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Solving The Hacker News Problem

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Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem

#261

Post by groby_b »

allwein wrote: post #240
eps wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a story making rounds about hiring policies of Saint-Petersburg Mint (back in Royal Russia times). Every new hire not only needed three recommendations from current employees, but that should the new person ever get fired, those who recommended him would be let go as well. Brutal, but brilliant... even if it is not necessary true :)

I assume, of course, that this process wasn't fully recursive, lest the entire mint be fired for one unfortunate hire.

Even then - it's only going UP the tree, not traversing down again to the siblings :)

Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem

#262

Post by groby_b »

die_sekte wrote: post #230
groby_b wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am seriously considering pruning branches, not just leaves of the social graph to keep communities healthy. I.e. if you invited a bunch of bad apples, you will be pruned too. I have no idea if it would work, but it's pretty obvious that open social graphs beyond a certain threshold are not conducive to high-level discussions.

Zed Shaw's Utu had that idea. Doesn't seem like he's still working on it.

I'm not surprised that I like how Zed Shaw thinks :)

Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem

#263

Post by howlingmime »

This has probably been said before (and/or above), but perhaps each article should be tagged and users should subscribe to only those tags of interest to them. In addition, a social component to HN would be useful -- for instance, allow me to recommend a story for someone or for stories of interest to my friends to be ranked above the norm. Our friends make great filters!

Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem

#264

Post by protomyth »

Almost all sites that have comments and user moderation concentrate on the comments and up voting / down voting them. Normally, when dealing with people, I don't remember the individual quote that made me think they were brilliant / a troll, I wrap that up into my sense of them. If I'm flipping channels and see someone who has struck me as a brilliant commentator, I stop based on the visual cue of their face. Names are kind of hard (is this the guy who called me a $%$% or was he the one who really knows python?).

I guess I wonder if the same thing keeps happening on "comment moderation" sites, isn't it time to look at the ways your view could be based on your (not the group's) opinion of your fellow commentors? I don't have a technical suggestion, but I will probably think a lot on it.

Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem

#265

Post by jbooth »

wazoox wrote: post #210
malandrew wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rent control has been a pretty effective way of preserving the identities of communities in cities. It's not perfect, but it helps. Concepts similar to rent control can and should be applied to sites trying to preserve certain characteristics.

Off-topic, but rent control has terrible problems. It lead to some grave NY neighbourhoods problems from the 60s to the 80s; back in the 20s in Paris...

Everything in moderation.

A big part of political-economic maturity (for me at least) realizing that just because the supply/demand lines from your Econ 101 class don't line up, doesn't mean that something is worthless. It could be that you're not measuring everything. Culture matters, preserving social mobility matters.

Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem

#266

Post by mkr-hn »

groby_b wrote: post #156
mkr-hn wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll be interesting to see how that model holds up to another 2-3 years. The few invite-based communities I've been a part of started to degrade as the social graph grew out and started to pick up the occasional undesirable. It was harder to get rid of them because they knew someone who knew someone, and trying to push them out had a network effect. It might be obvious to someone removed by 3+ levels that a bad elem…

I am seriously considering pruning branches, not just leaves of the social graph to keep communities healthy. I.e. if you invited a bunch of bad apples, you will be pruned too. I have no idea if it would work, but it's pretty obvious that open social graphs beyond a certain threshold are not conducive to high-level discussions.

A better way might be to nuke the undesirable, put their branch on notice if they start to cause trouble, and remove them if necessary.

It avoids unnecessary disruptions. Not all branches will shake if a leaf falls.

Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem

#267

Post by wazoox »

jbooth wrote: post #265
wazoox wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off-topic, but rent control has terrible problems. It lead to some grave NY neighbourhoods problems from the 60s to the 80s; back in the 20s in Paris...

Everything in moderation. A big part of political-economic maturity (for me at least) realizing that just because the supply/demand lines from your Econ 101 class don't line up, doesn't mean that something is worthless. It could be that you're not measuring everything. Culture matters, preserving social mobility matters.

Well, to be perfectly exact, in the real-world, for a limited duration, controlled rent can work fine. It just has been applied without discernment too many times.

Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem

#268

Post by jbooth »

wazoox wrote: post #267
jbooth wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything in moderation. A big part of political-economic maturity (for me at least) realizing that just because the supply/demand lines from your Econ 101 class don't line up, doesn't mean that something is worthless. It could be that you're not measuring everything. Culture matters, preserving social mobility matters.

Well, to be perfectly exact, in the real-world, for a limited duration, controlled rent can work fine. It just has been applied without discernment too many times.

Sure, you can screw up anything, and I certainly wasn't saying "everything should be rent-controlled".

Just kinda irks me when someone comes in with the Econ 101 argument regarding a policy that's being implemented by people with advanced degrees in city planning. These people took Econ 101, and know more about the subject than you or I. They could still be wrong, of course, but it's not for a silly simplistic reason like that.

Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem

#269

Post by nitrogen »

barrkel wrote: post #95
bootload wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Of that sampling, it hit the apex for me with Jan 2009 page. The Mar 2009 page is when there was an influx, and we started posting Erlang stories as a joke to stem the flow.

I was part of that influx (I registered 5 days before pg's Erlang post). I apologize for making the page worse for the rest of you ;-). Honestly, the Erlang posts contributed to keeping my interest (though I didn't pay much attention during the following summer as I was busy coding).

Re: Solving The Hacker News Problem

#270

Post by maxklein »

mkramlich wrote: post #176

My suggestions for tweaks to improve the site: 1. hard ban on purely political news ("Egyptian leader stepped down! OMG!") 2. hard ban on gender-specific things ("i'm female, went to bar during hacker conference, got groped, OMG!" -- yes it was hacker conference, but gosh subtract the 'during hacker conference' and you have real life, it's independent of tech, not specific to it or due to it, just a life thing with g…

My suggestion would be simpler : have a "this is not hacker news" queue. It's like the frontpage, but it's for the stuff that is "not hackernews". Whenever something hits the frontpage that people feel does not belong, instead of whining, they just hit the "this is not hackernews" vote button. With some algorithm that can combine vote numbers, influencers or whatever, when it crosses the threshhold, it gets moved over to the alternative page. So there is the community moderated hacker news and there is the alternative everyone hacker news.
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