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

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

#611

Post by bootload » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 4:56 AM UTC

bootload wrote: post #588

nhangen wrote: post #477

Relatively new user here... I found the site when someone submitted something and asked me to upvote it. I didn't know what that was, so came here and made a stupid comment and got downvoted. I didn't know what that meant or why it happened, and no one went out of their way to explain it. Months later, I have almost 1k karma and still didn't know who RiderofGiraffes was, and don't find myself caring. The real issue h…

"... The real issue here is culture, and the cultivation of it. There is a culture, but it's tough to find, and it's far from discoverable. ..." The best place to start is read pg's essays ~ http://paulgraham.com/articles.html I got the feel for HN before HN existed through reading. "... I don't get the feeling of a nurturing environment here, and because of that, it's sort of a "fend for yourself" environment, which…

the list is here ~ http://twitter.com/bootload/hackernews/members

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

#612

Post by chaosmachine » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 4:59 AM UTC

gnosis wrote: post #609

chaosmachine wrote: post #395

This is probably 300 comments too late, but I mocked up a solution: http://i.imgur.com/nY4X4.png It's something I've suggested before, getting rid of downvotes and replacing them with flags.

An interesting idea. But, unfortunately, it's very open to abuse. There is no guarantee the flagged comment has been flagged correctly. Really, you're stuck with the same problem: just as there could be mass upvotes of "poor" comments and mass downvotes of "good" comments, there could be mass flagging of "good" comments as "spam", "dumb", or "mean".

It shouldn't be too hard to limit abuse. Set appropriate thresholds, give less weight to new accounts with low karma, ignore flags from users who frequently flag inappropriately (this last one could be automated by comparing upvotes from a list of "known good voters" against the flags. For example, if you flag stuff that pg upvotes, you're probably flagging inappropriately).

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

#613

Post by gnosis » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 5:14 AM UTC

RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #359

A final thought: If you don't discriminate between the actions of the vast majority, and the actions of those identified as being aligned with your desired intentions for the site, nothing will work. I can probably "prove" that. I think any solution will require the identification of individuals whose actions are "more trustworthy," and giving them greater weight, or more powers. Anything else can and will be swamped…

"I think any solution will require the identification of individuals whose actions are "more trustworthy," and giving them greater weight, or more powers."

Yes, but the greater weight they get need not apply indiscriminately to all users of HN.

The simple act of voting on a comment implicitly indicates which other users a given user trusts and thinks should have greater weight. Namely, they are the other users who voted the same way on that comment.

A system could be developed which takes advantage of that information to give each user a personalized view of HN comments and articles.

I describe a scheme to do just that elsewhere in this thread:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2405266

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

#614

Post by niels_olson » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 5:15 AM UTC

You need gardeners. Which is work. But you don't ask just anyone to tend your garden. You ask a gardener.

Another way to think of it: a university needs teachers in the classroom. You can't just do research and have an open admissions policy. Someone has got to be providing training and feedback to the newcomers. Which is work. And you can't just have anyone do it. You need someone who's already had some training. A couple of thoughts:

1) You could feed those vested and proven folks with say, 1000 karma, 20% of their stories with top-level comments in non-descending order:

-- in randomized order instead of rank order, or

-- in inverse order, so they presumably have less cognitive burden to those undervoted great comments. Presumably it is less of a burden to skip over crap than decide if the 59 pt comment is really not as good as the 12 pt comment further down.

2) You could also add a more pre-emptive burden to rep: eg, you can't earn more than 10 points a day unless you vote on 10 new stories first. Feed a daily cookie to them with a popup with the policy, and encourage them to do it.

If you want an experimental focus group to pilot on, feel free to include me.

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

#615

Post by bootload » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 5:17 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #547

bvi wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"... because it divided the community into haves and have-nots. ..."

Isn't this is a logical inconsistency? There seems to be no problem dividing the community into haves and have-nots when it comes to post quality.

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

#616

Post by diego » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 5:18 AM UTC

crasshopper wrote: post #552

diego wrote: post #247

I'm surprised this book hasn't been mentioned here yet: http://www.amazon.com/Building-Reputation-Systems-Randy-Farm... If you read that book and then look at HN, it's clear how its design encourages behaviors that are not aligned with the goals of the community managers.

diego, would you mind summarising for us what's wrong with the design?

I'm playing by ear, but the one thing that stands out after reading the book is the display of karma (user / comment / post scores). One thing the book emphasizes is that if you display karma prominently, users will feel motivated to perform actions that will improve their numbers. This means perhaps going for a witty one-liner instead of a comment contrary to the community beliefs that could be downvoted into oblivion. More here:

http://buildingreputation.com/writings/reputation_wednesday/

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

#617

Post by pg » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 5:25 AM UTC

mixmax wrote: post #564

pg wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If the badges are only shown on a users profile page I think you'll see a very different reaction.

Hmm, maybe you're right.

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

#618

Post by gnosis » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 5:37 AM UTC

rlpb wrote: post #188

1. Set up a Twitter-like directed graph of users, so users can provide HN with people they'd like to "follow". This graph need not be public. 2. When someone upvotes or downvotes, all followers of that person upvote or downvote the same submission or comment by proxy. If a person follows multiple people some of whom upvote and some downvote, or upvotes or downvotes himself, then cancel their proxy vote. This proxy vo…

I don't think this really solves the problem either.

The problem is that popularity is not indicative of quality.

Your proposal is just another way of staging a popularity contest for comments.

Only instead of having "direct democracy" ("rule of the mob"), you propose a "representative democracy" ("rule of the elites").

While there's something to be said for the "representative democracy" approach (namely, that at least the elites are familiar with the community's norms and mores, unlike some random newbie) they are just as susceptible to making poor decisions as the mob is.

In other words, just because some guy is popular does not mean he makes good decisions.

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

#619

Post by sushrutbidwai » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 5:41 AM UTC

Few suggestions -

1. On top of comments section have one which is for recent comment. I think lot of people feel that once the post is around for 30 mins (for a fairly popular post), even if they have something good to say, it will just not reach audience.

2. Remove karma points completely, just hide them some place where no one will see them. Use them silently in the background to optimize things, but dont bring them at the center. Generally new comers to site want to rise to top (of whatever) because that way they will be taken seriously. This incentive drives people to just write anything

3. No karma for submissions. People submit any article and get 10-15 upvotes but lot of articles do not add any thing to HN.

4. I think there is already some threshold on upvotes, perhaps increase it? Only so many upvotes/downvotes/submissions in a day or even in an hour.

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

#620

Post by gnosis » Mon, Apr 04, 2011, 5:42 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #258

akkartik wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how would this help improve comments? Wouldn't the worst-behaved also be the least likely to hit such a button?

One reason comment threads get tendentious is when people think other people are commenting to game the thread and collect karma. The karma-ceiling flag tries to say "this is a good faith comment".

So by implication the rest of the commenters who haven't so flagged their own comments are not commenting in good faith?

Why not just make 1 the ceiling karma for all comments across the board? Or, in other words, why not get rid of karma all together?

I guess I'm still confused by how your proposal will solve anything.

It seems pretty clear that those people who really are commenting in good faith and aren't doing so to accumulate karma won't be swayed by whatever karma they may get (positive or negative).

So what does explicitly limiting the karma those good-faith commenters get achieve?