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An Update on Hacker News

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Re: An Update on Hacker News

#351

Post by morganvachon »

amyhoy wrote: post #284
amyhoy wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oooh, is being saucy or mildly disagreeable not allowed either? I get the hint.

I think it's pretty complicated, actually. I've lurked here for years but only made an account within the last year. In that short time, I've said arguably worse things than you have (though not with ill intent; I can just be abrasive and opinionated) and as far as I can tell I've not been hellbanned yet.

It probably helps that I'm a "nobody"; I'm not a member of the startup culture, just an outside observer and occasional commentator. If it's true that politics are a factor in bans and heavy-handed moderation, then I can understand (though not agree with) you being hellbanned for what are fairly mild comments as judged by an outsider like me, as you are a member of the startup club.

And I hate to say it, but misogyny might even have played a role in it. I have zero evidence of that and it's not meant as an accusation, just that it's a remote possibility. It's a real problem in just about any internet based community, and I really doubt this one is immune to it.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#352

Post by vannevar »

lotharbot wrote: post #305
krick wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only makes sense in case of "me too" comments. You have 4 options of response to somebodies comment: 1. Agreeing while providing some new information. So you write a comment (actually you'll probably upvote in this case as well, but whatever). 2. Agreeing without providing any new information. Like, "yeah it's completely right what this guy just wrote". That comment wouldn't be very useful indeed, so that's why…

Sometimes I disagree and someone else has already provided the new information I was planning to. Sometimes I have a problem more with tone than with content -- someone was right, but being a jerk. I'll both downvote them and upvote someone else who was right and more appropriately civil. Sometimes a comment is simply pointless. Someone posted a meme, a lame joke, or a comment that has nothing to do with the topic at…

In the first case, then simply upvote the comment you agree with. Remember that when you downvote a comment, you're essentially downvoting the entire discussion associated with that comment as well, affecting its visibility to others. Don't downvote substantive comments just because you disagree with them, it robs HN of quality content.

If everyone downvotes to disagree, the net effect is to reinforce the majority view and create an echo chamber. Use the downvote to enforce community standards, not community opinion. Many people have a hard time understanding the distinction, but it's an important one.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#353

Post by peterwwillis »

grayclhn wrote: post #333
peterwwillis wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sou…

Some comments degrade the quality of the conversation. We might disagree about which ones, but surely we can agree about that, right? The obvious candidates are purely asshole comments, trolling comments, intentionally racist comments, etc., and there are less obvious ones too. (Almost any joke where the author feels a need to reply, "guess no one around here has a sense of humor" after being downvoted probably fits.…

> Some comments degrade the quality of the conversation. We might disagree about which ones, but surely we can agree about that, right?

Yes.

> I don't understand what this means or what a "meritocracy" is in this setting.

Basically, thread sorting would be based (mostly) on merit.

> the highest ranked users will never form a ruling class or be in power

The highest ranking users have high social power. Their power is simply a tendency to steer the group without telling anyone what to do. Usually it's unintentional, and sometimes they have no idea they're doing.

Most forums are actually discrete social communities made up of ingroups, with their own cultural standards and hierarchies, and often a few custom heuristics. Some of them are really incredible from a behavioral standpoint, like an internet chat galapagos island. HN is not so special, but it does have a clearly defined social structure.

I agree with you that the stupid jokes, memes etc should stay off HN. That's why I think some kind of meta-voting is necessary: because a simple downvote is used for a lot of things right now, and not just "this-comment-is-out-of-bounds" like you're talking about. Barring meta-voting, removing the downvote keeps the troll talk but it still filters down to the bottom with the other useless comments.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#354

Post by throwit99 »

tptacek wrote: post #262
eksith wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your thoughts on this episode? https://jcs.org/notaweblog/2012/06/13/hellbanned_from_hacker...

I think you could, when Paul Graham was actively moderating the site, get hellbanned for unproductively pissing Paul Graham off. I think it happened more than once.

This is still true, and will always be true.

If a moderator has a button "ban", and you piss them off enough, you'll get banned.

Give people buttons, and they'll use them. Probably more than they actually should.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#355

Post by lettercarrier »

Comments are what gets me here, for discovery. Love when topics and links are the subject of comments.

I think my CPS degree received when having to use IBM 129 and 3 runs per day afford a great HN following.

I really don't get the down up karma thing. Just glad smart people with lots of time on their hands post interesting stuff

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#356

Post by natch »

lotharbot wrote: post #82
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.

A comment's location is affected both by its points and by its age. New comments tend to appear at or near the top in the first few minutes after they're posted, and then will drop down the page if they don't receive many upvotes.

Assuming you are saying this is how it works now, I did not know that. I'm glad to hear it; that is a smart system.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#357

Post by natch »

aragot wrote: post #272
hackuser wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is a cool idea. It would have to be done in a really subtle way to avoid becoming garish, but I hope it gets tried out. Not sure about encouraging reloading the page though.. maybe some kind of AJAX would be better for protecting the server from overload.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#358

Post by vannevar »

phkahler wrote: post #205
ggchappell wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pg has said many times that it's OK to downvote out of disagreement That doesn't mean it's a good idea. I would urge everyone (including PG) to reconsider the acceptability of this practice -- it strikes me as being harmful. To put it a different way: PG & friends have put together a quality discussion forum. One of the reasons it remains relatively high quality is necessarily that many users of the site do not use…

>> One of the reasons it remains relatively high quality is necessarily that many users of the site do not use downvotes to express disagreement. I think the reason it's high quality is because it started as a place for the kind of people interested in startups. To me that means (statistically) well educated, ambitious, interested in STEM topics, etc... Just like in the old days of internet news before AOL made it av…

Like all good forums, if it does really well to the point that the general public takes interest, it will likely become crap.

That isn't an inevitability, it's a consequence of poor forum design. At one time, if water started leaking into your boat, it sank. Then someone had the bright idea of pumping the water out and sinking was no longer inevitable.

One mechanism that might prevent the dilution you describe is to hide low-scoring comments from low-karma users, but show them to high-ranking users. Then the high-karma users can exert influence on the low-karma users by upvoting quality comments and downvoting poor ones. It becomes a self-organizing system with a bias towards quality, rather than the open loop 'majority rules' system currently in place.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#359

Post by dllthomas »

DanBC wrote: post #294
zanny wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has had downvote powers for a year, you should not be downvoting comments you do not agree with. Downvote trolls or other violations. If I ever make a site with community comment contributions, and include upvoting, I would just leave downvoting out of the picture entirely. Etiher you do not agree and do nothing, you like a post and upvote it, or you report a comment in violation of the site rules. Dow…

I would modify your system to include a placebo downvote. There is a downvote button, and you can click it. It just doesn't do anything. Or maybe it only has locel effects - that comment is grey on the user's local system but not on anyone elses?

I actually think that some meta info involving downvotes can be quite interesting. For instance, "view controversial" on Reddit. You could provide that while still ignoring downvotes for sorting, if that's what you wanted.

Re: An Update on Hacker News

#360

Post by vannevar »

hayksaakian wrote: post #308
DanBC wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would modify your system to include a placebo downvote. There is a downvote button, and you can click it. It just doesn't do anything. Or maybe it only has locel effects - that comment is grey on the user's local system but not on anyone elses?

the downvote button could simply function as a `hide` button

I like this idea, particularly if you communicate the number of hides. The poster is made aware of how the comment has been received, so there's feedback while not affecting other users.
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