Hacker News Reader

Comment by samwillis | Hacker News Reader

I think it would be damaging to the community, that is what HN is. We collectively curate the (to borrow from reddit) the "front page of the hacker internet", HN isn't your news reader it is a community driven homepage. If there were things that people were not seeing due to personal filtering they wouldn't be exposed to the "tone" of the site.

There are certainly things that show up on the homepage that I am not interested in and don't always read about but occasionally I am exposed to something that if there was filtering I may not have seen and learn from it. I believe that being exposed to the other things people are interested in is important for both the community and each of us individuality.

I think it is this global exposure that has helped tune HN in to the grate community that it has become.

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For the simple reason that US culture/politics/news etc. can be so tempting to delve into needlessly as a non-usasian (and it rises to the top so consistently because of userbase), when it often doesn't have any impact on my life outside of boards such as these, I'd appreciate the ability to hide such distracting content from time to time.

Not a blanket filter, just a "yeah that sounds interesting/topical but I'd rather hide the noise (as it relates to me) on this one".

Anything politics/news related is generally considered Off-Topic by the community guidelines http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and people are encouraged not to up-vote them, and I think you are generally ok to flag these items as well if you believe they don't contribute to the "hacker" nature of the site.

The problem is the ranking system and algorithm itself. The karma system incentivizes posting similar articles to the top articles either on the same day or a few days later thus creating a front page covering the same topic. And people seem to up vote every article on the topic ...

In a strange positive feedback cycle, the fact that the poster's karma is considered in placement effectively ensures that the voices of a few (the top 25 or so based on karma) dominate the flow (both of comments and of posts), rendering HN the front page of the few with sufficient karma.

I am unable to find the link at the moment, but tptacek explicitly noted that one of his comments were pegged to the top but some other comment, that he admitted was better and should have been at the top, wasn't rising naturally. That type of situation should never happen.

That may be the case with comments but I don't believe it is the case with stories. The only thing that may be a factor is the age of the account, if it is a very new account (minuets old) then it may be harder to get on to the homepage but I don't believe your karma has any impact.

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