Hacker News and Information Overload

#1

Post by WarTheatre » Sat, Sep 05, 2009, 8:17 PM UTC

I have been reading HN for almost a year now (always via Google Reader) and lately I'm finding HN increasingly difficult to use because of the high volume of posts. Each day HN has about 100 posts which makes HN quite time consuming to even scan. Actually reading the posts? Forget about it.

Increasingly more often I find myself skipping HN in Google Reader because it has become a time consuming chore to find content I'm interested in. This saddens me because quality wise HN is IMHO the single best aggregator for IT startups.

I'm not sure what to do about this information overload problem but I feel it's time to remove HN from Google Reader because in its current form HN is simply broke.

I'm open to all suggestions about making HN more managable.

Re: Hacker News and Information Overload

#2

Post by pg » Sat, Sep 05, 2009, 8:33 PM UTC

You mean each day 100 posts make it onto the frontpage at some point?

Re: Hacker News and Information Overload

#3

Post by rw » Sat, Sep 05, 2009, 8:48 PM UTC

pg wrote: post #2

You mean each day 100 posts make it onto the frontpage at some point?

I emailed something to you about this last year. Is there anything you find useful in it?

http://exponentialspace.com/hn-churn.txt

Re: Hacker News and Information Overload

#4

Post by qeek » Sat, Sep 05, 2009, 8:51 PM UTC

I have noticed the same thing and wholeheartedly agree with you.

Simple solution: categories with separate feeds.

Re: Hacker News and Information Overload

#5

Post by spitfire » Sat, Sep 05, 2009, 8:52 PM UTC

It's worse than that.

Each time an interesting post (say a blog post on fractal dimensionality in the stock market) gets posted ALL of that persons previous work gets posted as well. So you have a head post, followed by 5 other follow up articles which just kills Signal to Noise ratio.

Re: Hacker News and Information Overload

#6

Post by rw » Sat, Sep 05, 2009, 8:53 PM UTC

qeek wrote: post #4

I have noticed the same thing and wholeheartedly agree with you. Simple solution: categories with separate feeds.

That leads to the subreddit problem.

Re: Hacker News and Information Overload

#7

Post by mgcreed » Sat, Sep 05, 2009, 8:54 PM UTC

Could just need more points before reaching the RSS feed?

Re: Hacker News and Information Overload

#8

Post by Perceval » Sat, Sep 05, 2009, 8:59 PM UTC

rw wrote: post #3

pg wrote: post #2

You mean each day 100 posts make it onto the frontpage at some point?

I emailed something to you about this last year. Is there anything you find useful in it? http://exponentialspace.com/hn-churn.txt

Fascinating set of proposals, thanks for posting them here. They seem to fall under the general category of 'automatic gain control': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_gain_control

As the 'noise' of submissions goes up, a system that automatically adapts to the amount of activity in order to determine constitutes the 'signal' will probably help HN readers cope.

I think OP's problem stems mostly from the format in which (s)he reads HN. Checking the frontpage two or three times a day doesn't lead to the same kind of overload as the RSS might. Whereas when checking the frontpage you'll see a mostly stable set of articles (with most of the churn down at the bottom few), on the RSS feed you'll see every single article that hit the frontpage regardless of how short of period of time it spent there.

Perhaps, a quick fix for HN readers coming here from RSS feeds might simply be to not send every story out via RSS, but say, only those stories that stayed on the frontpage for >1 hour.