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Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

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Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#381

Post by makeramen »

hugh3 wrote: post #326
mixmax wrote: post #206

I used to be a big contributor to this site, but for the last months I've found that my interest in the site has waned. I've thought a lot about why, since I used to really enjoy HN - now it's just one of a few newssites I visit every day. It's hard to quantify but here are my reasons and my take at the decline: 1) The obvious one: Signal to noise ratio in the comments is way down. The problem is twofold - there are…

I just got back from a two-month (well, 85000 minute) noprocrast-enforced HN break, and while I've been browsing the front page for the last few days I haven't felt motivated to comment on anything. I think there's been a drop in the quality of stories as well as comments. Now, maybe it's just me, but I used to like the science-type stories, or other stories that taught me something interesting and novel from some br…

Definitely. I used to see many stories that had long, in-depth analysis or insight into problems; stories that wouldn't find it onto the front page of any other site but HN. I remember being able to check HN front page once every morning and fill my instapaper queue with about 5 lengthy but interesting stories I could read throughout the day. Not so much anymore...

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#382

Post by wolfrom »

ashleyw wrote: post #292
akkartik wrote: post #218

Make votes public.

I like this idea. Also perhaps if a comment was controversial (i.e. lots of up and down votes), a list of the first users who upvoted it could be added next to the comment, e.g. "userA, userB, userC and 27 others upvoted this". That way, a stupid comment would be like the plague, nobody would want to be one of the first to upvote it (and therefore put their name next to it), and so it would quickly sink.

I've always imagined that this is why Quora mentions the voters for a question. Another aspect to that display of votes is that it shows up in the list of a users activities. Clicking on a profile could display the articles and comments that the user upvoted/downvoted. This would cause users who consider their reputation to be important to think twice before upvoting something less appropriate.

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#383

Post by weaksauce »

Have you thought about scaling the effect of an upvote based on the number of words that a comment has? Of course there are implementation details that you would have to worry about but I could see that encouraging longer more thoughtful commentary and penalizing snarky 5 word answers that garner easy upvotes.

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#384

Post by akkartik »

colinsidoti wrote: post #304

I almost launched a site that was meant to compete with HN. Here was the strategy to take you over: Note: Thanks to Incubomber.com members and Aaron Burrow for coming up with these ideas. The specific problems that were being addressed: 1. Karma is given for link aggregation instead of content creation. Consider the user that is lucky enough to be the first to realize that you have posted a new essay on PaulGraham.co…

I like this idea.

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#385

Post by nyellin »

tptacek wrote: post #234
strlen wrote: post #104

Cap the score that is displayed with a comment e.g., past 10 points, just display "10+". Don't display karma and average scores of users, again, past a certain point: this prevents (subconscious) game incentives which lead to e.g., posting comments that say something stupid or mean but which tend to agree with general tendencies of the site. For example, I can post a comment decrying Blub with a snide remark (e.g., "…

The blub setter/getter comment really is the archetypical "dumb comment", isn't it? Nicely done. Users should live or die by their votes on that comment. If you vote up the blub comment, you should personally get the downvotes for it too. Upvotes should expose you to the karmic downside of superficial comments. Especially because the really good comments, the ones most deserving of upvotes, don't seem to get a lot of…

My initial reaction was to disagree with your suggestion: Your method would train people to predict how well a comment is going to be received and to vote based on that. I disagreed, because I don't want to read comments rated by the hive mind, in order to please the hive mind.

However, at a second glance, your idea could work. If people see diverse and insightful comments being voted up, perhaps the hive could learn to encourage creative and interesting comments.

Then again, this would incentivize upvoting comments with an existing positive score, and vice versa.

Perhaps the solution is to not display comment scores at all until you vote on a comment. (But order comments the same way they are ordered now.)

