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Blindly submitting content to HN, good or bad?

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Re: Blindly submitting content to HN, good or bad?

#41

Post by Ives »

swombat wrote: post #40
DanBC wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's less of a feedback loop there - people don't know if their submissions have been flagged or not.

On behalf of authors everywhere, please don't use the flag button as a downvote button. This, for several reasons: 1. It's overpowered. Based on some experiments I conducted a year or so ago, it seems like 1-2 flags equal about 10-20 places dropped in the rankings. It's brutal. A single person in a bad mood can drop a story like a stone. I don't know the exact maths, but a single flag seems to have the effect of many…

> It's not what it was designed for! According to the guidelines, flagging is meant to be for "spam or offtopic", not for stuff you don't like or disagree with and want to downvote. If you disagree with it, write a comment to explain why, or find a comment that agrees with your disagreement and upvote that. Flagging is not a way to express disagreement!

Disagreeing with something is not a reason to downvote either.

Re: Blindly submitting content to HN, good or bad?

#42

Post by veyron »

Ives wrote: post #41
swombat wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On behalf of authors everywhere, please don't use the flag button as a downvote button. This, for several reasons: 1. It's overpowered. Based on some experiments I conducted a year or so ago, it seems like 1-2 flags equal about 10-20 places dropped in the rankings. It's brutal. A single person in a bad mood can drop a story like a stone. I don't know the exact maths, but a single flag seems to have the effect of many…

> It's not what it was designed for! According to the guidelines, flagging is meant to be for "spam or offtopic", not for stuff you don't like or disagree with and want to downvote. If you disagree with it, write a comment to explain why, or find a comment that agrees with your disagreement and upvote that. Flagging is not a way to express disagreement! Disagreeing with something is not a reason to downvote either.

In your perspective, what are valid reasons for downvoting?

Re: Blindly submitting content to HN, good or bad?

#43

Post by joelhaus »

pg wrote: post #14

When we notice people doing this we rate-limit them. I just did.

Paul - Why not create a "comment karma threshold" to remove the incentive for new users to blindly submit stories?

For instance, users won't get karma points for stories they submit until they reach some threshold for karma from their comments. This would be beneficial in a number of ways:

  * encourage better comments from new users
  * prevent downvote capability for new users that only submit a lot of stories
  * fewer low-quality stories will be submitted

Re: Blindly submitting content to HN, good or bad?

#44

Post by chc »

joelhaus wrote: post #43
pg wrote: post #14

When we notice people doing this we rate-limit them. I just did.

Paul - Why not create a "comment karma threshold" to remove the incentive for new users to blindly submit stories? For instance, users won't get karma points for stories they submit until they reach some threshold for karma from their comments. This would be beneficial in a number of ways: * encourage better comments from new users * prevent downvote capability for new users that only submit a lot of stories * fewer…

This would seem to imply that comments are somehow "superior" to stories, and I'm not sure that's supposed to be the case.

Re: Blindly submitting content to HN, good or bad?

#45

Post by chc »

veyron wrote: post #42
Ives wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not what it was designed for! According to the guidelines, flagging is meant to be for "spam or offtopic", not for stuff you don't like or disagree with and want to downvote. If you disagree with it, write a comment to explain why, or find a comment that agrees with your disagreement and upvote that. Flagging is not a way to express disagreement! Disagreeing with something is not a reason to downvote either.

In your perspective, what are valid reasons for downvoting?

In the perspective of many people here, downvotes are to indicate that you don't think the comment contributes to the conversation in a positive way. For example, I upvote comments I disagree with as long as they make the point well and give me something to think about. Similarly, I downvote comments I agree with if they're snide or poorly constructed.

Re: Blindly submitting content to HN, good or bad?

#46

Post by jxcole »

bartl wrote: post #38
jxcole wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users should be rate limited based on the average score of their last x (say 100) submissions. If their last 100 submissions got an average of 1 (no points) then they should be rate limited to 3 a day. If their average score for the last 100 is above, say, 30, then it's obvious the user is providing real value to the community and their rate limit should disappear.

