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Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

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Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#241

Post by ankeshk »

Let moderators mark a comment as "not useful". And everyone who voted for that comment earns negative karma. This will make people think twice before voting for a comment. Dumb and mean comments won't be voted on.

This allows you and the mods to set the tone for comments.

Of course, the weak point is - moderators bias may show up. And a worthy comment may be marked as not useful occasionally. So depending on the number of moderators you have, you could make it so that the minimum criteria is x number of moderators have to mark a comment as not useful.

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#243

Post by mixmax »

strlen wrote: post #104

Cap the score that is displayed with a comment e.g., past 10 points, just display "10+". Don't display karma and average scores of users, again, past a certain point: this prevents (subconscious) game incentives which lead to e.g., posting comments that say something stupid or mean but which tend to agree with general tendencies of the site. For example, I can post a comment decrying Blub with a snide remark (e.g., "…

You, and other users both in this thread and in similar ones before it, are only looking at one side of the equation.

The problem is only partially too many bad comments, it's also too few good comments. Your proposal is targeted at lowering the amount of bad comments, but it might do so at the expense of the good ones.

Most of the users that have a high karma count have so because they always have something insightful to say (mechanical_fish (http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mechanical_fish) is a good example), and their incentive for posting interesting stuff is marginalized by this. Almost all people, whethere they'll admit it or not, are incentivized by other peoples approval, eg. karma, and downplaying their contributions will make them more prone to not submitting great comments.

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#244

Post by Lanzaa »

geuis wrote: post #31

Make voting on comments cost karma. Alternately, make new story submission require at least 100 minimum karma level. I suspect the effect here would be to reduce the number of frivolous and spammy submissions. When more high quality submissions are the topics of conversation, the quality of comments will go up.

I like this idea, but it would need some tweaking before being used.

If voting on a comment gives karma to the commentator and it takes karma to vote, then people would need to comment to vote. I think this type of zero sum game would increase the number of poor comments from people who want to vote and an increase in poor comments is what we are trying to prevent.

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#245

Post by matthodan »

peterlai wrote: post #93

You could help people discover good comments by allowing them to collapse comment threads. A simple [-] button by each comment should do the trick.

I like this idea-- you might even start with comments collapsed so users can quickly identify threads of interest. Here is a simple mock-up of what I'm envisioning:

http://imgur.com/SGbyG

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#248

Post by Alex3917 »

tptacek wrote: post #195
Alex3917 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right about mediocre comments being the real problem, and about identifying good users and rewarding them programmatically. I would take this a step further though and apply the same logic to story submissions. For example, bloggers who write insightful stuff on a regular basis should get some sort of bonus when content from their domains is upvoted early on. Maybe each upvote would internally count as…

I would strongly prefer we not add features that make HN more echo-chamber-y. For instance, I like John Gruber's writing a lot, but I'm not so much a fan of every one of his posts being on the front page.

I agree, but I don't think that invalidates what I'm suggesting. I think the solution is just to not give Gruber a bonus, or else to even give him a negative bonus.

The idea is to reward people who are writing good stuff but who aren't making the front page, not to reward people who already have all their stuff upvoted.

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#249

Post by tptacek »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #233
bretthopper wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, this is the biggest problem with HN rather than comment quality. Tons of related, and even duplicate, stories happen all the time which fragments discussion. Not to mention the duplicate posts which happen a few months later. Thankfully someone usually remembers and posts a link to the previous discussion but that shouldn't be required.

I think it's an interesting idea to be able to "group" related posts that occur within a certain time range of each other. If five posts on the new iPad 7 come in within the same three days, someone can drag them all together into the "iPad 7" thread. But this? the duplicate posts which happen a few months later Once we're up to a timescale of months , or even weeks, we're no longer being sensible. Instead we're exhi…

I think only time scale we need to think about is the front page.
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