Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN? • Hacker News Board

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

#541

Post by ww520 » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 2:37 AM UTC

Tycho wrote: post #238

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., "…

Actually, you just gave me a great idea (I think). The problem is mainly snide remarks, right? So make it impossible to make snide remakrs. How? Minimum comment length of ~50 words. This would A) get rid of casual snideyness, as those sorts of people wouldn't put in the effort to formulate a longer post; B) discourage crowd-pleasing one liners, which while enjoyable have a long term negative effect; C) still allow jo…

Length of a comment is not an indication of insightfulness. Wall of text sometime is a turn-off. People who are busy tend to just leave bare minimum to convey their point.

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

#542

Post by crasshopper » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 2:40 AM UTC

gcv wrote: post #433

pg wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with that is that it's hard to say exactly what counts as politics. E.g. is an article about economic inequality like this one http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2402027 politics? I don't think so. Economic inequality is a very interesting social phenomenon, though it is often written about in a heated/political way.

What about adding a separate "flag as politics" option to stories? That way, if enough people feel that it is off-topic for the HN front page, it could get banished to a separate news.ycombinator.com/politics area. Not deleted, just removed from the front page and easily accessible to anyone who wants it.

I really like your suggestion. It could be extended even further.

If readers are willing to tag stories not just as "good" or "bad" but with categorical labels, then suddenly the news aggregator "knows" a lot more about the data its serving up. You could have categories at the top, preferential sorting for users, and more.

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

#543

Post by crasshopper » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 2:42 AM UTC

Bias in favour of upvotes from the bottom of the page.

Everybody scrolls from the top down. Those who vote for lower-down stories are less likely to be amplifying the hive mind.

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

#544

Post by gridspy » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 2:43 AM UTC

gridspy wrote: post #462

jeromec wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And we could make it policy to immediately downvote such cases.

Sorry, your comment is too short (as is mine)

It's telling that this comment got more upvotes than any of my other (much more constructive) comments in this thread

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

#545

Post by crasshopper » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 2:45 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #150

scythe wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is there some other way to show what the most interesting comments in a thread are? How about if I displayed the point totals for subtrees, but not for individual leaves? How about dispaying the rounded log(score)? You give some indication of how well a comment is doing but it's hard to vote strategically. Not that easy with negative and zero scores, obviously, but those usually aren't the comments people are lookin…

That is a great idea.

No offence to pg, but why did this comment get upvoted 9 times?

This makes me think it would be good to remove the name of the commenter as well as the number of points a comment gets.

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

#546

Post by pg » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 2:46 AM UTC

EwanG wrote: post #361

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…

What's interesting is that we all KNOW what the answer to the problem is, but no one is going to go out on a limb and say it. So let me do so - HN needs a paid, full time, editor who will go through the submissions not to approve of what he/she likes (though you could go with a council of three if you're really worried about that), but to make sure they are real links to real articles - and that have the time to do t…

I didn't feel like I knew what the answer was, so I was very curious to see what it would be.

I'd actually been considering hiring someone to run HN, though not to moderate it in quite as hands-on a way as you're suggesting. Interesting idea though.

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

#547

Post by pg » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 2:49 AM UTC

bvi wrote: post #370

mixmax wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You, and other users both in this thread and in similar ones before it, are only looking at one side of the equation. The problem is only partially too many bad comments, it's also too few good comments. Your proposal is targeted at lowering the amount of bad comments, but it might do so at the expense of the good ones. Most of the users that have a high karma count have so because they always have something insightf…

One way around this could be through badges (a la Stack Overflow). You could automatically get badges based on average comment karma and so on, instead of tying your contributions to the HN community to a mere number. That way, you're rewarded when you contribute meaningful, valuable comments, plus from a reader's point of view, your comment will still have 10+ votes.

I tried badges based on average comment score (the infamous orange dot experiment) and everyone hated it, including me, because it divided the community into haves and have-nots.

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

#548

Post by shadowsun7 » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 2:49 AM UTC

EwanG wrote: post #361

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…

What's interesting is that we all KNOW what the answer to the problem is, but no one is going to go out on a limb and say it. So let me do so - HN needs a paid, full time, editor who will go through the submissions not to approve of what he/she likes (though you could go with a council of three if you're really worried about that), but to make sure they are real links to real articles - and that have the time to do t…

Metafilter uses this, so it is a valid model. I'm supporting you on this.

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

#549

Post by crasshopper » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 2:49 AM UTC

roadnottaken wrote: post #229

rexreed wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think it's a good idea to penalize people for commenting? How does this help people new to the scene? "Thanks for joining in the conversation, here's a penalty" This only rewards people who have been around in the scene for a while, while penalizing all the new people.

It's not penalizing, it's just acknowledging seniority. Sort of like how on Slashdot you can't vote on other peoples' comments until you accumulate enough karma.

> acknowledging seniority

Why is seniority good in and of itself? Privileging seniority seems anti-democratic and anti-newbie.

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

#550

Post by stanleydrew » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 2:52 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #182

Allow commenters themselves to publicly flag their own comments to prevent them from accruing karma. Call it the "sincerity" flag. Actually, this is my #1 top feature request for HN, period.

Do comment flags currently have any affect beyond signaling to pg and the moderators that the comment should be looked at? Specifically, does flagging a comment (perhaps enough times) actually prevent that comment from obtaining any more karma?