An Update on Hacker News • Hacker News Board

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#271

Post by peterwwillis » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 10:55 PM UTC

lotharbot wrote: post #180

zanny wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My position is that downvotes should not exist. There are three ways to view posts and comments: A. you agree with it, and appreciate it, so you upvote it to give it more visibility because that is how this whole system works - popular stuff should rise to the top, and an upvote is a measure of popularity. If you see popular stuff but have something to add, you will usually upvote and comment on it. B. a comment or p…

One thing we try to discourage on HN is "me too" or "disagree" posts that don't have much more content. The presence of upvote and downvote buttons means that those comments don't get made, because votes serve that purpose instead. There's still room to start a discussion if you have a specific point to make (and the desire to make it) about the problems with someone's comments. Those discussions do tend to happen wh…

Why do people post 'me too' or 'disagree'? They want their voice to be heard. Specifically, they want to voice their opinion that they agree or disagree with a comment. For most cases, this is pointless. It doesn't contribute to a conversation, it doesn't provide any context, and often it's more emotionally driven than anything else. But I get that you want to reduce the noise of unnecessary comments.

Instead of confusing what a vote means to a user, why not provide meta-votes that reduce noise while allowing users to voice their opinions? Provide a series of buttons with default responses, and allow the comment box to be the 'Other:'. Record these responses and provide a tiny graphic next to a comment that indicates some value based on the accumulated opinions of users.

What this would give you is the ability to change sorting based on emotional and/or intellectual feedback. If you have a sub-thread that has 200+ intellectual feedback, you could float it up to the top of the stack, and keep emotional feedback as a lower priority. People would be able to express themselves clearly and you could disagree with someone morally while ceding that they may have a valid argument. But this is probably a crazy idea, so feel free to downvote me ;)

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#272

Post by aragot » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 10:55 PM UTC

hackuser wrote: post #67

natch wrote: post #31

It seems like early comments on any article generally have a huge advantage in garnering votes. This appropriately rewards engagement, but also pushes down other worthy comments that come slightly later, often to effective near invisibility when replies to the top comment dominate the discussion. I wonder if there is any mechanism that could help counter this.

I expect that there is a strong correlation between how soon a comment is posted and its points. Two thoughts from a relative noob (sorry if these ideas already have been discussed or tried): * On threads with many comments, few users have time to read all or even most of them. Perhaps find a way to shorten the list, improve signal-to-noise, and surface newer comments by burying older comments that haven't received v…

Have a colour scheme for the 15 most recent comments of the thread.

That way we can reload the page and see what's new.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#273

Post by logicallee » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 10:55 PM UTC

gohjo wrote: post #198

dang wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be right. I'll look at the comment later and see if I should have written it differently. There's no time to reflect just now. I try hard not to let personal irritation leak through in my HN comments, but I do fail at it. The most I can claim is a willingness to correct mistakes.

It's wildly inappropriate to lob a blanket accusation of fraud against every single person who has ever complained about your moderation. People have wildly divergent views as to what's appropriate, what's a little rude, and what's over the line. This means that even if you really truly believe that there was NEVER a mistake made during moderation, that some people will truly believe what they said. Good moderation r…

I disagree! (with your pre-edit, reading "It's not that you expressed yourself poorly").

That's exactly what happened here. (And maybe Daniel can edit his comment.)

Daniel does a really good job, and is extremely responsive by email and on here. It is obvious where he wrote "Ever notice how people who make claims about why they got banned never provide links to the posts in question?" is borne of deep frustration. He would like to follow those links and improve the site, but can't. It's obvious that his comment is written out of frustration.

Let's be very clear: hellbanning is the worst and rudest thing that exists on any respectable Internet forum. Hellbanning literally wastes hours of the time of people who contribute great insight for free. The comments on this site are good and provided for free by people. Hellbanning turns this goodwill on its face, like a goodwill jar you can put bills into but which go into a furnace.

Daniel (and PG) knows very well that hellbanning is a nuclear weapon and the rudest thing that any Internet forum can possibly do, that is actually being done.

You have stories of people only learning they were hellbanned after literally taking the time to email someone a link to something thoughtful they had written. A lot of hellbanning has been (historically) in error.

It is one of the main reasons that I would never consciously leave a comment up if it reaches -3, even if I stand by it 100%, it's important, and the community happens to be wrong in its groupthink and I clearly have explained why. I would delete it instead.

Note that I have learned this behavior, and so have other contributors on this site.

It's one of the things that makes this site great.

So even though it is a nuclear option and the worst, rudest thing that any respectable forum does, in the sense that time is money literally stealing from users, and stealing donations at that and throwing them away, at the same time it is one of the things that allows this site to function as one of the best sites on the planet.

So you can bet that Daniel is extremely serious about following hellbanning claims and improving this process. It is difficult and he walks a very fine line.

He's doing a fantastic job at present in a very difficult undertaking. Kudos, Daniel, and keep up the good work. I can read your comment for what it is :)

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#274

Post by oftenwrong » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 10:58 PM UTC

twoodfin wrote: post #68

angersock wrote: post #8

A third experiment didn't go so well: we briefly made the software kill comments that had been sufficiently downvoted. Many users objected, arguing that killing downvoted comments is too harsh a punishment for unpopular opinions, especially since downvoted comments get faded to begin with. We heard that and reversed the change. Good to hear they decided to roll that back. PG opened a pandora's box when he said that d…

I read an anecdote about the Swedish language today that's just too good to check[1]: Being fluent in both Swedish and English, I know there are certain concepts, such as the difference between belief in an opinion and belief in a fact, where the Swedish language makes clear distinctions (tycka and tro) and English does not. English speakers spend ridiculous amounts of time arguing about these things, and Swedes simp…

Is not the real issue that people sometimes mistake opinion for fact?

