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Comment by citricsquid | Hacker News Reader

This doesn't address the real issue. The issue isn't that people are voting up comments or submissions that don't fit with what HN is supposed to be, the problem is that those submissions and comments are being made.

Even if the top submissions and top comments fit squarely with what HN is supposed to be there is still going to be comments and submissions that don't and they will continue to be a problem. If a post has 50 comments and 25 are "bad" it's a problem, even if the 25 "bad" comments are at the bottom of the page because people will still reply to them and they will still be a part of the discussion.

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Isn't this the same pattern as yesterday's "bozo" post? The general principle there was "B players hire C players and so on". Granted, we're talking about posters and topics instead of "players", but couldn't it be the same thing in a nutshell?

"People are voting up comments or submissions that don't fit..." sounds just like "People are hiring people who don't fit..." to me.

Or am I wrong?

It seems to me that trying to solve HN's problem by voting would be more similar to solving a company's bozo problem by internal policies, like performance reviews. If bozos can overrun any internal policy of the company, and the only solution for companies is not hiring bozos in the first place, then the only solution for HN is not allowing bozos to register accounts. (Not sure how you'd achieve that though.) That fits well with my impression that HN's early awesomeness was due to an initial pool of awesome people attracted by PG's writings, not due to voting.

Can you link to the post from yesterday? I didn't see it, but it sounds interesting.

The Bozo Event Horizon: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4409760

You seem to assume that the pattern of top submissions and top comments is unrelated to what users post. It seems to me that as quality of the top submissions and top comments improves, the quality of the worst submissions and comments will improve as well. When there is no longer a reward for posting "bad" material behavior will change accordingly.

> The issue isn't that people are voting up comments or submissions that don't fit with what HN is supposed to be

What is it supposed to be?

Interesting.

There are too many non-interesting, but pedantically correct comments that derail discussions. The community goal of an HN comment thread should be to unearth the most interesting, useful aspects of the submitted content. Correct but non-interesting, non-contributing comments should be down-voted.

I'd agree with this. I think too many people think HN should be startups or technology or whatever. But it's a community aggregator, with a community of voters deciding what matters. By definition, HN should be whatever it currently is. But I'd agree it should at least be interesting, if not also a tiny bit of entertaining.

By definition, HN should be whatever it currently is

Not so, there are norms: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

In a way it does address it: hopefully people will be more likely to think about what they're going to write if their reputation (and even more, their voting influence - something tangible) will be affected.

> The issue isn't that people are voting up comments or submissions that don't fit with what HN is supposed to be, the problem is that those submissions and comments are being made.

If people stop voting up such comments, people will eventually stop making them.

> If people stop voting up such comments, people will eventually stop making them.

That's like saying, "If we start putting people in jail for using illegal drugs, people will eventually stop using illegal drugs." Unfortunately that's just not how it works - some people comment (or use drugs, etc) because they can't help themselves, rather than for karma/recognition/trolling/attention. Idealism is a good place to start but but, long term, you have to recognize it as such.

My experience is the opposite. When I first came here, I made a funny remark, which was downvoted due to lack of content. I don't make funny remarks here any more.

> That's like saying, "If we start putting people in jail for using illegal drugs, people will eventually stop using illegal drugs." Unfortunately that's just not how it works

If you believe this, then what is the purpose of putting illegal drug users in jail?

My guess is he doesn't believe putting illegal drug users in jail has a valid societal purpose - I know I don't. Treatment not incarceration.

However I think his analogy is flawed, and that a system that successfully penalizes poor comments and submissions does have a valid societal purpose here, mainly because posting is nowhere near as addictive as most illegal drugs. And for those whom it is - perhaps we can get a treatment program going :)

>If you believe this, then what is the purpose of putting illegal drug users in jail?

The moral majority (or a vocal minority with the necessary clout) imposing it's ideas? Bureaucracy inventing roles for itself using some early 20th century myths about drugs? A convenient mean for controlling ghetto populations (like blacks, latinos, etc)? Sheer stupidity? All the above?

Using your analogy, some people do drugs because they can't help themselves. But there are also a significant number of people who don't do drugs because they know its illegal and are afraid of getting in trouble and what it would do to their reputation.

