Personally, I really wished pg would bring back the vote count next to comments. It used to be a very good indicator of what kind of comments were encouraged by the community. I feel HN has been getting worse since although it was intended to make things better.
Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..
271–280 of 465 posts
Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..
#272It's a genuine problem and has been growing gradually worse for a while. I think the cause is simply growth. When a good community grows, it becomes worse in two ways: (a) more recent arrivals don't have as much of whatever quality distinguished the original members, and (b) the large size of the group makes people behave worse, because there is more anonymity in a larger group. I've spent many hours over the past se…
You could color code people who are in the current (or past) YC cycle. You could also make quality participation an element to the application process (like it once was) - the forum has been cannibalized in a way.
Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
...says the new guy to the old guy. Sorry I couldn't help myself.
(haha - I totally misunderstood, my apologies) EDIT: (total rewrite) The cool thing about using metrics and machine learning is that the results speak for themselves and opinions and factions are less important. Intead of guessing what matters in advance, you get to discover what matters after the fact.
Relax buddy. No need to get so defensive. It's just a notable coincidence when debating the merits of age-weighted voting.
Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..
#274It's a genuine problem and has been growing gradually worse for a while. I think the cause is simply growth. When a good community grows, it becomes worse in two ways: (a) more recent arrivals don't have as much of whatever quality distinguished the original members, and (b) the large size of the group makes people behave worse, because there is more anonymity in a larger group. I've spent many hours over the past se…
I wish you'd consider investing less time in technical countermeasures to dumbness (all of them are gameable, and the brand of dumbness you're fighting is not at all incompatible with an intuitive talent for that gamesmanship) and more time into just setting better community norms. It is hard to imagine that the site guidelines you write years and years and years ago when this place was tiny are, intact and without c…
It seems to me that the (arguably) best discussion sites are those governed by benign dictatorship: firm moderation and clear guidelines. Yes, there are edge cases where judgement must be made but clear guidelines make this easier.
Whenever I think of a good example of a community that has managed to stay pretty high-quality for some time, I can't help but think of Matt Haughey's Metafilter. I'm sure the nominal charge for membership helps, but the (paid) moderators are very good.
Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..
#275It's a genuine problem and has been growing gradually worse for a while. I think the cause is simply growth. When a good community grows, it becomes worse in two ways: (a) more recent arrivals don't have as much of whatever quality distinguished the original members, and (b) the large size of the group makes people behave worse, because there is more anonymity in a larger group. I've spent many hours over the past se…
Sometimes saying an idea is pointless is positive feedback, there are a lot of people here that 'launch a startup' which basically means some half-assed website that does something utterly pointless and then expect the community to be like some kind of benevolent uncle and pat them on the back and say what an awesome idea and execution. Many many ideas really are pointless and negative criticism is very much a part o…
> Can't we all just act like adults and learn to deal with the negative comments - possibly even learn from the? Do we really need to protected from snarky comments?
Being able to function in the face of people making negative comments about you on the Internet is one of the basic survival skills of the 21st century.
> People need to start learning to cope with the real world and not expecting 'the system' to protect us from ourselves.
This perspective directly contradicts many HN'ers political leanings.
Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dearest Sir or Madam, thank you for providing me with this valuable feedback. I value your opinion as a fellow HN member and Human (if I may make that assumption). However, it is with deep regret that I inform you that the very first word of your comment contains a typo. Sincerely, Jack.R.Abbit tl;dr: *Your
You personify the problem, this kind of valueless snark is not welcome here.
As the OP was suggesting, I'm just trying to provide my feedback in a more pleasant way. On the other hand, your feedback seems to be rather harsh and all negative. Unless you were trying to be ironic. In which case I say brilliant!
Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..
#277It's a genuine problem and has been growing gradually worse for a while. I think the cause is simply growth. When a good community grows, it becomes worse in two ways: (a) more recent arrivals don't have as much of whatever quality distinguished the original members, and (b) the large size of the group makes people behave worse, because there is more anonymity in a larger group. I've spent many hours over the past se…
Make upvotes and downvotes visible (i.e. not the final number the actual list of users). Knowing that no one will know fosters petty up/down votes.
Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..
#278It's a genuine problem and has been growing gradually worse for a while. I think the cause is simply growth. When a good community grows, it becomes worse in two ways: (a) more recent arrivals don't have as much of whatever quality distinguished the original members, and (b) the large size of the group makes people behave worse, because there is more anonymity in a larger group. I've spent many hours over the past se…
Why not simply limit the size of the community? Heck charge a membership fee... Making it invite only would have (IMHO) improved things a massive amount. Have people do a test to gain entry. Any community that is free and open will just deteriorate over time.
Metafilter seems to be doing alright with its $5 membership fee, but then they also have pretty hands-on moderators (as opposed to community votes)
Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..
#279It's a genuine problem and has been growing gradually worse for a while. I think the cause is simply growth. When a good community grows, it becomes worse in two ways: (a) more recent arrivals don't have as much of whatever quality distinguished the original members, and (b) the large size of the group makes people behave worse, because there is more anonymity in a larger group. I've spent many hours over the past se…
I'm sure you already do, but just to get it off my chest: please use unusual amounts of caution when implementing a technical solution like this.
My gut feel is that your example of the voting system tweak will make users like me might not count. Granted, I don't comment nor contribute directly by providing links. I have various reasons for my silence like the fact English is not my first language (nor even my second language, so it takes me forever to compose something in English, and I still run the risk of my comment turning into grammar crit, with the point I try to make being lost in that noise), a lot of people on the site is intimidatingly intelligent, my points have already been made, etc, etc.
But. I do vote. Due to my non-existent karma I cannot downvote, only upvote. It's limited power, but I try to use it wisely. I cannot downvote the horrible negativity I saw, for example, in the wikipedia design thread (a submission I found fascinating even though it was flawed, as it was lovely to see how their thought process worked as they redesigned the visuals), but I did upvote one or two comments that I thought were thoughtful and added to the discussion. I would like to believe that I made some difference to the tone of the thread, even if it's in a very limited way.
Those that see the world as all shades of gray are not generally very vocal - you don't see a vocal middle ground in most arguments. But this doesn't mean we don't exist. And I don't know how "negative" comments will be classified, and I think people like me run a very real risk of silently becoming false positives when we stupidly upvote things using our own dodgy rules.
So - please consider unexpected side effects such technical things introduce. I guess what I'm saying is I'm already put off by some of the unwritten rules I perceive on this site, if the voting system is also rigged to make some people silently powerless I don't see how to be useful at all. It is off course your prerogative to decide that my type, the silent-but-voting user is unwanted, and if so, that's fine. But I hope I contributed something from time to time.
Re: Why I now, unfortunately, hate Hacker News..
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish you'd consider investing less time in technical countermeasures to dumbness (all of them are gameable, and the brand of dumbness you're fighting is not at all incompatible with an intuitive talent for that gamesmanship) and more time into just setting better community norms. It is hard to imagine that the site guidelines you write years and years and years ago when this place was tiny are, intact and without c…
I'm sympathetic to your point, but I fear that the worst offenders are among those least likely even to read the guidelines, much less adhere to them.
That is okay, they don't have to do that.
So long as it is a group norm to do adhere to the guidelines those who don't will be downvoted and their conduct will have little influence on the community.