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Poll: Should TechCrunch articles be banned from HN?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: Should TechCrunch articles be banned from HN?

#11

Post by rgarcia »

petercooper wrote: post #8

We've been there, done that: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=625255 Anything that isn't spam shouldn't be "banned". It's all down to what people vote up. If people are voting up TechCrunch stories as opposed to flagging them, that's your poll result right there in real life action rather than indignant votes.

Good point. Although I would say that TC from two years ago is a lot different than TC today. I guess I submitted this in the same spirit as pg's ominous "How to prevent the decline of HN" post earlier this week. Maybe drastic times call for drastic measures?

Re: Poll: Should TechCrunch articles be banned from HN?

#12

Post by 3pt14159 »

huwshimi wrote: post #4

One of the great things about HN is how organic it is in nature. HN is loosely about startups and hacking, but really it's about what people in the startup/hacking world find interesting. HN is self moderating (or rather community moderated). If people don't like certain posts they won't vote for them. If HN starts banning websites because some people don't like them then it takes the power away from the community an…

I very much agree with you, but the threshold to downvote must be pretty damn high if I haven't reached it. That needs to be lowered. If you have greater than 2k in karma and an average karma score greater than two you belong here. Tech Crunch has some great articles but they also pump out first-to-rumor ones at an alarming pace. If more of us could downvote it wouldn't be a problem.

Re: Poll: Should TechCrunch articles be banned from HN?

#13

Post by petercooper »

jacoblyles wrote: post #7
huwshimi wrote: post #4

One of the great things about HN is how organic it is in nature. HN is loosely about startups and hacking, but really it's about what people in the startup/hacking world find interesting. HN is self moderating (or rather community moderated). If people don't like certain posts they won't vote for them. If HN starts banning websites because some people don't like them then it takes the power away from the community an…

>" If people don't like certain posts they won't vote for them." That's an excellent recipe for the Lowest Common Denominator. Welcome to the internet, where it is September all the time.

This isn't a mass market site. The lowest common denominator on Hacker News should be orders of magnitude above the mean. If you think a cabal of top users should curate the content, that's cool, but that's a different idea to be discussed.

Re: Poll: Should TechCrunch articles be banned from HN?

#14

Post by seiji »

rgarcia wrote: post #3
js3309 wrote: post #2

I don't think any domain should be blocked. Feel free to post any link, the community will decide.

Tell that to pg: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=499044 To be fair the majority of those sites are spam sites, but I see Valleywag as a notable/relevant exception.

Valleywag once reported on pg's personal life. He threw the ban hammer at them the next day.

Re: Poll: Should TechCrunch articles be banned from HN?

#15

Post by petercooper »

rgarcia wrote: post #11
petercooper wrote: post #8

We've been there, done that: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=625255 Anything that isn't spam shouldn't be "banned". It's all down to what people vote up. If people are voting up TechCrunch stories as opposed to flagging them, that's your poll result right there in real life action rather than indignant votes.

Good point. Although I would say that TC from two years ago is a lot different than TC today. I guess I submitted this in the same spirit as pg's ominous "How to prevent the decline of HN" post earlier this week. Maybe drastic times call for drastic measures?

Perhaps, but let's say this poll gets 500 votes "for" blocking TechCrunch and 300 against. What would that tell us? That there's a legion of TechCrunch fans/upvoters whose opinion matters less than a legion of TechCrunch detractors?

If so, is dismissing the opinion of people who actively vote up stories on HN a way to prevent the "decline"? I don't have an answer to these questions but if it comes down to blocking Web sites that are relevant to HN's gamut of topics, the answers could be important.

Re: Poll: Should TechCrunch articles be banned from HN?

#17

Post by Hawramani »

petercooper wrote: post #8

We've been there, done that: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=625255 Anything that isn't spam shouldn't be "banned". It's all down to what people vote up. If people are voting up TechCrunch stories as opposed to flagging them, that's your poll result right there in real life action rather than indignant votes.

There are two ways to think about this.

First, there is a saying, "The state of a nation will never be better than the sum of the state of each one of its individuals." If the awareness of the people on HN is not enough to automatically cause content like TechCrunch to be excluded, maybe we deserve to see such content until we work to increase awareness.

Second, maybe it is non-core or new users of HN who vote up TechCrunch articles. Maybe we should take into consideration the opinion of the people who really care about HN and who know the business (and TechCrunch) better than the rest, and if they say the community will benefit if TechCrunch is banned then it should be.

Re: Poll: Should TechCrunch articles be banned from HN?

#19

Post by Terretta »

huwshimi wrote: post #4

One of the great things about HN is how organic it is in nature. HN is loosely about startups and hacking, but really it's about what people in the startup/hacking world find interesting. HN is self moderating (or rather community moderated). If people don't like certain posts they won't vote for them. If HN starts banning websites because some people don't like them then it takes the power away from the community an…

I see this argument emerge on every "community" site after it crosses a threshold, and consider it disingenuous.

If a small self moderating community of stamp collectors posted a few articles of interest to letter writers, word spread, and letter writers joined the community at a ratio of 10:1 till only letter writing articles hit the front page, the only thing this argument would prove is that the one making it is probably a letter writer.

You're right though, if stamp collectors don't like the letter writing articles, they don't have to vote for them. Doesn't matter much--their stamp collecting community is "organic" and "community moderated".

Re: Poll: Should TechCrunch articles be banned from HN?

#20

Post by genbattle »

No, explicitly banning whole websites seems like a brute-force way of preventing bad content from getting submitted/upvoted on hacker news. I think it's better to modify the mechanics of the community so that inappropriate articles get filtered out, rather than banning sites wholesale.

As far as TC goes, I think some people are unnecessarily picking on it at the moment. There's no reason to give it special consideration over every other website on the internet, it's not really that terrible, even if the consensus is that it has gone downhill.

As far as banning websites goes, you're removing choice, and I think it would go against the spirit of an open and free community.

If people don't like the content, it won't get upvoted (bots and unscrupulous characters notwithstanding).

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