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How would you improve Hacker News?

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1–10 of 33 posts

Re: How would you improve Hacker News?

#2
Two ways - first lose the idiot expired link thing

second - if I am not allowed to post because I am posting too fast please tell me before I spend 20 minutes entering and editing a message only to have it rejected

If I am not allowed to post, why was I given the opportunity to do so?

Re: How would you improve Hacker News?

#6
I would disclose who is upvoting/downvoting whose comments. There are cliques on every social news site. Some of those cliques are genuine communities of technology enthusiasts, but others are like little armies of trolls which have been set up by aggresive PR firms and marketing departments of large tech companies. I have never on any social news site seen a system that gives you insight into whether upvoting/downvoting is honest-grassroots or organized by some PR firm for the benefit of some corporate entity.

Re: How would you improve Hacker News?

#7
post #4

Any reason why this discussion should not be held inside of hacker news instead of on a third party website?

Yes.

There are several recent items about this question here on HN, the threads are long, the same points made over and over again, very little insight, and nothing will happen.

More, threads about HN have a tendency to disappear without trace, because meta is usually frowned upon. There are a few exceptions, but if you want to go all meta, it's better to do it somewhere else and have a semblance of control.

Re: How would you improve Hacker News?

#8
Decide once and for all whether you think this is, or want this to be, a single community.

If not, then allow users to have different "front pages" according to their interests.

If so, then define clearly the policies and police them properly.

HN is currently sinking under a morass of links trying to reflect the ever widening spread of interests of an undifferentiated mass of users. Any given individual will find it harder and harder to find links that match their interests, and the site will become more and more bland, culminating in a race to the bottom.

Retaining the level of politeness is a noble aim, but in the end, strongly technical people will find nothing of value here and will leave.

Re: How would you improve Hacker News?

#9
1.Making the front page should be based on a black box score comprised of upvotes and comments. This would avoid the piling on effect.

2.Throttle user's ability to submit content based on their karma score. Users should participate and add meaningful comments in order to be able to submit content. HN is more than an SEO best practice.

3. If its not your content, you don't deserve the karma. Users should be rewarded for submitting their own content (URLs would need to be added to profiles). I think HN overcompensates content submission from a karma perspective.

Re: How would you improve Hacker News?

#10
3 things would improve hacker news:

Better dedup

Report suspected PR (the Atlantic, for one, is hitting HN big now that reddit banned them)

Removing submission abilities from the newest of users, and of users who get flagged above a certain amount.

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