Too much noise in HN? (Open question)

#1

Post by toto » Sun, Aug 16, 2009, 11:17 PM UTC

Hi all,

I have been a RSS subscriber for a long. I love HN but I have to admit that I get a little frustrated by the increasing percentage of noise. Especially by off-topic links.

I spend now too much time sorting useless stuff (for my needs) for reading a few really good links.

Do you also think there is too much noise?

If many agree, maybe it will be a signal that it is now time to add some categories/filters. :)

Thanks.

Re: Too much noise in HN? (Open question)

#2

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Aug 16, 2009, 11:17 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Too much noise in HN? (Open question)

#3

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Aug 16, 2009, 11:18 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Too much noise in HN? (Open question)

#4

Post by rms » Sun, Aug 16, 2009, 11:23 PM UTC

There is more noise by quantity because there are more links than ever, but the average quality hasn't gone down. It only seems like it sometimes, because the site has good and bad days.

Also, if you just want programming links, read http://hackerhackernews.com/. The topic here is much broader than only technical things.

Re: Too much noise in HN? (Open question)

#5

Post by 321abc » Sun, Aug 16, 2009, 11:26 PM UTC

I think there's definitely a lot of noise. Having categories (or tags) would be a good aid to sorting through it all.

Re: Too much noise in HN? (Open question)

#6

Post by TallGuyShort » Sun, Aug 16, 2009, 11:28 PM UTC

By the way, polls are officially supported - it will add options to the header of your post that people can select of - independent of any comments or replies to thread, or links to your own karma. Details are here: http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html (See March 1st, "Polls") - I do not know if the 200-karma threshold is still in effect

Re: Too much noise in HN? (Open question)

#7

Post by toto » Sun, Aug 16, 2009, 11:33 PM UTC

TallGuyShort wrote: post #6

By the way, polls are officially supported - it will add options to the header of your post that people can select of - independent of any comments or replies to thread, or links to your own karma. Details are here: http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html (See March 1st, "Polls") - I do not know if the 200-karma threshold is still in effect

"Sorry, you need 20 karma to create a poll." :) I have... 1.. :) I created a new "linked" account.

Re: Too much noise in HN? (Open question)

#8

Post by travisjeffery » Sun, Aug 16, 2009, 11:37 PM UTC

I was going to comment last night on the post on how to sleep better in the Summer, but I didn't in hopes that sort of thing would stop itself. But all-in-all that sort of stuff doesn't belong on Hacker News, after all the site is Hacker News.

Re: Too much noise in HN? (Open question)

#9

Post by webology » Sun, Aug 16, 2009, 11:39 PM UTC

There is a lot of noise but I prefer the classic view - http://news.ycombinator.com/classic over the existing homepage. It'd be nice to have a few features like never show me techcrunch articles again but all in all I still prefer Hacker News over everything else.

Re: Too much noise in HN? (Open question)

#10

Post by timtrueman » Sun, Aug 16, 2009, 11:40 PM UTC

I have one suggestion that would possibly help: separate out "saved" versus "up-voted". For me, I rarely want to save something but I would love to go to the new page and up-vote more interesting stories to get rid of the noise. But maybe that's just me--I'm also the type who never submits anything unless I want to see the discussion on it. I'm guessing there's a lot of karma-whores and hence all the TechCrunch articles (I kid, I kid). Anyone have an idea for putting the incentives in the right place for submitting with that in mind? Fractional karma for submission up-votes?