's my impression (from other comments, &c) that your claim is accurate, this alone isn't necessarily proof. I would generally expect a site to perform better for logged-out users, as 1) it gets to skip any tasks that are for logged-in users only, and 2) it should tend to have e…

slowbanning is a thing, I remember an official announcement about it. Of course my memory might be fallible.
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