Hacker News Reader

As a (mostly) lurker who's quite wary of this change, I agree that stifling newcomers and longtime but quiet users could deprive the HN community of something real.

That said, Hacker News is a high enough quality forum that it could fare quite well for some time even if it completely cut off registrations. I don't think the experiment will be catastrophic by any means; though it'll undoubtedly result in at least some useful content never reaching daylight.

Of course, the fact that the HN comment sections are right now orders of magnitude higher quality than the internet at large is precisely why this change seems unnecessary. HN has long been- and still very much remains- a secluded mini-Reddit for startups and hackers. Doesn't that ethos almost demand the welcoming of newcomers?

EDIT: I wonder if everyone realizes the feeling of being excluded arbitrarily by karma count. Sure felt weirder than I anticipated while this comment was pending.

The worst aspect of this change for me is the knowledge that because of my sub-500 status I am not even allowed to see pending comments. I am cut off from the full discourse.

PG indicated that he might add show pending/dead comment buttons so maybe that concern will be alleviated.

It sounds like the limit is 1000, so some of us with over 500 karma also would not be able to see them either.

I'm skeptical about the hypothesis of how this would play out, but I'll reserve judgment until it goes live.

I just hope this isn't abused by users with over 1000 karma as a way to stifle dissenting views on topics some users may feel strongly about.

HN is like EMACS not WordPad. It has a learning curve.To some extent, HN is unwelcoming to new comers by design. It filters out people who want to behave to the same standards as the rest of the internet.

To put it in perspective, your post would several standard deviations above the mean both in length and content on most sites. Would have written so thoughtfully and carefully a year ago?

Supposing that I was writing about something I cared about, yes I would have. Maybe that just means I already went through the learning curve on other communities though (vim -> emacs).

Having a $5 sign-up fee would be better than 'pending comments', IMHO.

MetaFilter does that, and doesn't seem to have problems with quality of discourse. Of course, HN as it stands doesn't seem to have significant problems with quality of discourse, either, so I'm not sure that HN needs either solution; discussion here is already far superior to what you find on the vast majority of sites.

> MetaFilter does that, and doesn't seem to have problems with quality of discourse.

What also helps the level of discourse at Metafilter is moderation to the tune of showing up in threads, deleting comments, and saying "knock it off" when things get particularly bad.

Sure, but that's done on a case-by-case basis, when things actually do get out of hand; it's not a universal, preemptive moderation system that's built right into the structure of the site.

Can you imagine the outcry if it was revealed pg goes into threads to delete negative comments about him?

The $5 sign-up-fee isn't as cheap as it would seem in developing countries.

There's no reason the fee can't vary depending on the location of the person signing up.

I also think this is a far better solution than "pending comments". I'm not convinced that either solution is ideal, but I fear "pending comments" has the potential to silently strangle HN.

Can you elaborate on how a test might cause permanent damage? Keep in mind that it should be clear whether significant damage is occurring quite soon after it rolls out. (Eg. Whether comments are getting approved, rate of comments, etc.)

I meant it to go along with the rest of the paragraph. I think you'll see people turn around at the door with this policy. I would have.

That's certainly a possibility. It would show up in HN's metrics. (perhaps not visible to you and I, though)

On the other hand, you might also see more people coming in the door. What if this makes conversation on HN so much better that more people want to get involved?

The one thing that is certain with the new system is that if your comments are abusive, they will probably not get endorsed. Perhaps at first they will (protesting 1k+ karma users) but eventually anyone who is endorsing poor quality comments would likely lose the ability to endorse.

At a minimum, I think this a really interesting experiment.

> protesting 1k+ karma users

well, I'm going to voice my concerns and complain about it, but I'm not going to sabotage the system out of spite. that's childish.

> but eventually anyone who is endorsing poor quality comments would likely lose the ability to endorse.

If that happens it'll be because some invisible moderator has a different idea about "quality comments" than I do.

If it happens, I will lose the ability over endorsing puns.

Eg, if this policy precludes 1-on-1 dialogue between sub 1k users, that would (arguably) be a dis-service. It would be "permanent" in the sense that the rules# logically don't allow a two party conversation (ie, absent a 3rd party "endorsement"). So this meets the test of "damage" and "permanence" at some threshold.

# The original ones, at least.

The thing is, this is a kind of change which makes it difficult to know the real impact since the users who would have a problem with it are the ones losing their voice (until a karma elite user intervenes, of course). That's one of the reasons most people are opposed to this.

Everyone can see pending comments, though. At a minimum, everyone has the potential to find out if there might be a problem.

https://news.ycombinator.com/pending

The problem will be the low signal-to-noise ratio, making that section unbearable.

I don't think that is correct. I can access the page, but I can't see any comments there. I have 393 karma at the moment.

This was shut off around 4 hours ago, in case any issues came up while he slept. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7447790

I come to HN to learn new things and to get the opinions of people who are well-trained in their fields. In that respect, I don't really care what a new user's, student's, or novice's opinion on something is unless they've had valuable firsthand experience, in which case the comment would definitely add to the discussion. IMO any change to this site that encourages listening over speaking is quite welcome.