I don't like that. If anything here smells like Digg's "power users", this is it: the more you can post, the more karma you gain, and up goes your ceiling.

That's the point of the 100 most recent. If they are power users and they can submit 80 posts a day, each of which gets at least 20 points, then they are obviously making a contribution. If they just have high Karma though, they won't necessarily be able to have a high limit. If they keep submitting crap in the hopes that a few will be upvoted, their average will go down.

Also, you could try using median rather than mean and that might produce better results.

Re: Blindly submitting content to HN, good or bad?

#47

Post by [deleted] »

chc wrote: post #44
joelhaus wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paul - Why not create a "comment karma threshold" to remove the incentive for new users to blindly submit stories? For instance, users won't get karma points for stories they submit until they reach some threshold for karma from their comments. This would be beneficial in a number of ways: * encourage better comments from new users * prevent downvote capability for new users that only submit a lot of stories * fewer…

This would seem to imply that comments are somehow "superior" to stories, and I'm not sure that's supposed to be the case.

[deleted]

Re: Blindly submitting content to HN, good or bad?

#48

Post by bmelton »

chc wrote: post #44
joelhaus wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paul - Why not create a "comment karma threshold" to remove the incentive for new users to blindly submit stories? For instance, users won't get karma points for stories they submit until they reach some threshold for karma from their comments. This would be beneficial in a number of ways: * encourage better comments from new users * prevent downvote capability for new users that only submit a lot of stories * fewer…

This would seem to imply that comments are somehow "superior" to stories, and I'm not sure that's supposed to be the case.

I think that HN is large enough now that we don't have to worry about stories getting missed. We used to be small enough that any contribution was potentially new and novel and a general benefit to having been posted here, as it might not have been submitted otherwise.

Nowadays, it's big enough that people submit so much that the opposite is a problem, where a given article is submitted multiple times.

It's less important whether or not everyone can submit an article because the frequency is high enough that we'll get it from the next guy. We can now afford to limit the amount of submissions we receive, and limiting the submissions to people who have some standing in the community makes sense, at least on its face.

That said, I think it's a great idea, and about the least inconvenient, from a community standpoint, as I've heard for limiting spam.

Re: Blindly submitting content to HN, good or bad?

#49

Post by nantes »

chc wrote: post #44
joelhaus wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paul - Why not create a "comment karma threshold" to remove the incentive for new users to blindly submit stories? For instance, users won't get karma points for stories they submit until they reach some threshold for karma from their comments. This would be beneficial in a number of ways: * encourage better comments from new users * prevent downvote capability for new users that only submit a lot of stories * fewer…

This would seem to imply that comments are somehow "superior" to stories, and I'm not sure that's supposed to be the case.

I get what you're saying, but I am not sure it does.

When I first arrived on HN, I was unsure about what was appropriate to post. I learned by reading the comments and contributing where I had something useful to share.

Now, after a year or two, I often hear or read a story and think HN has to see this. Then I step back and really weigh whether it fits HN or if I just think it's cool. Often, I end up not submitting. By starting out slow I realized HN isn't popularity contest, but an important community.

That was my experience anyway, YMMV.

Re: Blindly submitting content to HN, good or bad?

#50

Post by vannevar »

chc wrote: post #45
veyron wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your perspective, what are valid reasons for downvoting?

In the perspective of many people here, downvotes are to indicate that you don't think the comment contributes to the conversation in a positive way. For example, I upvote comments I disagree with as long as they make the point well and give me something to think about. Similarly, I downvote comments I agree with if they're snide or poorly constructed.

Yes, I think many people are under the mistaken impression that the upvote/downvote buttons are functionally symmetrical, which is understandable given that they are presented as visually symmetrical. But upvoting serves to avoid redundant 'I agree.' posts, while if users downvote to disagree, it robs the discussion of valuable content (i.e., why they disagree). It would help if the UI were modified to signal this asymmetry.
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