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Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.

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Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.

#71

Post by aslkjdf »

robg wrote: post #63
aslkjdf wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can read a site and not be registered. I've been on this site for months but never chose to register an account. Found out about it on techcrunch about 6 months ago and have been reading every day since. Even shared and discuss it with my boss. Just like on digg, it took me 8 months before I joined. You can see a pattern through observation of submissions. Instead of trying to discredit me by the length of days o…

Except the only way to influence the direction of this community is by actually participating. And complaining about content does no good especially if you're not submitting content you deem better.

Your right. I'll stop posting comments complaining and go somewhere else. By the way, again, please try and get the point of what people say instead of trying discredit them. If you don't think i'm enough a part of the community to dawn upon you a valid observation then so be it. As if you can't spot a problem only through observation. I won't be posting here any longer. Good job building the community robg.

Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.

#72

Post by robg »

aslkjdf wrote: post #71
robg wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the only way to influence the direction of this community is by actually participating. And complaining about content does no good especially if you're not submitting content you deem better.

Your right. I'll stop posting comments complaining and go somewhere else. By the way, again, please try and get the point of what people say instead of trying discredit them. If you don't think i'm enough a part of the community to dawn upon you a valid observation then so be it. As if you can't spot a problem only through observation. I won't be posting here any longer. Good job building the community robg.

Instead of going elsewhere, why not simply submit content that you think is better?

As for my complaints on your comments, it's very strange for me to read complaints from someone who has done nothing (quite literally) to fix the problem they're complaining about. You have that power just as much as I do. Why not make use of it?

Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.

#74

Post by eru »

robg wrote: post #26
eru wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it may seem lame it's entirely within the system. Voicing your opinion with a comment/submission is as acceptable as up and down voting - as far as I am concerned. Though I do not like to read complaints that much, either.

Actually, it's not supposed to be in the system: Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or egregiously offtopic, you can flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

OK, thanks for pointing that out.

Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.

#75

Post by swombat »

robg wrote: post #64
edw519 wrote: post #44

TTTTTT HH HH A NN N KK KK YY YY OOOOOO UU UU !! TT HH HH A N N N KK KK YY YY OO OO UU UU !! TT HHHHHH AAA N NN N KKKKK YY OO OO UU UU !! TT HH HH A A N N N KK KK YY OO OO UU UU TT HH HH AA AA N NN KK KK YY OOOOOO UUUUUU !! I'm visiting hn about 10% as often as I used to, but I didn't want to be one of those "not hn" complainers. Can we please have the real hn back? I miss it so much. (Please, let's talk more about pr…

The only way for you to get the "real" HN back is by submitting and upvoting content you deem appropriate. You've done that well previously. Visiting less often is certainly not going to help.

You're failing to see the positive feedback cycle at work here.

1) Political articles creep in

2) Political articles draw more of the politics crowd

3) Voting power of hacker crowd decreases as a percentage of total votes

4) Submit power of hacker crowd decreases as a percentage of total submits

5) This leads to a slow but steady increase in political articles

6) Go back to 1)

This is not a self-correcting system. It can and will happily veer into irrelevance because there are far more politics/reddit type users out there on the internet than there are hackers on HackerNews.

Hence why we need to apply conscious control to it, not just "submit and vote more".

It is madness to expect the same action in the same circumstances to bring anything other than the same result.

Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.

#76

Post by davidw »

ssharp wrote: post #18

Business and economics are extremely relative to this user base. A core understanding of how the economy is doing, where it's headed, etc. is very important. If Web 2.0 is moving to the enterprise, then understanding what's happening in business is VERY important. Since this is an entrepreneurial community, this information is significantly more relevant than the 20,000th person asking what to do to start learning LI…

I find economics fascinating. The unfortunate fact is, though, that most economic discussions very rapidly degrade into libertarians vs non libertarians or capitalists vs socialists, or something along those lines. Another popular one is Austrian economics vs Mainstream economics.

Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.

#77

Post by davidw »

ivankirigin wrote: post #8

Asking others to vote differently and submit different content is lame. It's like complaining about getting down modded. If you want better content, submit it yourself and upmod it on the new page.

It's hard to find good stuff, and sometimes there just isn't that much. This of course leads to a 'crowding out' problem if there's lots of junk being posted - you just can't compete without spending more time searching for content than the junk submitters.

Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.

#78

Post by jon_dahl »

swombat wrote: post #75
robg wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way for you to get the "real" HN back is by submitting and upvoting content you deem appropriate. You've done that well previously. Visiting less often is certainly not going to help.

You're failing to see the positive feedback cycle at work here. 1) Political articles creep in 2) Political articles draw more of the politics crowd 3) Voting power of hacker crowd decreases as a percentage of total votes 4) Submit power of hacker crowd decreases as a percentage of total submits 5) This leads to a slow but steady increase in political articles 6) Go back to 1) This is not a self-correcting system. It…

Agreed. As it stands, all it takes for Hacker News to become Reddit is for the hackers to be outvoted by the Reddit crowd. The wildcard factor is PG, who will probably step in more aggressively if and when he thinks quality has slipped too far.

Remember that "hacker" can mean a variety of things. For YCombinator, a "hacker" is a smart person who likes to build great things, usually using the medium of software. For other communities, "hacker" might mean script kiddie, or World of Warcraft gamer, or tech fanboy. So even the current standard - on-topic = interesting to hackers - won't necessarily protect HN.

Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.

#79

Post by robg »

swombat wrote: post #75
robg wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way for you to get the "real" HN back is by submitting and upvoting content you deem appropriate. You've done that well previously. Visiting less often is certainly not going to help.

You're failing to see the positive feedback cycle at work here. 1) Political articles creep in 2) Political articles draw more of the politics crowd 3) Voting power of hacker crowd decreases as a percentage of total votes 4) Submit power of hacker crowd decreases as a percentage of total submits 5) This leads to a slow but steady increase in political articles 6) Go back to 1) This is not a self-correcting system. It…

What evidence is there for this feedback loop? The one in a hundred political articles? To me, their relative lack, in the current climate, is proof of the opposite conclusion: The strength of this community. Your loop falls apart at #2 because the posts at #1 seldom make it to the front page.

Still, the point remains, the solution isn't fleeing to somewhere else (where the problem will likely repeat). It's sticking around and submitting posts to make the community stronger (by your standards).

Technologically, I think the solution is weighting votes by karma. That would give the initial users more say AND make it harder for new users to push the community around. But that's not our decision here.

Re: Pleading with YC: Enough with the political & financial news. More Hacker News please.

#80

Post by biohacker42 »

robg wrote: post #79
swombat wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're failing to see the positive feedback cycle at work here. 1) Political articles creep in 2) Political articles draw more of the politics crowd 3) Voting power of hacker crowd decreases as a percentage of total votes 4) Submit power of hacker crowd decreases as a percentage of total submits 5) This leads to a slow but steady increase in political articles 6) Go back to 1) This is not a self-correcting system. It…

What evidence is there for this feedback loop? The one in a hundred political articles? To me, their relative lack, in the current climate, is proof of the opposite conclusion: The strength of this community. Your loop falls apart at #2 because the posts at #1 seldom make it to the front page. Still, the point remains, the solution isn't fleeing to somewhere else (where the problem will likely repeat). It's sticking…

What evidence is there for this feedback loop?

It is self evident.

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