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#275

Post by existencebox » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 10:59 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #242

PavlovsCat wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The filters would get very complex very fast though, I imagine. The symptoms of "echo-chamber-itis" are as varied as the humans that exibit them. Sometimes it's aggressive downvoting of an idea that doesn't align with the status quo despite validity for discussion, sometimes it's aggressive upvoting of an idea that aligns better, sometimes it's an aggressive amount of churn as various subgroups battle for "placing" the item, which results in the item being read as a net 0. (I'm being very hand wavy and referring to patterns I see broader than just HN; before anyone starts jumping up and down about how the HN algorithms avoid any specific problem I mention :P )

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#276

Post by SilasX » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 11:01 PM UTC

peterwwillis wrote: post #263

SilasX wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is no particular purpose for HN downvotes other than to express dislike. It's not needed to move 'stupid' comments down, because only 'non-stupid' comments rise up. The problem is that smart-but-unpopular comments may fail to rise up. We want to prevent groupthink by ensuring that the top comments don't exclude ones that are well written and productive while expressing a contrary viewpoint. A simple "vote down…

Well first of all, I disagree with your assertion that top comments with contrary viewpoints might prevent groupthink. Sometimes being contrary is inherent to groupthink. And being well-written and productive doesn't mean the comment is insightful, intelligent, or informative, which one assumes would be a preferred top comment. (personally I think promoting comments that are well-written, productive and contrary just…

>Sometimes being contrary is inherent to groupthink.

And lack of being contrary, is more conducive to groupthink.

>And being well-written and productive doesn't mean the comment is insightful, intelligent, or informative, which one assumes would be a preferred top comment.

Only if you're using a non-standard definition of productive. Could you spell out what you mean here? In common use, a productive discussion is one in which at least one side emerged with a better understanding of the issue. (If you can do that without being insightful, more power to you!)

This contrasts with a discussion in which arguers blur important distinctions, talk past each other, and so on.

It may be helpful (productive?) to give an example of (what I consider) a comment that is insightful, informative, and correct, but unproductive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7840204

In this case, it's because the poster simply reiterated the logic behind the point his critics already accepted, thereby doing nothing to convey understanding of why they should take his position.

So, I don't think you actually disagree that "productive = good" here, but have non-standard criteria for what counts as productive.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#277

Post by opendais » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 11:02 PM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #252

opendais wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The guidelines (as you probably already knew) also say that if you have a question about moderation, send us an email instead of posting about it on the site. So it sounds like got banned for refusing to follow the guidelines?

I don't see that in the guidelines, nor do I see an email address to contact anyone in the guidelines (or anywhere else). https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Dan beat me to it.

I'll admit it could be clearer but it has always been there since that page went up as far as I'm aware. Ctrl+F for hn@

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#278

Post by peterwwillis » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 11:03 PM UTC

grayclhn wrote: post #267

peterwwillis wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no particular purpose for HN downvotes other than to express dislike. It's not needed to move 'stupid' comments down, because only 'non-stupid' comments rise up. The comments which are never voted on have no intrinsic value, so they might as well be stupid anyway. I wasn't even aware of flagging on comments until someone mentioned it, and to be honest it's so inconvenient i'd probably never do it. Downvote i…

It moves stupid comments down _faster_. If the comment's super stupid, that can be worthwhile.

What's the difference between a super stupid comment and a comment which gets no votes at all? I'll bet you the answer to that is "I really didn't like it", which mostly means emotional value. So the purpose of the downvote there is to basically have an emotional reaction button. Take away the downvote and you take away the emotion from the voting. Then all you have is upvoting, which is based purely on merit. It sounds like people don't like the idea of forum meritocracy, though.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#279

Post by aaren » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 11:04 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #195

phkahler wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps flagging those comments would be better, since they are what you claim to be the problem.

I have only just become aware of flagging comments. Some of the threads tho' you would need to flag 100 and a lot of bad feeling is generated. Best nip it in the bud early I reckon.m

The threads that you are flagging are the ones that need to happen.

I can see why you would flag a whole thread, but I don't think that will ultimately get us anywhere. If you care about the accessibility of this site, then I implore you to upvote those threads^ and flag the bad comments within.

^presuming that they have some techy slant

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#280

Post by amyhoy » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 11:09 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #135

throwit99 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had this happen to me when I critiqued a YC backed company. Had a few thousand in 'meaningless internet karma points'. You pretty soon realise after a few further comments anyway, so I doubt it's actually effective. It's pretty mean spirited though - generally a "douchebag" move. It'd be like having a bad employee, but instead of firing him, or discussing his work, just don't bother paying him any more. After being…

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…

Hi there.

Why not tell me why I was hellbanned then?

Here's my comment history. Such bullying, so horrible, wow: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ahoyhere

The only conclusion is that HN hellbans dissent. I'm about as far from a troll as you can get.

It's your platform; do what you want. But don't lie about it.