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Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

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Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#641

Post by GMoromisato »

Ensorceled wrote: post #473
GMoromisato wrote: post #272

I'm here to read what actual humans think. If I wanted to read what an LLM thinks, I could just ask it. But here's where it gets tricky: Do I prefer low-effort, off-the-top-of-my-head reactions, as long as it is human? Or do I want an insightful, well-thought-out response, even if it is LLM-enhanced? Am I here to read authentic humans because I value authenticity for its own sake (like preferring Champagne instead of…

> If I wanted to read what an LLM thinks, I could just ask it. and > Or do I want an insightful, well-thought-out response, even if it is LLM-enhanced? What is the difference? What's the line between these two? The prompt: "Analyze and respond" is pretty clearly "I would just ask it." and, the prompt: "here's my comment, please ONLY the check the grammar and spelling" would probably be ok. What about prompt:"I disagr…

What about:

1. "Here is my answer to a comment. Give me the strongest argument against it."

2. "I think xyz. What are some arguments for and against that I may not have thought of."

3. "Is it defensible for me to say that xyz happened because of abc?"

All of these would help me to think through an issue. Is there a difference between asking a friend the above vs. an LLM? Do we care about provenance or do we care about quality?

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#642

Post by f38 »

minimaxir wrote: post #427
dang wrote: post #386

The rule has been around for years, but only in case law, i.e. moderation comments ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... ). What's new is that we promoted it to the guidelines. Fortunately I found some things we could cut as well, so https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html actually got shorter. --- Edit: here are the bits I cut: Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pic…

...Hacker News could use some more cute animal pictures, though.

AI generated "cutest possible animal" (and "make it cuter") might be mildly interesting.

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#643

Post by tzs »

computomatic wrote: post #608
tzs wrote: post #573

How about comments that include AI output if labeled? Earlier today I remembered that there was a Supreme Court case I'd heard about 35 years ago that was relevant to on an ongoing HN discussion, but I could not remember the name of the case nor could I find it by Googling (Google kept finding later cases involving similar issues that were not relevant to what I was looking for). I asked Perplexity and given my recol…

> I though of pasting in Perplexity's summary, saying it was from Perplexity but that I had checked and it was a good summary. > Would that be OK or would that count as an AI written comment? The rule seems written to answer this directly. Absolutely nobody cares what Perplexity has to say about the case - summary or otherwise. If you mention what the case is, I can ask claude myself if I’m interested. Better yet, po…

I did post a link to the Supreme Court's decision at Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute's archive of Supreme Court decisions.

I looked at the decision itself sufficiently to see that it was the case I remembered and that my recollection of the facts and the decision was correct.

I just didn't include a summary because I didn't find a good one I could link to. Normally I'd write a brief one myself but I found that hard to do when Perplexity's summary was sitting right there in the next window and it was embarrassingly better than what I would have written.

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#644

Post by CivBase »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #631

Translation is a form of AI-edition. Language translation is the origin of (the current wave of) AI and its killer app. English is not the main language of the world, and translation opens us up to a huge pool of interesting thinkers. I'm a native speaker in a foreign language, but out of practice except of a weekly family call. I recently had to write a somewhat technical email to my family, and found it easier to w…

The spirit of the rule is clearly about using AI to determine what you say and how you say it. Translation is not again the spirit of the rule and I doubt you'd get in trouble for using it.

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#645

Post by nunez »

tzs wrote: post #573

How about comments that include AI output if labeled? Earlier today I remembered that there was a Supreme Court case I'd heard about 35 years ago that was relevant to on an ongoing HN discussion, but I could not remember the name of the case nor could I find it by Googling (Google kept finding later cases involving similar issues that were not relevant to what I was looking for). I asked Perplexity and given my recol…

I'd be fine with treating this like snippets from Wikipedia with citations back to the article. This way, people can manually verify the sources if they so choose.