In the same way, some people will make stupid comments. But there are also a significant number of people who won't. I know I'm far more hesitant to make dumb/funny comments on HN than on other sites because I know that they won't be tolerated, and will be downvoted.

Just because a system isn't perfect, and won't fix the whole problem, doesn't mean it won't have a significant impact on mitigating part of the problem.

> Using your analogy, some people do drugs because they can't help themselves.

It's not my analogy; that's just drug addiction. If you don't believe in the addiction part of drug addiction, then that's where we would differ, I suppose. I think that drug and alcohol addictions are true addictions for some people (as opposed to just bad habits).

I have to confess that I don't understand how the rest of your comments relate to my post.

You analogy compared doing drugs to posting comments. Specifically when you said "Unfortunately that's just not how it works - some people comment (or use drugs, etc) because they can't help themselves,". Yes, drug and alcohol addictions are true addictions for people. I don't think that commenting is a true addiction.

The discussion was on using this system to deter people from posting "bad" comments, and you compared this to threatening people with jailtime for drugs.

...some people comment (or use drugs, etc) because they can't help themselves...

And under the proposed system, those people will never achieve a high karma score and so never have disproportionate influence over the site. That's precisely why it's an improvement.

Even if the top submissions and top comments fit squarely with what HN is supposed to be there is still going to be comments and submissions that don't and they will continue to be a problem.

Only if those comments are made public to everyone. If this system were adopted, it would be sensible to also implement a filter so that low-scoring comments only appear to high-ranking users, who are presumably responsible enough to filter the bad ones out and raise the good ones to visibility. I'd be happy to see fewer comments per post if the quality increased.

> If a post has 50 comments and 25 are "bad" it's a problem, even if the 25 "bad" comments are at the bottom of the page because people will still reply to them and they will still be a part of the discussion.

What is a "bad" comment anyway? Your idea of a bad one is bound to be different from mine, and pg will no doubt have a third view. Would it be possible to present to each user those comments that that user is likely to want to see, based on that user's voting behaviour?

What if users with a registration date around your own or prior had a more significant weight with respect to their votes? That should, at least in theory, keep the content fairly consistent with the quality you came to know around the time you registered.

My account is fairly old as well, but I think PG is correct in trying to discover a rating independent of karma or account age. I don't want to start chasing karma just so my opinion is considered, and I fear a HN where uber-posters hold sway (even more). Similarly, a newish poster who adds huge value shouldn't be disadvantaged because they haven't been around for X years. If they act like PG wants us to, they should get more voting juice.

I'd like to see, as a result of algo changes, less nastiness and better thought-through discussions. Fewer me-too comments, fewer arbitrary no-value comments. I'll happily trust our dictator-for-life on this issue.

I'm not sure that there is an advantage in having an older account under said system, it is more about freezing the ideologies of the rankings during the time at which you signed up. If you signed up during the time that the discussion was all about startups, then your feed should remain predominantly about startups. If you are a more recent subscriber, you will see more political and "learn how to program" type discussions as presumably those topics are what enticed you to sign up at that point in time.

Of course there is danger in that as well, but I see so many lament that they wish it was like it was in the "good old days", where good old days equals the approximate time in which they joined. The way to do that is to let them have the member base just as it was back then, while still letting the site naturally evolve for the rest.

even if the 25 "bad" comments are at the bottom of the page because people will still reply to them and they will still be a part of the discussion.

Here's a good example-

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4407733

That's rich, because it rather looked like you were the one trolling in that exchange.

How is that rich? I pointed it out because that is precisely how I felt some would feel.

I didn't feel like that was bad discussion, per se. You were getting ganged up on for having a counter opinion (one that would have been accepted at face value on HN a year ago) and responded poorly, but overall good points were made.

>This doesn't address the real issue. The issue isn't that people are voting up comments or submissions that don't fit with what HN is supposed to be, the problem is that those submissions and comments are being made.

The solution then is to autohide comments with low scores(configurable on the page) like Slashdot does. Some of the HN comment threads have grown too long these days. It would be nice to skim the comments that the community thinks are the most valuable.

Then you'd be punishing all newbies, not just the bad ones. Instead, hide low scoring comments from low-ranking users, but show them to high-ranking users so that they have the chance to upvote them.

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