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#386

Post by Tycho »

dolinsky wrote: post #346
Tycho wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen this actually implemented somewhere? Note that I'm not contending that none of the short comments are valuable: far from it, sometimes they're the best thing in the thread. But having a limit would not necessarily deter that content from appearing. The authors would just share a bit more info/insight with us before hitting 'reply.' Meanwhile the timewasters really would be deterred. And while it's great…

We implemented this on zootoo.com during a contest where posting rewarded the user with points (I understand 100% how ridiculous this is as a concept, how awful it is at achieving any kind of 'quality' by itself - and if I was the one who had been allowed to make the decision on this then it never would have been implemented - but karma is a kind of never-ending contest). Not only did the minimum length limit not wor…

To be honest, you're probably right. Unless comment padding was universally down voted, there'd be lots of it going on, defeating the point. And sometimes valuable things like corrections are at loggerheads with a minimum word count.

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#387

Post by coffeemug »

Look at http://gamedev.net - they've grown their community from a few active users to more than a hundred thousand and the quality only increased. They had to go through a period of significantly decreased quality as the community grew, and faced all the same problems as HN. I believe a combination of the following changes would fix things: (from most to least important):

- Upvotes need to be weighed by karma, and karma of exemplary members of the community needs to be seeded by you (and other exemplary members). This way cliques of mean/non-insightful users can upvote each other to their heart's content without making any appreciable difference in their karma value.

- The above would fix the quality of articles on the front page, not just the quality of comments. Our most successful blog post to date was "will the real programmers please stand up" (http://www.rethinkdb.com/blog/2010/06/will-the-real-programm...) which is at best a provocative rant. The actual technically insightful content isn't nearly as successful. TechCrunch mastered the art of linkbait headlines. Weighed upvotes will solve this problem.

- Anonymity breeds animosity. If I don't know someone it's much easier for me to say mean, dumb things (see: YouTube). The solution is somewhat controversial, but I strongly believe the downsides of threaded discussions strongly outweigh the upsides (ability to carry on multiple discussions at a time). Removing the ability to have threads will force people to pay attention to who they're talking to and have a coherent discussions instead of snarky oneliners.

- Moderators need to be able to lock down threads that are getting out of control.

- When the article is off the front page, the discussion quickly dies off with it. There needs to be a "hot discussions" tab that allows people to continue the conversations. This encourages people to get to know each other and participate in a coherent discussion that spans beyond 24 hours.

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#388

Post by jeromec »

hugh3 wrote: post #360
jeromec wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know what you mean, but is it really elitist if it's only a time requirement? It's like admission to a club, anyone can get in but everyone past the current site size pays their dues (in this case by sticking around). If the goal of the site is to not die from popularity, this may be understandably necessary. On your other point, I'm thinking that short unwanted quips can rear their ugly head anywhere along threads…

The thing about elite prestigious clubs is that a large portion of the discussion and activity inside the club turns out to be about membership -- who wants it, to whom we should give it, who is unworthy of it, how worthiness should be decided, and how awesome we folks inside the club are compared to all those folks who aren't inside the club. (Or at least, that's what I assume it's like -- I don't know, I've never b…

The restriction isn't for commenting, only voting. "Big Name" would have to stick around 6 mo. to a year to vote. Shouldn't be a problem if site quality (the key draw) remains high.

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#389

Post by danielford »

jacques_chester wrote: post #380
danielford wrote: post #313

I've generally found a strong correlation between forum quality and the difficulty of gaining admission. One of my favorite forums put me on a waiting list for three months before they let me post. 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 lo…

> I've generally found a strong correlation between forum quality and the difficulty of gaining admission. There's a well-research phenomenon that people believe that a group is more valuable if it was harder for them to become a member. It pops up everywhere from YC to skull & bones to young men being ritually injured in the deserts of central Australia.

This is true, but it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm incorrect in my assessment. Compare the average Metafilter comment to the average YouTube comment. You'd have a difficult time making the case that there wasn't a discernible difference in quality between the two.

Re: Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?

#390

Post by jedsmith »

pg wrote: post #5
th0ma5 wrote: post #2

A suggestion could well be to not have threads like this one (not trying to be disrespectful!) An interesting thought is the idea that punk music was dead the first time someone said punk's not dead.

I could see that being the case with a trend/fashion, but it's not so much of a problem with other things.

With respect, the meta of late has been extraordinarily aggravating, and I do think it is a problem here.
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