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Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day?

news.ycombinator.com

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Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day?

#1

Post by pg »

I worry about News.YC being a time sink, so here's a crazy idea: what if it were turned off a few hours a day? Time zones are obviously a problem, but we can tell when most users are active from the logs, so if we went black for a few hours during that time we'd help the most people.

It seems worth at least trying. Just a few hours would be enough to break most people's cycle of procrastination. And if anything it might improve the feeling of community, because users would tend to all show up together at opening time.

Re: Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day?

#3

Post by Alex3917 »

I like this idea. Maybe not permanently, but it would be worth trying if only because no one has ever done it before and I'm curious to see what would happen.

Also, does anyone have any interest in a news.yc book club of sorts, maybe a book of the month type thing? I'm guessing everyone else will read the new Gladwell book eventually so it would be fun to discuss.

Re: Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day?

#4

Post by cperciva »

If people want to procrastinate, they're going to procrastinate anyway. They'll just do it on other websites -- and if anyone else is like me, they'll probably get sufficiently irritated by coming to a frequently-broken website that they'd end up coming here far less frequently.

As for the notion of improving the feeling of community by having everybody turn up at once... do we REALLY want to get dozens of posts all at once? It seems to me that having a fixed "opening time" would interfere with the site more than aid it.

Re: Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day?

#5

Post by Zev »

I like the idea (and voted as such), but doesn't that duplicate what noprocrast does?

Though, it would be an interesting experiment to do for awhile; I'd like to see if your thought about improving the community by taking it away for a bit each day would have any noticeable effect.

Also, among the sites to procrastinate on, I imagine that HN is one of the better ones - There's mostly intelligent conversations and submissions on here (as opposed to "Guide to Smoking Pot Around the World" on Digg, "Has to be the most disgusting crime ever... WTF!" on Reddit, or something similar on $insertOtherSocial"News"Site)

Re: Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day?

#6

Post by jwilliams »

Zev wrote: post #5

I like the idea (and voted as such), but doesn't that duplicate what noprocrast does? Though, it would be an interesting experiment to do for awhile; I'd like to see if your thought about improving the community by taking it away for a bit each day would have any noticeable effect. Also, among the sites to procrastinate on, I imagine that HN is one of the better ones - There's mostly intelligent conversations and sub…

> I like the idea (and voted as such), but doesn't that duplicate what noprocrast does?

It's a bit different - people come back as there is always something going on. noprocrast just excludes you.

If the site is blacked-out there is no reason to visit.

Re: Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day?

#7

Post by jwilliams »

cperciva wrote: post #4

If people want to procrastinate, they're going to procrastinate anyway. They'll just do it on other websites -- and if anyone else is like me, they'll probably get sufficiently irritated by coming to a frequently-broken website that they'd end up coming here far less frequently. As for the notion of improving the feeling of community by having everybody turn up at once... do we REALLY want to get dozens of posts all…

do we REALLY want to get dozens of posts all at once? It seems to me that having a fixed "opening time" would interfere with the site more than aid it.

Maybe there are other means to limit it - for example, only let users submit a max of (say) 2 links a day.

Not sure limiting comments would have a desirable effect - But you could limit the number of story/comment votes users get a day.

Might make people more frugal with their time - but still keep a high standard of contribution.

Re: Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day?

#8

Post by Jasber »

What about an option to disallow override on noprocrast?

I find it a very useful feature, but sometimes I click override when I know I should probably be working.

A way to effectively ban myself by removing the override option (by choice) would be effective for those of us worried about YC being a time-sink.

You could log out of your account if it was that important, but it seems like putting another barrier in-place as an annoyance will accomplish the desired effect.

I often find noprocrast does exactly what it's supposed to do and reminds me that I should be working.

Re: Poll: Turn off News.YC a few hours a day?

#9

Post by bootload »

"... I worry about News.YC being a time sink, so here's a crazy idea: what if it were turned off a few hours a day? ..."

Good idea.

This will also have a kick-on effect to searchyc and a few others. It seems the time-sink idea is something that should be looked into more. Different people procrastinate at different levels. I smell the beginnings of an algorythm.

"... because users would tend to all show up together at opening time. ..."

This bit's hard. I log in at GMT+11 and it seems I log in out of sync with a lot of stories. Having a break will also do funny things to submissions as news never has a break. Expect the server to be hit at opening time.

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