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Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

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Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#141

Post by armitron »

Jaygles wrote: post #21
sondr3 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, I miss what.cd, not just for the content but for the obsessive users they had and the collections they made. Want all albums with a shoe as the cover? They have a collection for that. Want good music to start a journey into classical music in the 1800s? They have a collection for that. I mostly used it to discover great music, and the void that what.cd left has yet to be filled for me.

I don't think I'm ever going to get over what.cd getting taken down. After it disappeared my new music discovery has plummeted.

You can join one of the successor trackers. Though, I expect them to be taken down in turn when they become more well-known.

The centralized private tracker model has a fatal flaw in that it's too easy to take down and all the work/hours people put in in curating and creating metadata ultimately wasted.

There are alternative models where the metadata is distributed but so far nothing has really caught on.

Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#142

Post by dang »

slg wrote: post #96
ColinWright wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a mod and I don't have any inside track, but I've been around a while. I suspect that this item has fallen not because of flags, but because it's got 80 comments and only 75 votes. There is a mechanism as a proxy to detect flame wars, and is not necessarily because of flagging. If you think this has been sunk inappropriately then email the mods. They are quite open to getting honest, constructive comments and…

I have scrolled through several pages and this post is no longer in the top 200 on HN. I have never seen the flame-war penalty hit anything close to that hard that quickly. I am pretty sure this is from user flagging.

It was both, but we turned off the flamewar detector.

Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#143

Post by dang »

slg wrote: post #107
ColinWright wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be. I've also now read through most of this thread and I can say categorically that for me, this thread is now mostly full of dross, and I'd be tempted to flag it as being of negative value to HN. I haven't, but I can see why others would. Like it or hate it, the purpose of the voting system is to provide a direction for the content. You may disagree, but it's like elections - you get what "the community" deem…

I am not suggesting we remove the ability to downvote or flag. I still want the community to decide most of these things. I simply want more accountability for these actions so they aren't used for petty reasons. You would be free to flag this post for causing a comment section full of garbage. You would just have to say that rather than flagging and moving on.

That would lead to a ton of comments saying why they had flagged or downvoted things. Such comments tend to be of low quality and (if people could reply) would lead to endless bickering. IMO it's much better for signal/noise ratio not to go there.

I once spoke to the creator of a much larger forum than HN, who told me the biggest mistake they made was to add a meta facility to the site.

Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#144

Post by dang »

slg wrote: post #70
o10449366 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvoting isn't the problem - it's spam flagging. There's no better tool for suppressing ideas and viewpoints you disagree with than flagging it. Only on HN can a story occupy #1 on the front page due to overwhelming upvotes, and 30 seconds later be sunk to the depths of page 2 or 3 by a handful of flaggers who disagree with the content that's presented.

I have complained about this to moderators before. There are certain topics that are almost off limits on HN not due to the rules, but due to the heavy flagging they always receive. Articles by, about, and for women are one common example. These articles being flagged results in this community being pulled further into a dangerous realm of misogyny that already exist in some pockets of the tech world. EDIT: Another e…

HN has hosted countless threads about gender issues and articles by, about, and for women. Here is one from two days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22128385. Some get flagged; sometimes we turn off the flags, especially when the article contains substantive information and isn't primarily a sensational piece.

This is by no means an under-represented topic on this site in relative terms. You may feel that it's under-represented in absolute terms, but that's true of every important topic, because front page space is the scarcest resource HN has.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#145

Post by detaro »

laumars wrote: post #111
samatman wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not on lobste.rs, so I could be getting this wrong. But I believe the system is that you have to choose a reason for downvoting, which is shown to the person you downvote, but that you're not required to reply to the post, and the user doesn't know who in particular did the downvoting.

I'm not on lobste.rs either and if that's their system then that's not entirely what I had in mind. I'd want voting to be first class comments. That way bad moderation surfaces quickly and can be moderated on itself -- thus pushing the abuser below the threshold for access to negative voting. One thing I think HN does really nicely is that you cannot down vote someone who's replied to your comment. Only 3rd parties c…

Has the downside though that now a genuinely bad comment takes much more space in the comment section, because of all the comments necessary to justify its downvotes, and all the comments arguing with those comments (I'd expect that to descend into flamewars very quickly).

Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#146

Post by Reedx »

solatic wrote: post #14

And HN is arguably better for not being invite-only. There are so many articles on HN where the top comment is by somebody with deep domain knowledge who provides some kind of original insight that fits into the low length and polish expectations of a comment, but would never have become a formal blog post. Invite-only communities intentionally give up on that kind of discourse for... what? Easier moderation?

That's a good point.

Indeed sometimes the most insightful comments here come from one time use anonymous/throwaway accounts.

Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#147

Post by nickpsecurity »

nkelly31 wrote: post #16
self_awareness wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was already used when dealing with voting rings (resulting in termination of accounts)

Very cool! Did they do a write-up? I haven't been following lobste.rs closely and some quick google searching returned a lot of unrelated content.

There's an example of the admin, pushcx, eliminating a voting ring in this part of the moderation log:

https://lobste.rs/moderations/page/4

He's really good at that. I can't recall if he disclosed his methods. Most don't to avoid giving the people doing it a chance to adapt. Let them stay at low-effort attempts. :)

Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#148

Post by ColinWright »

dang wrote: post #143
slg wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not suggesting we remove the ability to downvote or flag. I still want the community to decide most of these things. I simply want more accountability for these actions so they aren't used for petty reasons. You would be free to flag this post for causing a comment section full of garbage. You would just have to say that rather than flagging and moving on.

That would lead to a ton of comments saying why they had flagged or downvoted things. Such comments tend to be of low quality and (if people could reply) would lead to endless bickering. IMO it's much better for signal/noise ratio not to go there. I once spoke to the creator of a much larger forum than HN, who told me the biggest mistake they made was to add a meta facility to the site.

I think the idea is that when you flag or downvote you have to provide a comment on the action, and that comment is then displayed when someone asks for a list of downvotes and/or flags. Those comments are not part of the regular comment system, and one can't reply to them.

It's what happens on Lobsters, but whether or not it makes a difference is hard to say. The traffic is small enough that I doubt the effect is properly measurable.

Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#149

Post by nickpsecurity »

Speaking on behalf of Lobsters, I'll repost my former comment about this site when I explained it to Hacker News:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17873715

Feedback from Lobsters, esp those that run the site and major contirbutors, was mostly in agreement. Most responses preferred one or more of peaceful coexistence, getting good from both, and/or cross-posting good stories/comments to both communities. A seemingly-tiny group does hate HN or SV, though. We're less about which is best so much as helping make the one(s) we use the best.

On Lobsters, culture articles usually get more upvotes than downvotes. This article on Lobsters got a large number of downvotes at a higher-than-usual ratio indicating they thought it doesn't represent Lobsters' vies and/or might offend the HN community. That's despite kevq being a guy we like who writes and submits lots of content that gets plenty of upvotes. Just throwing out there for anyone on HN wandering if this was a group consensus or just kevq's thing.

Speaking for myself to address a few comments in this thread:

1. Looks dead. It usually is on weekends. Check back Monday and Wednesday. Always slower-moving, lower comments, and just more laid back, though. Although niche, we're unusually strong in accessibility, formalmethods, plt, and testing. Look at the tags:

https://lobste.rs/tags

2. Politics, echo chambers, moderation, etc. The site itself is diverse. The main preferences in voting are people that just want deep tech vs people that want human side and/or political (most far-left-leaning). There's plenty in between who submit links, drop in randomly, etc. These two are just most vocal about preferences. If not haters or trolling, then moderators let visibility be determined by votes w/ worst collapsed, not deleted. Deletes and bans are rare with constructive criticism from community being most common.

3. Experts. Lobsters comments has higher expert-to-non-expert ratio on a lot of topics due to its model. HN's model and long history gives it a higher volume of experts and expert comments. The two are also usually different even on same article or topic. Reading both sites is best for maximizing expertise.

Dan, I appreciate the list you posted illustrating No 3 since I've needed that on most of the occasions I've described HN's diverse array of experts to people not on the site. Definitely passing it along.

Re: Why Lobste.rs Is Better Than Hacker News

#150

Post by aarroyoc »

cf wrote: post #134
aarroyoc wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, I'm interested. I can't see your email and probably you can't see mine, so if you think I'm not an asshole, could you send it to adrian D0T arroyocalle AT gmail D0T com

Oh crap I didn't realize it wasn't public in my posts. Hold on! Also you don't seem to be an asshole! Invite sent!

Thanks!
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