241–250 of 264 posts
One suggestion is to reduce the influx of new users. Maybe keep new registrations closed except for a few days every month or so. It allows older users time to help the new users adjust to the community, and prevents opportunistic/anonymous-trollish comments. Just an idea.
I agree completely. I've been on HN for almost six years now (sidenote: wow!), and I'm in the top 40 users on the site by karma. And, despite the exhortations to not think that the site is becoming Reddit, the community is absolutely changing for the worse. There are a few things that I've noticed that I never used to see: * More politics. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm a crazy flaming liberal, and I still d…
I think it'd be interesting if any account less than a year old had their comments put into the 'pending' state pg has been talking to.
It's possible to have civil political discourse, but it takes a lot of effort, much more than maintaining the entire rest of a site. You can't do it by tweaking things here and there, you need active moderators who can maintain cool heads themselves about topics they are passionate about.
I don't think it's worth HN spending that effort, and what's more important it doesn't look like HN wants to spend that effort.
If you want a swimming pool, you have to maintain it. If you can't, fill it in. HN should either invest a lot more maintenance on political posts, or take a very very heavy ax to them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My comment is a non-partisan analysis of why most of the NSA story is astroturf. Astroturf can only be debunked by describing the conspiracy. This does not make me a partisan either for or against the astroturfers. If HN stories were showing up simultaneously and with the same headlines as press releases from the John Birch Society, I would direct my flamethrower in their direction. And you ignored the other half of…
Still, I think Thomas is right: your comment is an example of what needs to be avoided to prevent further devolution. The issue isn't whether you are right or wrong, whether the comment is political or non-partisan. Rather it's whether HN or any online community can take on such issues without destroying itself. Historically, the odds are poor. If we want to keep quality of the technical discussion high, I think that…
With politics, there seems to be no such restraint.
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The decline is because there are more people on the site, not because of politics per se. The same thing happened to Reddit: success leads to growth leads to lower average user IQ.
> The same thing happened to Reddit: success leads to growth leads to lower average user IQ. Are you sure it's IQ, or as another user suggested, some kind of mass hysteria? The mainstream news exploded with the whole NSA thing, and then HN did too. Is that a function of IQ?
What's sort of mass hysteria has been suggested?
>The mainstream news exploded with the whole NSA thing, and then HN did too. Is that a function of IQ?
My IQ reference was about the general decline in HN/Reddit comment quality, not about concern with the NSA on HN/Redditm which I think is a healthy thing. Being interested in the fact that someone is collecting one's private communication is a rational security concern.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My comment is a non-partisan analysis of why most of the NSA story is astroturf. Astroturf can only be debunked by describing the conspiracy. This does not make me a partisan either for or against the astroturfers. If HN stories were showing up simultaneously and with the same headlines as press releases from the John Birch Society, I would direct my flamethrower in their direction. And you ignored the other half of…
Still, I think Thomas is right: your comment is an example of what needs to be avoided to prevent further devolution. The issue isn't whether you are right or wrong, whether the comment is political or non-partisan. Rather it's whether HN or any online community can take on such issues without destroying itself. Historically, the odds are poor. If we want to keep quality of the technical discussion high, I think that…
Now it is just about too late. For the next 10-20 years, national infosec policy will be driven by the radicals' memory of their principled stand against the NSA "revelations". "Abuses" will be "curtailed" without regard for legitimate security needs.
The is no elsewhere to reserve this discussion for. If HN is credulous enough to believe staged CNN sound bites, there is no hope for other venues.
I've always been hopeful that lobste.rs would take off, but sadly the steps they took to ensure good participation has kept it from growing. I mean, it still gets new articles, and there are a very few items that aren't on HN (or showed up sooner), but most posts have very little discussion. Looking at the homepage, and the majority of links have 0 comments. That said, it's got a few features that people have pitched…
The biggest issue with lobste.rs is that they hide some of the tag filtering features behind the invite-only membership. I can understand restricting the commenting and submission, but I have no desire to chase after an invitation just to get the tag filtering features. I also think their invite-only membership policy puts them on a different community-growth curve than an HN, Reddit, Metafilter. I used to scan throu…
I realized a long time ago that indignation about political issues was for forums what bad currency is in Gresham's law. We actively compensate for that in various ways. Sometimes when an issue seems a genuinely big deal and/or of particular interest to hackers, we compensate less. It's always a judgment call. But don't worry, if HN declines through indignation about "issues," it won't be by default. We've fended tha…
Not counting talent acquisition and buying/investing into startups
I realized a long time ago that indignation about political issues was for forums what bad currency is in Gresham's law. We actively compensate for that in various ways. Sometimes when an issue seems a genuinely big deal and/or of particular interest to hackers, we compensate less. It's always a judgment call. But don't worry, if HN declines through indignation about "issues," it won't be by default. We've fended tha…
Do you monetize HN, or the data generated? That's something I always wanted to know. Not counting talent acquisition and buying/investing into startups
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>a multibillion dollar industry walking around in peoples pockets every minute of the day. - you are speaking of popularizing and monetizing the internet on mobile devices. In the last dot-com, we were popularizing and monetizing the internet on desktops. To someone that has lived through both? it looks pretty similar. Lots of dumb ideas that will crater, and a few good ones that will endure. (Of course, it's difficu…
While I initially agree with you and can understand your view point based on your previous experience, I think there are two categories of tech: -Business Value Add -Hype / Marketing I separate these out because we've already gone through a terrible economic downturn that is sputtering to produce jobs and yet we see an explosion of jobs in the tech sector. That's because of the value add software that is reducing the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The biggest issue with lobste.rs is that they hide some of the tag filtering features behind the invite-only membership. I can understand restricting the commenting and submission, but I have no desire to chase after an invitation just to get the tag filtering features. I also think their invite-only membership policy puts them on a different community-growth curve than an HN, Reddit, Metafilter. I used to scan throu…
Perhaps your issue with the tag filtering is from an older version? When I look at lobste.rs in an incognito window, it appears I can set tag filters even without an account (they claim "Since you are not logged in, your filters will be stored in a long-lasting browser cookie."). That said, it'd be awesome if they allowed access to that feature through a url you could bookmark.
https://lobste.rs/s/wnqz13/tag_filtering_now_available_to_lo...
https://github.com/jcs/lobsters/commit/249dd85ec3e0d36f6d87d...