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Auto submission bots on Hacker News

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Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#121

Post by mquander »

raganwald wrote: post #119
lwhi wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quality of HN would be harmed. We'd end up with a very tedious site. People often behave like sheep - the fact that a lot of articles are voted up isn't a reflection of quality, it's a reflection of familiarity and unthinking, sycophantic behaviour. A large majority of these articles aren't actually discussing anything interesting - and it seems that their main purpose is to generate buzz and self-promote.

People often behave like sheep - the fact that a lot of articles are voted up isn't a reflection of quality, it's a reflection of familiarity and unthinking, sycophantic behaviour. If this is true, then the problem is with the users of the site, not with bots that correctly submit stories garnering upvotes. Remember, this post is not about bots that submit spamvertising for Rolex knock-off watches, it's about bots th…

Wait a second, it is completely that person's fault, don't you think? People have a responsibility to submit well-considered, high-quality links. Granted, a lot of people completely abdicate that responsibility and submit whatever strikes their fancy, but it doesn't mean the responsibility went away; with whom else would it lie? The guy submitting that 47th article is being a dick.

Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#122

Post by lwhi »

raganwald wrote: post #119
lwhi wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quality of HN would be harmed. We'd end up with a very tedious site. People often behave like sheep - the fact that a lot of articles are voted up isn't a reflection of quality, it's a reflection of familiarity and unthinking, sycophantic behaviour. A large majority of these articles aren't actually discussing anything interesting - and it seems that their main purpose is to generate buzz and self-promote.

People often behave like sheep - the fact that a lot of articles are voted up isn't a reflection of quality, it's a reflection of familiarity and unthinking, sycophantic behaviour. If this is true, then the problem is with the users of the site, not with bots that correctly submit stories garnering upvotes. Remember, this post is not about bots that submit spamvertising for Rolex knock-off watches, it's about bots th…

"If this is true, then the problem is with the users of the site, not with bots that correctly submit stories garnering upvotes. "

But bots do the bidding of humans ;)

As well as sheep-like behaviour, we're often also egotistical and care deeply about the tokens that are used to pass judgement on our place in the world; tokens such as karma.

I think that there's a lot of content on HN that isn't about interesting ideas; there's a lot of mediocre content that is created to self-promote, because some authors' find it gratifying to see their posts do well within the community. Imo, this kind of behaviour is dull.

Perhaps the solution would be to allow people to vote-down articles they deem uninteresting.

Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#123

Post by markkat »

veyron wrote: post #98
markkat wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've built a HN-based site that uses karma as a currency, which I submitted a week ago, to little fanfare :) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2359935 In the scheme I'm trying, it costs you karma to upvote or downvote, which gets converted to non-spendable clout. You get a small portion of karma everyday, which increases as you have more clout (and followers, another aspect I added). If you have spent all your karm…

This sounds similar to the Stack Overflow model [you take a penalty when you downvote]

I don't have a SO account. Do you mean when someone downvotes you, or when you downvote someone else? Or both?

Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#125

Post by veyron »

markkat wrote: post #123
veyron wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds similar to the Stack Overflow model [you take a penalty when you downvote]

I don't have a SO account. Do you mean when someone downvotes you, or when you downvote someone else? Or both?

To downvote on SO you need a certain number of points, which you get by doing other activities [like posting or answering questions]. After reaching that threshold, you can choose to downvote a question or response, which costs you one point and costs the other person 2 points. I.e. If you wanted to downvote this post, i would lose 2 karma and you would lose 1.

Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#126

Post by noahc »

mzl wrote: post #34
jasonkester wrote: post #7

Why does HN give karma points for submitting articles? That's never made any sense to me. All it does is encourage this kind of behavior, where you submit everything you can find in the hopes of gaining points. You haven't really contributed anything valuable, since good articles tend to find their way here on their own. Karma for comments makes sense. You can look at somebody's average and it gives you a sense of wh…

I seldom comment on HN, and when I do I typically do so in threads that are somewhat dormant, with little activity. I don't really care about karma/votes at all, I just say something when I think I have something of value to add. My comment average is 1.7, but I would still like to believe that I have yet to exhibit any behavior that I'm just angry at the world. I hope that I could still get yours or others attention…

When I comment my goal is to have the most Karma per thread.

In some ways its very Karmic in that my goal is to maximize all users Karma over my own individual Karma. I get really excited when a comment of mine results in multiple 20+ Karma comments because that means I'm really contributing.

Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#127

Post by zargon »

knowtheory wrote: post #101
bmelton wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the hope would be to reduce the signal to noise ratio, so, in the event that something less popular comes up, it should have more time to be seen and appreciated. I would also venture that 'cutting edge' is HN's bailiwick, and therefore, it's really hard to get ahead of the tech curve here.

Ha. Don't tell the guys at Lambda the Ultimate that ;) Incidentally, i submitted a link ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2386915 ) about an hour ago, and after watching it depressingly fall off the first page of the new list, i think i'm giving up on ever submitting a link to HN again. What's so frustrating is that i can identify content that is good, and relevant (the link above is about open data, citizen acce…

There are many submissions that I read on the new page that I like, but aren't something I want in my saved list forever. I don't know if many other people treat article upvotes as I do, but it might explain part of the difficulty.

Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#128

Post by raganwald »

lwhi wrote: post #122
raganwald wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People often behave like sheep - the fact that a lot of articles are voted up isn't a reflection of quality, it's a reflection of familiarity and unthinking, sycophantic behaviour. If this is true, then the problem is with the users of the site, not with bots that correctly submit stories garnering upvotes. Remember, this post is not about bots that submit spamvertising for Rolex knock-off watches, it's about bots th…

" If this is true, then the problem is with the users of the site, not with bots that correctly submit stories garnering upvotes. " But bots do the bidding of humans ;) As well as sheep-like behaviour, we're often also egotistical and care deeply about the tokens that are used to pass judgement on our place in the world; tokens such as karma. I think that there's a lot of content on HN that isn't about interesting id…

As well as sheep-like behaviour, we're often also egotistical and care deeply about the tokens that are used to pass judgement on our place in the world; tokens such as karma.

I think you're right, but don't forget the irresistable temptation of playing the game. Imagine you build a box with an LED display that shows a number, let's say 42. On the box are various switches, sliders, levers, knobs, &c. You place the box in a public area, suitably hardened against vandalism. Inevitably some bored person decides it is not a bomb and flicks a switch. The number goes to 50. He plays with the controls and the number rises and/or falls.

I put it to you that people will treat it as a puzzle where the goal is to display the biggest number, even if you don't say so. Some folks will try to display the smallest number, a little like trying for the low hand in hi-low poker.

As I said, I think you're right, but I wouldn't discount the number of people who simply treat karma as a game simply because... It's a number they can influence through the knobs and switches of submissions and comments.

Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#129

Post by dtby »

jasonkester wrote: post #40
mzl wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seldom comment on HN, and when I do I typically do so in threads that are somewhat dormant, with little activity. I don't really care about karma/votes at all, I just say something when I think I have something of value to add. My comment average is 1.7, but I would still like to believe that I have yet to exhibit any behavior that I'm just angry at the world. I hope that I could still get yours or others attention…

First, I hope my upvote just gave your average a bit of a boost. Second, you'll need to produce a bit more anger and irrationality before anybody starts labeling you as a troll :) Frankly, the only time I ever check anybody's profile is when they say something really valuable or really obnoxious. So by the time I get there I've pretty much made up my mind about the character of the individual in question. I can't ima…

Why, then, even bother checking their HN karma score, GitHub commits, WoW gear score or Stack Overflow reputation points?

Either their comment is useful to you where you live today or its not. You don't have to justify your judgement by yet another subjective.

(By a... checking... 3.4 karma/comment user who was sub-1.0/comment last week; not having changed his opinions or commenting style.)

Re: Auto submission bots on Hacker News

#130

Post by oreilly »

RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #46
rbanffy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lately, I see we don't give points for meaningfulness more than for popularity. Perhaps we could measure meaningfulness by the size of the tree of replies and assign karma according to that. That would even solve the post-to-upvote ratio problem. I just don't know what to do with the downvote-for-disagreement thing. Not everyone regard it as a problem, but I'm not sure I agree. Maybe Slashdot-style metamoderation...

The very best submissions get virtually no discussion. One measurement to make might be the votes divided by comments. Let V = votes Let C = comments Let IT = 1.0 Let R = V/C If R > IT then the article is "worth IT" Let "the paper it's written on" be 0.1. If R But all this is tinkering around the edges, and doesn't feel like it's significant. Perhaps a new model of how a site like this works at all is necessary.

If we lack discussion, it is only because there are not enough good questions, or those questions are too hard to detect.

Maybe we could get better results by identifying unanswered questions.

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