Hacker News Reader

Since technical solutions to things are always fun, a recommendation system could be awesome: look at your upvotes and activity, cluster you with folks who vote similarly, then show you links based on neighbors' votes. There are refinements (maybe there could be other signals--domains, user-added post tags, etc.) but even a basic try at it has the potential to make everybody happier.

I love posts about algorithms and anything about Go or Python 'cause I use those; people's snazzy tech demos are always cool; startup/career stuff can be fine but isn't super relevant to me. It's just weird that to get to the bits I like I load a page that also has a lot of strident arguments about the things I shouldn't or must do, the things people are quitting, the things folks are mad at each other over, etc.

You described an implementation of the Confirmation Bias :D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Well, any community that tries to show people what they want does that, including HN as it stands now; it doesn't mean you abandon the goal of getting people content they want.

It's still an interesting problem, though. You might help address it with distinct kinds of vote (relevant vs. agree), or a randomized rather than static list to show people some things outside their filter bubble, a change folks have already proposed for other reasons (it would spread some votes to things off the homepage).

I'm not sure even the naïve implementation would be so bad, though. Things from HN that have actually improved my life haven't really had a component of agreement/disagreement; often they were, e.g., tips or new things to play with or interesting CS or math.

there are three articles about that at the top of the frontpage that say exactly the same thing with exactly the same comments.

Worse, two were based on the same guy at G+ raving about the whole thing.[1]

I'm a little curious about how the stories hit the front page and have stayed up so long. I don't know if it's fully organic, if Google's reputation has really suffered that much, if it's specific to the HN community, or if someone at WaggEd[2] woke up Saturday morning, glanced at HN's submission queue, and decided they needed some nudging. Or Apple, or Oracle, or Facebook, or even some of the privacy rights groups (though Google's slightly late-to-the-game but strident opposition to NSA/PRISM surveillance seems commendable).

But by HN's metric of what's worthy of consideration[3], the story seems to resonate. And I have to say for myself, having worked in the tech field for a few decades and watched data, surveillance, and analytic capabilities mushroom, I think it's a damned good thing for people to be questioning.

That said: I'm partial to Reddit myself, if you find the right subs. And if you're into the whole drama thing, their personal information policy ain't bad either.

_______________________________

Notes:

1. I happen to be that guy. And I'm pretty much just as amazed as anyone.

2. Microsoft's PR firm. Or whomever they use for online reputation management.

3. That being: stuff which makes the front page.

What are some of the good subreddits that would appeal to an HN audience?

Used to be /r/programming... not anymore though. Just go to techcrunch and wired.com, that way you'll see everything that makes it to proggit - but only once, instead of every day for a week. The more specific the better, provided there's a lot of subscribers and there's regular new developments in the topic of interest. So /r/doctorwho sucks pretty hard when the show isn't in season. There's a lot of crocheted figurines, etc, it's painful.

/r/bicycling, /r/motorcycles and /r/autos are all great, but /r/justrolledintotheshop is brilliant because of how specific it is and how there's always new content - ie. picutres of idiotic things customers bring to their mechanics. /r/scooters is not great because the community is too small.

The subreddit for my phone is of interest. Programming languages that I'm trying to learn - Python, Scala. Skills I'm interested in - welding, CNC machinery.

Well, that's a good start if you're into things on wheels and programming, anyway.

It sounds like /r/doctorwho suffers from a particular thing I've observed, which is that the more specific a subreddit is to some target of fandom, the more likely it's filled with cringeworthy uncritical fanboys.

And fangirls - responsible for most of the crocheting and cupcakes.

http://www.reddit.com//r/AskHistorians/ is easily my favorite subreddit. The quality of the lengthy submissions and the fanatically rigorous moderation is amazing.

http://www.reddit.com//r/DepthHub/ is a great highlighter for introductions to quality subreddits. Its how I found /r/AskHistorians/

http://www.reddit.com//r/BestOf/ is good too.

Other than that it depends on your particular interests.

There is an outstanding problem that subreddits I would love exist but are hard to find. However that does also protect them and their mods from the slavering hordes of captioned gif posts.

If someone likes the subreddits mentioned above, you might also want to look at these:

http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview,

http://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics,

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskSocialScience/,

http://www.reddit.com/r/Foodforthought/.

It depends on what you're interested in.

I'd start by, say looking at a set of current tech sites, seeing what current articles appeal to you most, and searching for those at Reddit. Look for the subs they turn up in and check out the conversation.

I'm actually mostly following subs that don't have to do with IT issues (programming, systems admin/DevOps, or networking) as I'm finding my interests lie elsewhere. One rule of Reddit is that if you can imagine it, there's a subreddit for it.

One G+ feature I'd liked was the fact that my posts there formed their own channel, a feature somewhat lacking on Reddit. I've created my own user subreddit as a place I can post and curate my own links or discussions. Not sure if I'll keep it but it's an interesting idea.

Ugh. These meta-HN topics about the "quality" of the discussion come up every six months or so, even dating all the way back to the beginning. Cut it out already.

> Poll: How do you feel about making HN invite only? (5 years ago)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=373789

> Ask HN: Is it just me, or are HN comments becoming more and more negative? (4 years ago)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926604

> Why people complain about the quality of Hacker News (4 years ago)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=777813

> Ask HN: (Yet Another) HN Comment Quality Going Down? (3 years ago)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1198041

> Hacker News Needs Honeypots (2 years ago)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3166209

Edit: The moderation on this site is as iron-fisted as ever. The problem here is perception.

Just because something gets talked about a lot doesn't mean it's not worth trying to find a solution.

