[deleted]
Solving The Hacker News Problem
251–260 of 284 posts
Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#252Simplest solution
Limit the number of links submitted per account per day to 1.
Why
Prevents spammers and karmafarmers from submitting the entire TechCrunch\Wired back-catalog at a rate of 25+ a day.
Further Analysis
Increasing the scarcity of a resource (link submission ability) will increase the value of items it is traded for (links).
HN already gets the independent code submissions people want. They just die an early death on the new page due to overcrowding by webzines\newspapers with builtin linkbait titles. This reduces the rate of dropoff for independent news.
Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#253"""For the vocal minority that isn’t happy with what the site has become, the powers that be offer the facepalm-worthy hidden concession of classic mode, which only pulls in submissions from longtime members. “Classic” is probably the single biggest sign that something isn’t healthy in the HN community."""
How come the classic-mode is "facepalm worthy"?
It sounds ingenious:
1) The expanded, current crop of members are mostly idiots.
2) Longtime members are known to be worthy.
3) Filter the crap out.
4) Profit.
Does Al3x have any other solution to propose? Like "educating the general public, so that any random selection of HN members will be equally worthy"?
Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interestingly, this isn't a problem related to any particular category of site. Hell, look at 4chan: bitching about newfags and how /b/ isn't good anymore, how /b/ was never good, different factions with different ideas on how to fix the problem (or what the problem is, or if there even is one), spinoff sites where the early adopters migrate to... This isn't an HN problem, it's an Internet problem. pg could probably…
SA has internal problems too. There's a constant slow cycle where the individual topic forums become boring and straightlaced because the users get proud of how mature they are, so they start new subforums where people are allowed to make "bad" but interesting posts as long as they pretend to be doing it ironically. Then everyone moves into those and it collapses, because they really did become bad posts. Sometimes t…
The gist of that (forums "cancer") is that those users "infected" with it have their posts become harder to read outside of those subforums by lightening the font. A quick mouseover returns the text color to black.
In my opinion, the method doesn't really work because they aren't reading their own posts. It should probably change everyone else's text color instead of their own. Greasemonkey scripts and the like would still fix it, but it would be a lot more annoying to the shitposters that way.
Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#255In response to some of the points being raised in the thread, and to provide some sorely needed data, here are some snapshots of the HN "newest" page taken since Feb 2009:
Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#256I think if we could see random frontpages from days a few years ago, we'd find that the top stories weren't that different, and that there was the same "jack of all trades, master of none" aspect to the site that Alex complains about. It may be that a site whose design spec is to satisfy hackers' intellectual curiosity would necessarily feel that way. Maybe I'll write something to regenerate past front pages, so we c…
A diff of past front pages would be interesting. Some historical front page entries: 2007AUG15 ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/1119991071/ 2008FEB08 ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/2250089864/ 2009JAN18 ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3205568708/ 2009MAR12 ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3347109733/ 2010JUN24 ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/4728476663
From August 2007: "Am I the only one who doesn't care about Facebook?"
That has been a theme on HN longer than I realized.
Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
I encourage everybody to come by the HN secret cabal IRC channel, #startups. Do you mean through here: http://www.ircnet.org/ ? If so, either I'm doing something wrong or the Secret Cabal is not in session tonight (darnit).
I think it's on freenode.
Yes, it is on FreeNode. Which is (in my opinion) to other IRC networks what HN is to other link aggregators.
Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
A similar effect: The average age on the internet is younger than you, and will be for the rest of your life. Think about what effect that has on the density of quality user generated content.
Haha great... I'm barely 30 and you punks are already calling me old. :)
Heh, I'm 26 and I've started calling myself old.
Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#259There is no hacker news problem if you realize that all sites up to this point in internet history are either heavily curated for quality and limited in scope or self-moderated with a one-dimensional, imperfect karma game, and thus chaotic and ephemeral.
Such is the nature of suchness until someone figures out a better game that more properly engages human nature.
Crying over the demise of HN is like crying over a naive hill-climbing algorithm when it gets stuck.
Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem
#260Quality of HN Comments Over Time | . . | . . q| . . . . u| . . . . . . a| . . . . . l| . . . . . i| . . . . . t| . . . you are here -->. . y| (that's all) |________________________________________________________ N D J F M A M J J A S O N D J F M A M J J A S O N D J F '09 '10 '11 (It must be that time of year again...) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926604 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1646871
Nice chart. How did you make it?