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#646

Post by ASalazarMX »

rzmmm wrote: post #603
tzs wrote: post #573

How about comments that include AI output if labeled? Earlier today I remembered that there was a Supreme Court case I'd heard about 35 years ago that was relevant to on an ongoing HN discussion, but I could not remember the name of the case nor could I find it by Googling (Google kept finding later cases involving similar issues that were not relevant to what I was looking for). I asked Perplexity and given my recol…

Perplexity supports sharing URL to the thread. I think it's quite natural to link AI summaries like that.

> I think it's quite natural to link AI summaries like that.

I think you misspelled "convenient". More than the small effort that it takes one to share generated text, one has to consider the effort of who knows how many humans that will use their time to read it.

If a LLM wrote something you don't know about, you're not qualified to judge how accurate it is, don't post it. If you do know the subject, you could summarize it more succinctly so you can save your readers many man hours.

If LLMs evolve to the point where they don't hallucinate, lie, or write verbosely, they will likely be more welcome.

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#647

Post by DetroitThrow »

dang wrote: post #426
arrsingh wrote: post #381

There should be a "flag as AI" link in addition to "flag" and then a setting for people to show flagged as AI. Once the flagged as AI reaches a certain threshold then it disappears unless you enable "Show AI". Maybe once enough posts have been flagged like that then that corpus could be used to train an AI to automatically detect content generated by AI. That would be cool. Maybe the HN site wouldn't add this feature…

We're going to add that. I've resisted adding reasons-for-flagging for years, but even I can change my mind every decade or so. A nice side effect is that it will double as a confirmation step, solving the FFF (fat finger flagging) problem.

Flag as AI would be incredible and is probably unique to software-focused forums. Saves everyone who wants it a lot of time. Still allows cool content to reach the front page with some visibility or escape some moderation queue.

Thanks for not standing still on this issue. The world is changing, fast, and glad HN responded quicker than some forums on a cogent stance.

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#648

Post by nunez »

schopra909 wrote: post #548

Honest question, why were folks posting AI generated comments in the first place? There's such a high inertia to comment. I only comment when I have something to contribute OR find something incredibly interesting. So I'm just baffled, why anyone was using AI to generate comments. Like what was the incentive driving the behavior?

Most comments on here are really well-written. I can imagine someone for whom English is a second language (or a first language but aren't as good at writing as they'd like to be) using an LLM to "keep up." Of course, this sometimes works until they decide to post something without those tools.

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#649

Post by kl33 »

wilg wrote: post #434

It's far from proven or obvious whether involving an LLM in your thought process degrades your thought process.

Long-time lurker.

Personally I stopped using LLMs much from around 6 months ago. I was using them regularly prior to that.

I noticed these dimensions of myself increased:

- Patience - Focus - Ability to hold concepts and reason for longer

and other related qualities improved.

My personal experience tells me they do degrade or hinder oneself from operating maximally. Some may be more sensitive than others - we aren't all the same.

But one thing for sure - younger generations will be more sensitive as they are already exposed to products that are designed to erode their self-control.

Re: Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans

#650

Post by verdverm »

browningstreet wrote: post #442
GMoromisato wrote: post #272

I'm here to read what actual humans think. If I wanted to read what an LLM thinks, I could just ask it. But here's where it gets tricky: Do I prefer low-effort, off-the-top-of-my-head reactions, as long as it is human? Or do I want an insightful, well-thought-out response, even if it is LLM-enhanced? Am I here to read authentic humans because I value authenticity for its own sake (like preferring Champagne instead of…

I keep wishing for a public place to put a formatted version of my LLM threads. I have long conversations with LLMs that usually result in some kind of documentation, tutorial, or dataset. Many of them are relatively novel, but I haven't created a place for them yet. And no, I wouldn't think an HN post is it either.. I'm just saying, there should be a good place to post the output of good questions asked iteratively.

Simon Willison published something for turning Claude Convos into something publishable. [1] I haven't tried it, so cannot speak to the ergonomics.

Where to post it? Any blog site, probably a good few Show HN too. Will anyone read it? I haven't read anyone else's, I'm more inclined to dock them reputation for suggesting I read their Ai session. Snippets of weird things shared on socials were interesting to me early on, but I'm over that now too.

[1] https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/25/claude-code-transcript...

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