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Blindly submitting content to HN, good or bad?

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Re: Blindly submitting content to HN, good or bad?

#21

Post by mkr-hn »

mnutt wrote: post #18
mkr-hn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New users could start with a 24 hour limit between submissions (86,400 seconds) and get 20 seconds removed for every karma point. Someone with 2000 karma would be able to submit every 12.8 hours. By 4000 you've probably learned that quality beats quantity.

That seems fair, though it might be better to use average story karma. The bots in question probably have a fair amount of karma just from the sheer number of stories submitted.

Multiply the value by their average. It boosts overall submission quality automatically by giving better commenters more chances for a front page article.

edit: Though the value would need to be much lower than 20 per karma with that modifier. My average of 2.73 with 2011 karma would let me post as much as I want.

karma * 3.7 * average would come to around 20,000 for me. That would let me submit an article every 18 hours.

Re: Blindly submitting content to HN, good or bad?

#23

Post by biot »

One thing I've noticed happens quite a bit is that a thread on one story will have someone post a link to an external site. Someone takes this and then submits it as its own story. Take, for example, this comment on the "ACTA will force border searches" story:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3496269

Two hours after this was posted someone posted the link within that comment as its own story:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3496475

Normally it's not a bad thing to have a new discussion if the subject is too tangential to the main item being discussed. But this is close enough that the discussion probably ought to have happened directly within the thread.

Additionally, the person who submitted it as its own story received (as it now stands) 145 points for the effortless submission, far more than would be likely for even an incredibly well-written and researched reply within the original thread.

HN has gamified participation by rewarding people with karma. Even though it's only a bullshit number, it triggers a desire to maximize this number. As it stands, submissions are too highly rewarded relative to the value and behavior like 80+ submissions per day results.

Re: Blindly submitting content to HN, good or bad?

#24

Post by cleverjake »

veyron wrote: post #22
pg wrote: post #14

When we notice people doing this we rate-limit them. I just did.

What are your thoughts on allowing people to downvote posts (akin to how comments can be downvoted)?

I believe that is what the flag button is for. Down vote button on a story could lead to people downvoting something they don't like because it is the opposite of upvoting. Flag is more of a "this is an inappropriate story" word.

Re: Blindly submitting content to HN, good or bad?

#25

Post by VMG »

cleverjake wrote: post #24
veyron wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your thoughts on allowing people to downvote posts (akin to how comments can be downvoted)?

I believe that is what the flag button is for. Down vote button on a story could lead to people downvoting something they don't like because it is the opposite of upvoting. Flag is more of a "this is an inappropriate story" word.

But this problem also affects comments - shouldn't we remove the downvote button for them?

Re: Blindly submitting content to HN, good or bad?

#26

Post by darksaga »

brackin wrote: post #7

I definitely disagree with auto submitting but don't believe that Hacker News should be more locked down. There is always a lot of complaints about content but there is an inherent system allowing posters to know what the mass wants rather than one commenter and making sure the best content rises. Don't vote up anything you believe doesn't deserve to be on the front page or flag anything that deserves to be flagged.…

I had the same reaction. HN is already fairly strict with content. If an article has value, it will be on the front page.

Not to mention, most of the stuff I comment on, I want to engage in a decent discussion. If a post doesn't have a lot of comments, chances are the people here don't think it's all that important.

Re: Blindly submitting content to HN, good or bad?

#27

Post by jamesbritt »

biot wrote: post #23

One thing I've noticed happens quite a bit is that a thread on one story will have someone post a link to an external site. Someone takes this and then submits it as its own story. Take, for example, this comment on the "ACTA will force border searches" story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3496269 Two hours after this was posted someone posted the link within that comment as its own story: https://news.ycombin…

Normally it's not a bad thing to have a discussion if the subject is too tangential to the main item being discussed. But this is close enough that the discussion probably ought to have happened directly within the thread.

Similar to this is when the same event is reported by different sites, each of which gets submitted. We end up with essentially the same discussion happening in multiple places.

Ideally there would be some magical way to have all these posts direct to a canonical discussion, but in practice it seems this requires human intervention.

In the meantime perhaps the best action is to flag the late-comer posts and post a discussion link to an existing thread.

Re: Blindly submitting content to HN, good or bad?

#28

Post by DanBC »

cleverjake wrote: post #24
veyron wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your thoughts on allowing people to downvote posts (akin to how comments can be downvoted)?

I believe that is what the flag button is for. Down vote button on a story could lead to people downvoting something they don't like because it is the opposite of upvoting. Flag is more of a "this is an inappropriate story" word.

There's less of a feedback loop there - people don't know if their submissions have been flagged or not.

Re: Blindly submitting content to HN, good or bad?

#29

Post by tyre »

jamesbritt wrote: post #27
biot wrote: post #23

One thing I've noticed happens quite a bit is that a thread on one story will have someone post a link to an external site. Someone takes this and then submits it as its own story. Take, for example, this comment on the "ACTA will force border searches" story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3496269 Two hours after this was posted someone posted the link within that comment as its own story: https://news.ycombin…

Normally it's not a bad thing to have a discussion if the subject is too tangential to the main item being discussed. But this is close enough that the discussion probably ought to have happened directly within the thread. Similar to this is when the same event is reported by different sites, each of which gets submitted. We end up with essentially the same discussion happening in multiple places. Ideally there would…

Not necessarily. Google's news aggregation has gotten pretty good at grouping numerous stories on the same subject together. It doesn't always get things right, but helps to reduce the clutter.

Re: Blindly submitting content to HN, good or bad?

#30

Post by chollida1 »

veyron wrote: post #22
pg wrote: post #14

When we notice people doing this we rate-limit them. I just did.

What are your thoughts on allowing people to downvote posts (akin to how comments can be downvoted)?

I'd fear you'd end up like Reddit where there is a large fraction of the submitters who downvote all other posts in a misguided effort to make their own reach the front page.
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