311–320 of 729 posts
Institute a one-time $5 fee to participate.
A privmsg feature, available to people who cross a karma or karma average feature, that would allow gruseom to tell people offline that their comments are dumb. Sometimes it's good to make an example of a dumb comment, but other times it just begs for an unproductive fight.
I make a lot of lousy comments, because I don't really have a lot of respect for the quality of discussion here. But, you know, if I got private feedback a few times -- even from people who were powerless to punish me -- that my comments were bad, then I would actually stop.
So I'd prefer the addition of some sort of barrier to entry. Either an invite system like the private file-stealing sites use, a sign-up fee like Metafilter uses, or a vetting process for potential members.
Ideally, I'd love to see Paul Graham take a couple hundred of the best users and start a new forum. After they had some time to establish the community, people like me could apply for membership, which would involve submitting a written case, and waiting a week for the existing members to vote on it.
*This was originally a reply to lionhearted, who deleted his perfectly reasonable post.
I'm surprised to hear someone as experienced as you say that. I've only been online since 1997.
All successful internet communities seem follow a common life cycle:
* Early adopters seem to be good
* They attract more users
* Someone pines for the old days
* Earnest discussions start about how to "save" the community
Here things bifurcate:
* Descent into infinitely recursive navel gazing with site population following a visible half-life; OR
* Equilibrium is reached after a certain number of the early adopters leave.
I imagine this can be modelled as stocks-and-flows. It would be interesting to see if there are any predictable tipping points or at least observable, predictive metrics.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You just banned 10 out of 12 of the 'pg comments on this thread. :)
I was thinking the same thing which is why I didn't mention the length idea. However... what if users over say 1 year and with a high comment average were exempted? To add to that, lionhearted posted a comment about inevitable site decline because of open membership and equally weighted voting. What if only accounts over 1 year could vote (or diminish their vote weight)? Wouldn't instituting a min. length requirement…
A hard ban on politics and current events, instead of the wiggly one we have in the site guidelines now.
I can't see this working, but heck, I'm willing to give it a try. Two main problems: 1) everything is politics and current events. That is, everything touches in some way on what's going on in the world and how you feel about it. Maybe I'm applying too broad a brush, but I can see politics and current events in every post on HN -- and always have. About the only exceptions would be the driest of technical articles. I…
We're getting politics, in short, even if by a different name.
I don't think you really can. This site is a community and the users matter above all the features. If the user quality takes a nose dive all you can do is hold off the inevitable with new comment rankings. Every site has a point where it gets so big it declines in quality, reddit hit that and now those who want the old reddit back are coming here. The only way to truly guarantee it would remain high quality would re…
I don't think you really can. This site is a community and the users matter above all the features. If the user quality takes a nose dive all you can do is hold off the inevitable with new comment rankings. Every site has a point where it gets so big it declines in quality, reddit hit that and now those who want the old reddit back are coming here. The only way to truly guarantee it would remain high quality would re…
I think that the reason that it has happened to other communities you've seen is because they all had similar incentives. Also, I believe that requiring credentials to use the site (or using referrals/invites) like you suggest is in fact changing the incentives, as people are more accountable to a smaller community/feel more compelled to have a higher standard due to being invited there, rather than just using it as they would public infrastructure (see how people treat a public WC compared to how people treat toilets in homes they've been invited in to).
In this case the problem seems to be an influx of new users that don't completely understand what the site's about. It seems to me the best response is to more actively encourage good commenting from new users. My suggestion is inspired by stackoverflow. Over there, below a certain karma threshold, users must submit their edits to be reviewed by others. It might be beneficial to do the same thing for, say, a user's first 10 comments. They would submit a comment, a more experienced user reviews it and gives feedback if necessary. That way new users are forced to learn a little bit about what the community values in a comment.