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Programming Is Like Sex

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Re: Programming Is Like Sex

#21

Post by pius »

pg wrote: post #16
ghiotion wrote: post #15

Wow. Add a few puns and one C-C-C-C-Combo Breaker, this could be a comment thread on reddit. That ain't a good thing.

Yeah, this is worrying. A crap link and a crap thread, and it's number 2. The fundamental problem on any site like this is that it's so easy to upvote lightweight stuff. When a link sounds like it's going to take a while to read, people say "maybe I'll read it later," and never do. And since they haven't read it, they don't upvote it. Whereas e.g. a cartoon people know will only take a few seconds, so they click on i…

I think there's a fundamental lack of agreement on what an upmod, uparrow, digg, or what have you actually means.

Some people upmod for relevance, others upmod for bookmarking purposes, and some upmod whenever they see something that makes them giggle.

Maybe more social news sites need to rise to the challenge of being opinionated in what the point of their upmods are.

Re: Programming Is Like Sex

#22

Post by pg »

ghiotion wrote: post #19
pg wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is worrying. A crap link and a crap thread, and it's number 2. The fundamental problem on any site like this is that it's so easy to upvote lightweight stuff. When a link sounds like it's going to take a while to read, people say "maybe I'll read it later," and never do. And since they haven't read it, they don't upvote it. Whereas e.g. a cartoon people know will only take a few seconds, so they click on i…

The downarrow is a good idea, until you start to consider the cabal of greasmonkey jerks auto-downvoting everything on the new page that wasn't submitted by one of their cretin brethren. Perhaps there could be some kind of difficulty weight a user inputs when they submit a story. More demanding stories get a 10. Cartoons get a 1. Then give more weight to upvotes on the more complex stories. Obviously, this has the po…

Another variant would be to have the weight be voted on. Weights only matter for a fraction of submissions, so I wouldn't want to complicate submission by making everyone (especially new users) come up with a weight for what they're submitting.

Maybe it would even be a good idea to have the votes on weights be public, so no one would be tempted to use that as a way of censoring stories.

Re: Programming Is Like Sex

#23

Post by akkartik »

pg wrote: post #16
ghiotion wrote: post #15

Wow. Add a few puns and one C-C-C-C-Combo Breaker, this could be a comment thread on reddit. That ain't a good thing.

Yeah, this is worrying. A crap link and a crap thread, and it's number 2. The fundamental problem on any site like this is that it's so easy to upvote lightweight stuff. When a link sounds like it's going to take a while to read, people say "maybe I'll read it later," and never do. And since they haven't read it, they don't upvote it. Whereas e.g. a cartoon people know will only take a few seconds, so they click on i…

Hmm, you could just markdead. Do y'all resist the temptation to kill stories past some number of upvotes?

Re: Programming Is Like Sex

#24

Post by rms »

ghiotion wrote: post #19
pg wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is worrying. A crap link and a crap thread, and it's number 2. The fundamental problem on any site like this is that it's so easy to upvote lightweight stuff. When a link sounds like it's going to take a while to read, people say "maybe I'll read it later," and never do. And since they haven't read it, they don't upvote it. Whereas e.g. a cartoon people know will only take a few seconds, so they click on i…

The downarrow is a good idea, until you start to consider the cabal of greasmonkey jerks auto-downvoting everything on the new page that wasn't submitted by one of their cretin brethren. Perhaps there could be some kind of difficulty weight a user inputs when they submit a story. More demanding stories get a 10. Cartoons get a 1. Then give more weight to upvotes on the more complex stories. Obviously, this has the po…

What if the downvote only appears if the story is above, say, 7 karma? This would limit how long a lightweight story could be high on the frontpage.

Re: Programming Is Like Sex

#26

Post by ghiotion »

rms wrote: post #24
ghiotion wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downarrow is a good idea, until you start to consider the cabal of greasmonkey jerks auto-downvoting everything on the new page that wasn't submitted by one of their cretin brethren. Perhaps there could be some kind of difficulty weight a user inputs when they submit a story. More demanding stories get a 10. Cartoons get a 1. Then give more weight to upvotes on the more complex stories. Obviously, this has the po…

What if the downvote only appears if the story is above, say, 7 karma? This would limit how long a lightweight story could be high on the frontpage.

