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Hacker News metrics (first rough approach)

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Re: Hacker News metrics (first rough approach)

#41

Post by Bahamut »

dang wrote: post #10

The Hacker News ranking algorithm tends to penalize stories that address social issues. The Hacker News ranking algorithm does not penalize stories that address social issues. It doesn't consider social issues at all, apart from a couple of special cases that we turn off once a major wave subsides [1]. The effects the OP is observing are mostly caused by user flags and the voting ring detector. 1. The intention there…

As far as I can tell, a fair number of users abuse the flag ability to squelch discussion on topics they don't want to see discussed or a viewpoint they don't agree with as an alternative to downvoting (since one cannot downvote a submission).

Re: Hacker News metrics (first rough approach)

#42

Post by nknighthb »

dang wrote: post #33
nknighthb wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is insanely disingenuous. User flags and the voting ring detector are part of HN's ranking algorithm, whether they're labeled as such in the code or not.

We must have a crossed signal here. Of course those are part of the ranking algorithm! My point is that except for the exceptions I mentioned, none of the code considers social issues. What part is disingenuous?

You said:

"The Hacker News ranking algorithm does not penalize stories that address social issues."

And then explained the observed effects as being from flags and vote ring detection.

People flag stories that address social issues, thus, the ranking algorithm is penalizing stories that address social issues. That (the collective) you did not specifically intend this makes a nice case study in unintended consequences and/or the collision of technology and humanity, but doesn't change the point being made.

Re: Hacker News metrics (first rough approach)

#43

Post by hippowithgas »

wow - the money quote "I scraped Hacker Slide to get just over two months of data in the form of hourly snapshots of stories, their age, their score and their position" -- how did he do this? I can barely get to the homepage say 14 times out of 20, without hitting the error page from their CDN/DDOS Protection pages (cloudfare?) And that's not to scrape content, just to read the headlines from time to time.

Re: Hacker News metrics (first rough approach)

#44

Post by dang »

nknighthb wrote: post #42
dang wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We must have a crossed signal here. Of course those are part of the ranking algorithm! My point is that except for the exceptions I mentioned, none of the code considers social issues. What part is disingenuous?

You said: "The Hacker News ranking algorithm does not penalize stories that address social issues." And then explained the observed effects as being from flags and vote ring detection. People flag stories that address social issues, thus, the ranking algorithm is penalizing stories that address social issues. That (the collective) you did not specifically intend this makes a nice case study in unintended consequences…

By your logic, the software must also be biased against the things users downvote, since after all the code records the vote.

Of course the algorithm penalizes (most) stories that users flag. But it has no knowledge of what those stories are about. If some topics get flagged more than others, that is a function not of the algorithm but of the inputs users give it. This seems so obvious that I fear this dispute is purely definitional.

Re: Hacker News metrics (first rough approach)

#45

Post by imaginenore »

pron wrote: post #25
aw3c2 wrote: post #19

Not sure about penalising algorithms but I make sure to flag pointless social war mongering posts.

Right, because it's the posts that incite social wars rather than the real events they discuss. This is how it happens: 1. Something bad happens due to what we can call "SV culture", at least bad for some people. 2. A brave soul writes about the injustice, and posts the story (or someone else does) to HN. 3. The story is promptly flagged because the discussion of the injustice is "pointless social war mongering". 4.…

So much butthurt.

This is Hacker News, not Tumblr. Social justice idiots try to inject their nonsense into every culture, and I would prefer this community to stay on the technology.

Re: Hacker News metrics (first rough approach)

#46

Post by JoshTriplett »

slg wrote: post #35
JoshTriplett wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that makes more sense. A story that generates a large number of comments and a large number of upvotes very quickly seems likely to be a good story. A story that generates many quick comments without upvotes seems likely to have produced comments negative about the article; if you posting a comment but you don't want to upvote the article, that does seem like a good sign of controversy and possible flames.

But it doesn't just penalize flamewars, it penalizes all conversations. For example, I have now posted two comments in this discussion and only upvoted the article once. Does that mean this is a worse article than one that I only upvoted and never commented on or a better article than one I upvoted and commented on three times?

Keep in mind that HN also has a "deep thread" mechanism, which hides the reply button for a while on sufficiently deep comment threads to discourage rapid-fire posting without thought. (Slashdot used to have the same thing; if you posted comments too rapidly, you'd get a "whoa, slow down there".)

I'd also hope that more weight goes to "more commenters than upvotes" rather than "more comments than upvotes", though as vague heuristics neither seems too far off.

Re: Hacker News metrics (first rough approach)

#47

Post by AndrewDucker »

Chinjut wrote: post #37
krapp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe a thread with more comments than votes is penalized as well, suggesting that commenting on a thread without upvoting it first is implicitly flagging it. And of course there may be other arcane metrics involving thread depth, average comment rate, comment size, thread shape, etc. Who knows?

Whoa, really? ...I've been flagging a lot of articles.

Only a factor if it's got more comments than upvotes.

Re: Hacker News metrics (first rough approach)

#48

Post by pron »

imaginenore wrote: post #45
pron wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, because it's the posts that incite social wars rather than the real events they discuss. This is how it happens: 1. Something bad happens due to what we can call "SV culture", at least bad for some people. 2. A brave soul writes about the injustice, and posts the story (or someone else does) to HN. 3. The story is promptly flagged because the discussion of the injustice is "pointless social war mongering". 4.…

So much butthurt. This is Hacker News, not Tumblr. Social justice idiots try to inject their nonsense into every culture, and I would prefer this community to stay on the technology.

What's technology for? Technology isn't neutral (like science can be). It is either to advance social justice or to obtain or maintain power. I think you're not particularly powerful, so I can only assume you're so laser-focused on technology, so religiously fanatical about it, because, how did you put it? Well, because you're a "social justice idiot".

Re: Hacker News metrics (first rough approach)

#49

Post by imaginenore »

pron wrote: post #48
imaginenore wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much butthurt. This is Hacker News, not Tumblr. Social justice idiots try to inject their nonsense into every culture, and I would prefer this community to stay on the technology.

What's technology for? Technology isn't neutral (like science can be). It is either to advance social justice or to obtain or maintain power. I think you're not particularly powerful, so I can only assume you're so laser-focused on technology, so religiously fanatical about it, because, how did you put it? Well, because you're a "social justice idiot".

You seem to have a mental disorder when everything seems to be revolving about the issues you like, and so you are unhappy when they aren't covered by site X you visit.

Most of us like technology because it's interesting, not because it gives us some magical power. It's infinitely more interesting than whining about the abuse of virtual characters in games and other such idiocy.

Re: Hacker News metrics (first rough approach)

#50

Post by [deleted] »

pron wrote: post #48
imaginenore wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much butthurt. This is Hacker News, not Tumblr. Social justice idiots try to inject their nonsense into every culture, and I would prefer this community to stay on the technology.

What's technology for? Technology isn't neutral (like science can be). It is either to advance social justice or to obtain or maintain power. I think you're not particularly powerful, so I can only assume you're so laser-focused on technology, so religiously fanatical about it, because, how did you put it? Well, because you're a "social justice idiot".

[deleted]
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