61–70 of 93 posts
According to a thread less than 24 hours ago the problem is that your articles are falling off the new page too fast. The problem is too many submissions, not less people reading the new page: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1720742 It's an alternative explanation.
PG, check the analytics. What's been the trend on hits to /new over time?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks Jacques. As usual, we agree. Sometimes I wonder why I reply to your comments at all, since we agree so much. :) I think what bugged me was the lack of drive-by readers. HN is pretty much the only site I submit to. I have no aspirations of blogging as a business. I blog because I want to, and I'd blog if nobody came by. So heck with the score or the front-page status. And no, it doesn't bug me that a large perc…
I think as Jacques suggests, the problem is sheer number of submissions, combined with the way the new page seems to work by showing everything: stuff thus scrolls off the bottom much faster than it used to. It’s unclear what could be done to counteract this.
One of the factors that I've noticed lately is that due to the quantity of new submissions, it takes only 30 minutes or so for an article to drop off the first "new" page. I try to check the "new" page periodically, but I must admit, I don't scroll beyond the first page-- so, the article referenced above I missed entirely, and it seems like I wasn't the only one. Which means that the problem may not be that "nobody i…
It only takes 3-4 votes for a newly submitted (It's good for karma, too, as getting early comments in on stories that later become hot is a good way to get lots of points on them.
Now I realize that many people don't vote up videos. However, this is Grace Hopper, who was one of the first programmers for the very first computer ever. She is credited with coming up with the term "debugging" after finding a moth in one of her computers, and she wrote the first compiler for a programming language.
If that's not Hacker News worthy then I don't know what is.
And yet amazingly, this submission only got two upvotes (one of which is mine). Now I realize that we've had a lot of scandalous and "Big Important News" but two upvotes seems abnormally low to me. In fact, if Google Students had not tweeted it (http://twitter.com/googlestudents/status/25361367579) I would have never even seen it.
One example that I have seen of this was this submission of Grace Hopper on David Letterman's show from 1984 ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1719458 ). Now I realize that many people don't vote up videos. However, this is Grace Hopper, who was one of the first programmers for the very first computer ever. She is credited with coming up with the term "debugging" after finding a moth in one of her computers, and…
I've always avoided video, and especially now that I'm responsible for this network. (To clarify, since apparently this post is controversial, we're very isolated and this network is the primary link to the outside world for over 100 people.)
I think that the real problem in operation over here is information deluge. People aren't reading stuff on that page because it overflows on a minute by minute basis. So let's say, if I click to read a long article and I come back to upvote it. This would mean that I am putting a flag for others to read it, but in this time frame it has moved beyond the first new page. Hence, the stories that tend to get upvoted are…
Instead of having a link directly to the article, have the link go to the discussion page instead, but with an added header.
That extra header would check for a cookie. If that cookie is set, no action. If the cookie is not set, set the cookie, then forwards the user to the actual article.
Then, when you finish reading and decide it's worth an up vote, when you go 'back', you're already at the discuss page where you can vote the story itself up, as well as comment on it.
I think that the real problem in operation over here is information deluge. People aren't reading stuff on that page because it overflows on a minute by minute basis. So let's say, if I click to read a long article and I come back to upvote it. This would mean that I am putting a flag for others to read it, but in this time frame it has moved beyond the first new page. Hence, the stories that tend to get upvoted are…
I know it seems unwelcoming to noobs, but we already have a tiered system where you need N karma for your votes to count, to downvote, to submit polls, etc.
I didn't submit anything for months after joining, which I think is the best way to go. Through actively participating in the comments, I got a good idea of what the HN community was really like.
And even now I don't submit that much (though since I discovered the bookmarklet my rate of submissions has increased). HN isn't about submitting to me, it's about comments (though obviously I realize we need good stories to comment on).
The biggest drawback I see is that it might impact the quality of comments. If users desperately want to hit that submission threshold, they might comment a lot or comment group-think-ily trying to pick up a few points here and a few points there until they hit that threshold.