Karma is variable, no? As the site gets more traffic, karma points will start to go up over the board. A rising tide lifts all boats, so to speak. 7 may be a good threshold now, but will it be in 6 months?

Re: Programming Is Like Sex

#27

Post by rms »

ghiotion wrote: post #26
rms wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the downvote only appears if the story is above, say, 7 karma? This would limit how long a lightweight story could be high on the frontpage.

Karma is variable, no? As the site gets more traffic, karma points will start to go up over the board. A rising tide lifts all boats, so to speak. 7 may be a good threshold now, but will it be in 6 months?

Probably not, but it's the kind of thing that could be manually or algorithmically adjusted.

Re: Programming Is Like Sex

#28

Post by ghiotion »

pg wrote: post #22
ghiotion wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downarrow is a good idea, until you start to consider the cabal of greasmonkey jerks auto-downvoting everything on the new page that wasn't submitted by one of their cretin brethren. Perhaps there could be some kind of difficulty weight a user inputs when they submit a story. More demanding stories get a 10. Cartoons get a 1. Then give more weight to upvotes on the more complex stories. Obviously, this has the po…

Another variant would be to have the weight be voted on. Weights only matter for a fraction of submissions, so I wouldn't want to complicate submission by making everyone (especially new users) come up with a weight for what they're submitting. Maybe it would even be a good idea to have the votes on weights be public, so no one would be tempted to use that as a way of censoring stories.

Maybe restrict users below a certain karma to X number of upvotes per day? That way, you need to consider carefully which stories you upvote. Comment upvotes could stay infinite.

Re: Programming Is Like Sex

#29

Post by bayareaguy »

pg wrote: post #16
ghiotion wrote: post #15

Wow. Add a few puns and one C-C-C-C-Combo Breaker, this could be a comment thread on reddit. That ain't a good thing.

Yeah, this is worrying. A crap link and a crap thread, and it's number 2. The fundamental problem on any site like this is that it's so easy to upvote lightweight stuff. When a link sounds like it's going to take a while to read, people say "maybe I'll read it later," and never do. And since they haven't read it, they don't upvote it. Whereas e.g. a cartoon people know will only take a few seconds, so they click on i…

Perhaps you could give users a limited anti-karma budget they could spend to downmod articles. Something like you may spend 1 point of anti-karma every 24 hours for each 100 karma you have earned.

For ordering purposes, a story's effective karma should be something like (total upmods / (1 + total antikarma)).

Re: Programming Is Like Sex

#30

Post by thaumaturgy »

pg wrote: post #16
ghiotion wrote: post #15

Wow. Add a few puns and one C-C-C-C-Combo Breaker, this could be a comment thread on reddit. That ain't a good thing.

Yeah, this is worrying. A crap link and a crap thread, and it's number 2. The fundamental problem on any site like this is that it's so easy to upvote lightweight stuff. When a link sounds like it's going to take a while to read, people say "maybe I'll read it later," and never do. And since they haven't read it, they don't upvote it. Whereas e.g. a cartoon people know will only take a few seconds, so they click on i…

I've opined a bit elsewhere on what happens to social sites as they get more and more popular.

If you want YC to be, and stay, as a particular sort of thing, then unfortunately you have to actively enforce a particular culture. Since, presumably, you don't want to have to babysit the thing yourself all the time forever, that means picking a handful of people and 'blessing' them to do it for you.

So! Here's one way that might work -- though there're gonna be some objections to it:

Pick a dozen or twenty users that you think really 'get' what you want the site to be about. Set a special flag on them in your database. When they upvote a submission, it counts for a little extra, say 1.5 points; likewise if they downvote a submission. Then, you need to make sure that as people come and go, you still have this active core group of people tuning your site for you. So, if an 'unblessed' user gets habitually upmodded in their comments, or their submissions, by members of your blessed group, over a period of time that unblessed user gets automatically blessed, and their votes count for a little extra too.

This still leaves the door open for debates and arguments, while -- I think -- helping the site to stay on-subject without your active participation all the time.

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