Edit: I suppose there is some insinuation that HN doesn't really use the original algorithm, and this is the author's attempt to reconstruct what's going on. Is that what I was missing?
> Given that discussions are my favorite part, why don't we apply PageRank for every user based on the upvotes they receive for the comments they leave on any post, and replace the P (points) value in the current version of the HN algorithm?
Because that would lead to absolutely terrible longterm outcomes due to obvious reasons.
In my personal experience, YouTube and Windows 11 are some recent examples of usability degradation due to unnecessary changes.
Post ranking works pretty well, but as far as discussions go I often see insightful responses sent into low-contrast oblivion whilst a glib comment or quip gets accolades.
1. There seems to be a group of people that abuse the flag button to get stories downvoted. You notice this when highly upvoted stories with a lot of points suddenly drop from the top and fall quickly beyond older stories with many fewer votes. For instance, there seems to be a group that was mass flagging submissions about Rob Lee's recent death until one was made that didn't mention his cause of death and explicitly forbid discussion of it in the comments.
2. Partly because of #1, you can have a topic with a lot of votes at the top of the page suddenly drop to page 5 and disappear within a very short amount of time. This significantly lowers the incentive to spend any time writing a thoughtful response or researching useful information, because even spending 20-30 minutes on a response might mean that no one is going to see what you wrote.
I’m not sure that I’d characterize this as abuse. HN stays interesting by avoiding flame bait topics and part of the realization of the community guidelines happens via this flag feature.
One way to reframe #1 is that the community’s self-moderation features are working as designed, and that any post about Bob Lee’s death that somehow editorializes it or positions it in a way that is likely to lead to political debates is against the site guidelines and thus were removed appropriately.
Regarding #2, this has happened to me more than once, and while frustrating, it made me think more about posts I encounter before commenting. When a post fits the criteria for “potential flame war” or “clearly outside of site guidelines”, I flag it instead of commenting, even if I know that at the core, the topic could be an interesting one. Most things get posted more than once, and usually at least one of the posts is within guidelines.
When I do lose a comment to a flagged post, I’ll reuse it in a more level headed discussion about the topic.
A lot of discussions on HN lead to discussions of government policies (both U.S. and foreign) when there's a connection to the story, including saying that certain policies lead to the death of individuals. There's only a subset that gets mass flagged. If he was shot to death by police at a protest, killed by a U.S. military strike in another country, died as a result of a mass Covid surge, stories mentioning the reason for his death wouldn't be mass flagged. People wouldn't be forbidden from mentioning the causes of death on the only one that isn't, and it wouldn't be dismissed as "political flamebait."
If Hacker News decides that discussion about government policies is off limits, that's fine. It might even make discussions better. But allowing it in some situations and having it "removed appropriately" in others is only reinforcing bias. I think characterizing that as abuse is appropriate.
Edit: If you want to see an example, look at the Hacker News discussion about the death of Aaron Swartz. The cause of death isn't hidden, and there's a lot of criticism of the government, none of which is getting dismissed as editorializing or political flamebait[1].
The initial post about Bob Lee was split off into two, so one could remain focused on remembering Bob for who he was [0], and the other could explore the surrounding circumstances [1].
With that said, the site guidelines are pretty clear:
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon ... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity.
So this will often boil down to the framing. If the title is tinged with political implications, that's quite a bit different than mentioning the cause of death.
The circumstances surrounding Bob Lee's death are relevant to quite a few readers here, and so there was a discussion about it. But a default assessment of any given submission if weighed against the guidelines should assume that such content is off-topic, unless there's a reason to believe otherwise (as there was in this and cases like the one you cited that are close to the tech community).
Even with that separation, there was quite a bit of discussion that was clearly far outside of the guidelines in that thread.
In my experience, HN seems okay for reading and participating in meaningful discussion. Comments that don't contribute or are inappropriate don't stay in sight for long (possibly due to the community upholding the guidelines), whereas useful discussions and references to projects tend to stay towards the top. I don't always agree with what sits at the top, but if nothing else it's civilized and reasoned.
In some respects HN has the typical issue of most attention focusing on the first page posts and most discussion being in one or two top level comments, but that's just how people engage with the content, short of randomization there's no way around that. There will always be a top comment and everything else will receive slightly more lukewarm reception and activity.
Well, the article is something of an ad. The author discusses current ranking and effectively proves that it could be gamed to an extent ( author links his non-SEO search engine, which obviously you cannot do unless you are deep into SEO stuff, which includes HN ranking algorithm ). The complaint is mildly self-serving, but only mildly so. FWIW, it worked on me.
Still, I will echo what others said. Despite my grievances with HN at times, don't change what ain't broken.