Just because something gets talked about a lot doesn't mean there's a real issue. The problem is with perception and it's not the reality.

Looking forward to a dataset to show me otherwise. One that clearly defines the subjective nature of "quality" and "degradation" of comments.

Alternatively, only activate voting on comments when new users reach a certain karma threshold (does this exist already?), and only activate voting on stories when users reach a certain higher karma threshold.

Another thing to consider is what constitutes a karma point. I don't have any statistics to validate, but it seems that posting new submissions rewards more karma points than responding to submissions. Maybe the Admins/Mods could run some stats and see if this is true or not. While I do not personally care about karma points (I'm here because I actually enjoy the community), basing the ability to vote (as in, influence the ranking of what is presented) on a single metric that does not differentiate between submissions and comments likely results in a skewed representation of the community.

To put it simply, if you want lots of karma points, don't bother responding to submissions (presumably in an attempt to help someone with a problem, or contribute to the conversation). Instead just find some "hot" controversial articles on some other tech related news sites and submit them instead. If this is true, then it should not be surprising that there is more "white noise" here at HackerNews, as this approach facilitates submitting stories instead of contributing to conversations.

My recommendation (if anyone cares), break karma points up into two separate values, one related to submitting articles/stories (which is valuable), and another related to submitting comments (which is also valuable). Then I would remove any reference of points from the system (make them hidden from users) as to remove any desire to "game the system" for points. This would result in a system where points do not influence how people contribute to the community.

You need 500 pts to vote on HN

I only have 63 points and I can vote (but rarely do). Actually I can only upvote. I think 500 is for downvote rights.

You're right my bad. 500pts to downvote

I wonder if that asymmetry is part of the problem. There's a large population of users who can push junk to the top of the page, and a much smaller population with the ability to downvote it.

You can't downvote submissions; you can only flag them.

Stack Exchange does this.

I think HackerNews (and similar sites) would greatly benefit from having submissions grouped by a moderator. Don't display all submissions about NSA or Steve Jobs as separate lines. Display them as a thread, with some general information like "6 submissions, tags: Steve Jobs is still dead, average karma: 703"

  from itertools import groupby
  
  better_hn = sorted(hn, key=topic)
  better_hn = [topic, len(list(submissions))
    for topic, submissions in groupby(better_hn)]

  for line in better_hn:
      print(line)

> It's a problem all successful communities face

No it's not. It's a problem all large and free communities face.

Try looking for private communities, and the quality is much higher.

To get into these types of communities, you have to pass an interview or maybe pay monthly (I don't belong to these types, but I've heard good stuff about their quality).

e.g. want a good business community?

Maybe have a fee for $100/month, so you have people who can afford that join.

want a good programming community? Maybe have open source contribution requirements.

Or just interviews in general will filter out a lot of crappy users.

How does the ability to pay indicate ability to make worthwhile contributions? Or, how does inability/unwillingness to pay or prove yourself in some other way relate to an inability to make worthwhile contributions? (quality of posts, comments, etc)

>How does the ability to pay indicate ability to make worthwhile contributions?

If you can pay something that's related to the niche, it shows you have expertise in the niche.

For example, if you can pay $100/month for a business forum, than that shows you are at least somewhat serious and interested in business, and more likely, you are already successful at it.

If you can pay via open source contributions to the OS community, and that's a requirement for a software community, it shows at least you can code decently.

It doesn't have to be a "Do X" type of test either, it can just be an interview to hear their experience, their attitude, etc..

>Or, how does inability/unwillingness to pay or prove yourself in some other way relate to an inability to make worthwhile contributions?

You design a test to filter out people that you don't want in your community. If people fail that test, then it should already signal an inability to make worthwhile contributions. It might give false negatives for users that would have been good, but the test should not give too many false negatives.

It is more a psychological effect, when you need to prove yourself before entering a community you tend to appreciate it more, and (in theory) care more about the community. It will be interesting to see if this really holds in practice.

I've been apart of some small, free, private communities that have had similar problems. It's just less noticeable because it's easier for mods to keep a handle on it in smaller numbers.

Isn't it essential that a monumental topic blows up a community? Isn't this one of the most important purposes of a community, the ability to kick off a movement?

HN should require you solve some form of fizzbuzz to get voting/posting rights

Not a bad idea at first glance, until you consider the poor guy or gal whose job it is to review them, not to mention the need to prevent people from copy/pasting the answer from a search result. I guess you would have to have a karma threshold before being offered a chance to solve fizzbuzz, in order to keep the volume manageable. For the second issue, you would probably need to do it in person at your local HN branch office and hope your reviewer knows your preferred programming language.

That's not even getting into the discussion of whether programming knowledge is the only field of value for contributors to HN.

That said, it would be interesting if people had to put an answer to fizzbuzz in an area of their profile once they hit the karma threshold in order to get voting rights, (can't be null) and then peers could vote/comment on the answer.

I like the idea of having a single thread for all related stories. That way if a particular story was generating a lot of noise it would just be one line on the front page and very easy to ignore. It would be a bit like subreddits but more dynamic, the subreddits would flit in and out of existence. Everone would still share the same front page, perhaps each line would be something like "NSA: latest story headline". The question is, what would be the best way to do the grouping?

I think you proposal is good.

One option would be to give out some of the data that is behind HN, namely the information about who has upvoted which article. This should make it possible to create mashup which would try to learn whose thoughts about interesting arcticles match mine.

(No need to disclose the actual usernames, some anonymous identifier would be enough)

Do posts like "I'm leaving Hacker News" count as drama content?

I understand this was facetious, but it's not a bad question. How do you implement something like that while circumventing user posts?