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HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

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Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#121

Post by galfarragem »

pajju wrote: post #78
pajju wrote: post #20

Good that someone raised this topic. 1. Many good articles & posts don't get upvoted. 2. There are pre-formed HN groups who game the system often. My Feedback 1. Some special users can be given special Front-Page-Post Button permission. Say, 3 Top Users have voted this Post for FP(Front Page) 2. Frontpage should not be the highlighting part of HN. At least it looks like that as of now. The other good parts of HN: new…

Additional feedback: 5. Use of better colors: For following keywords or topics & colors for users by active | top | influencers etc. 6. Verified accounts. 7. Use of on Demand Badges like: Trustworthy User Badge, Looking for(Badge), Looking for co-founder, Hiring, Remote jobs etc. All these can be grouped under a Paid plan? I would definitely pay for value & additionals, even a good mobile app experience is missing. 8…

I don't agree with you but I upvoted your comment (that was already being downvoted) - it adds value to the discussion.

The simplicity of HN is something innegociable IMHO. As I understand you are proposing to evolve HN into a mix of Reddit-social network for hackers/entrepreneurs.

Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#122

Post by notlisted »

enraged_camel wrote: post #94

Equally suspicious are popular but controversial stories that disappear off the front-page within a very short amount of time despite having accumulated lots of votes and comments quickly. I've always gotten the feeling that there are groups of users who flag submissions to make them disappear.

Exactly, though I suspect moderator intervention, not user groups. Notably, anything remotely critical of AirBnB. Changes are too sudden (e.g. story on #3 position, loads of upvotes and comments, and while I'm formulating a comment, it disappears and a completely inane and inactive post takes its place). At times I've even had trouble finding the original post again in the first few pages. Maybe Porter could shed some light on that too.

Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#124

Post by borgia »

There seems to be some demand here to warp HN into some bastardized version of Reddit?

The vast majority of submissions that hit the front page cannot be explicitly linked to one company, or a product, which would indicate that the vast majority of that which is on the front page is there because users liked the content and upvoted it.

If some parties are occasionally abusing the system to promote their own content then I don't think the answer lies in a dramatic overhaul to everything including throwing in flair pieces to submissions and giving people special accounts.

Perhaps a solution would be to disable the upvote button until a user had a certain amount of karma points, as is done with the downvote button? Or maybe add weighting to upvotes based on the amount of karma points a user already has? Or maybe monitor submissions for actual link clicks and use that as a weighting i.e. to prevent people upvoting content they themselves haven't even looked at?

All of that is game-able, of course, but not without significantly more effort than is currently required, and the abuse of the current system appears to be infrequent as it is.

I don't think HN needs any radical changes.

Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#125

Post by minimaxir »

driverdan wrote: post #97

One of the open secrets of YC alumni is that many will vote brigade new posts by other YC companies when asked. This has been confirmed to me by multiple YC alumni and I've seen it in practice. This isn't to say others don't do it to, they do, just that it's another "benefit" of going through YC.

I've seen many YC alum posts blatantly brigaded; that's what the flag button is for.

The interesting thing about the flag button is that it's more impactful than an upvote, which means that if the system is gamed and an article is vote-rigged, it makes the article more prone to be flagged and it immediately corrects itself. It's an unstable equilibrium.

Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#126

Post by pajju »

galfarragem wrote: post #121
pajju wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additional feedback: 5. Use of better colors: For following keywords or topics & colors for users by active | top | influencers etc. 6. Verified accounts. 7. Use of on Demand Badges like: Trustworthy User Badge, Looking for(Badge), Looking for co-founder, Hiring, Remote jobs etc. All these can be grouped under a Paid plan? I would definitely pay for value & additionals, even a good mobile app experience is missing. 8…

I don't agree with you but I upvoted your comment (that was already being downvoted) - it adds value to the discussion. The simplicity of HN is something innegociable IMHO. As I understand you are proposing to evolve HN into a mix of Reddit-social network for hackers/entrepreneurs.

Thanks.

It was an open opinion & you understood it well. Others simply downvoted it.

I don't feel anything for downvotes, but opinionated things gets often misunderstood and the whole discussion stops there.

The Idea that someone brings a new conscious(new topic) open for discussion is also gone down by downvoting. The essence of further discussion is thus diluted, because of first few downvotes or no enough upvotes.

This is still a persistent problem in HN, if there is a downvote, there can be fair explanation too(as you did) or don't push it so down, so others might re-consider this topic to be validated.

Nice, these kind of open discussions is the way looking forward.

Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#127

Post by kev6168 »

A feature suggestion (it might seem stupid to some people, but I think it's interesting):

At the lower right corner, every minute or so, pop up a small box containing three or four newly submitted links. The box is only shown for five seconds, then it disappears by itself. Of course users can close the popup box with a click (and can turn off the feature altogether).

In this way a whole lot of new links are exposed to HN readers.

I don't mind this distraction at all, because 90% of time when I am on HN I am not working, have no need for intensive concentration. Frankly, I am often looking for distractions and unexpected/unusual contents. The more links I can see the merrier (come on, I know you agree with me). When I see an interesting link in the popup, I might click it right away, or just keep it in mind.

The links shown can be the same to everyone on HN at the moment, or better, tailored to the user depending on many factors generated by some testing algorithms.

The benefits are more exposure on newly submitted links and probably more additive and longer mindless browsing on HN :-)

Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#128

Post by [deleted] »

pajju wrote: post #20

Good that someone raised this topic. 1. Many good articles & posts don't get upvoted. 2. There are pre-formed HN groups who game the system often. My Feedback 1. Some special users can be given special Front-Page-Post Button permission. Say, 3 Top Users have voted this Post for FP(Front Page) 2. Frontpage should not be the highlighting part of HN. At least it looks like that as of now. The other good parts of HN: new…

[deleted]

Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#129

Post by petercooper »

onion2k wrote: post #111
petercooper wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many good articles & posts don't get upvoted. As someone involved in news delivery, I find this to be an opportunity. I frequently dig up stuff with only 1 or 2 votes here that I can share on and look like I found it - ha! :) As a long timer HNer, I think the main problem is there's little reason or motivation to monitor /newest so it's mostly visited by people being asked to vote up other people's posts. It'd be ver…

As someone involved in news delivery, I find this to be an opportunity. I frequently dig up stuff with only 1 or 2 votes here that I can share on and look like I found it - ha! :) I really thought you'd have automated 99% of the information gathering for your newsletters based on something like that. :)

Not quite automated but there is certainly a process! :) Even just doing searches for common terms on here can dig up some gold.

Re: HN Cheaters: Catch me if you can

#130

Post by minimaxir »

alexcasalboni wrote: post #26

I guess there might be some manual work by HN moderators. They must have a way to help you get to the homepage and also to mark you as a cheater/spam. Don't you think?

The Hacker News moderators have a way to rescue posts that were submitted but never made it to the front page. That still doesn't guarantee that they will get upvotes the second time around, though.
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