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Comment by edw519 | Hacker News Reader

I think we should leave things exactly as they are. Some of the best "how to do your app" discussions result directly from these "fluffy" posts. Whenever one of these shows up, the ensuing thread is usually very long with many hackers presenting many different opinions. It turns into a "community-based analysis and design session" with exactly the kind of people you'd like to have.

"This is what the up arrow should mean."

"This is what karma should be."

"This is how to get it to behave like..."

And we're all talking about OUR app, the one we all know and love. These are my favorite threads and one of the best ways to learn and get to know each other a little better.

What we already have is better than anything any one of us could have designed.

Keep the fluff coming (just not too much).

(EDIT: This was the 2nd comment posted. One hour later, there are 22 comments about OUR app. This is EXACTLY what I was talking about. Great thread!)

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I would not count on that. I have a hypothesis that the character of a site's comment threads is a time-delayed function of the top stories. If we want to keep the 14 year olds away, we have to ensure that the front page of News.YC looks boring to them when they come across it.

I wish I had access to such a great source of information when I was 14. I was just starting to become a competent programmer, and would have greatly benefited from the recurring messages in this site (like release early and often, I rarely released anything to anyone but a small circle of friends). I finally began to learn these principles through a lot of trial and error on my own in my mid 20's.

While I realize that the majority of users will be 20-40 year old web app creators buy don't alienate anyone. Going forward can we look to keep non-hackers away? I think everyone enjoys this community, let's not strangle the spirit of it trying to keep it from changing.

Sorry, I know there are thoughtful 14 year olds. I don't want to exclude them. I'm using "14 year olds" as shorthand for people whose mental age is 14. Basically, anyone, whatever their age, whose comments you can imagine being said by Beavis & Butthead.

I'm not sure users can be neatly split into "mental 14 year olds" versus "mental adults". I act like a mental 14 year old sometimes (usually on reddit), and sometimes I don't (usually here). I think most users are like that, and if we give an appearance of incentive for people to act maturely, then they will. I think this is at heart a psychological problem, not a sorting problem.

Of course, some people will act like "mental 14yo's" no matter what, and others never visit reddit anymore - but it seems intuitive that most people are somewhere in between.

One of the things I actually worry about are the "attractive nuisance" threads about things like politics and economics that are actually pretty interesting, or can be, but often end up being fairly divisive and distracting. This, for instance:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=121137

So far it's civil... But they're the kinds of things that end up drawing people into often lengthly, fruitless debates - they end up being philosophical differences that might be ok to discuss over a bottle of wine, but often end up badly on the internet...

I challenge this.

The decision to broaden news.yc's scope to include other "interesting" information instantly adds fuzziness to the selection criteria. I have seen submissions that fly over my head, but other submissions in areas where I know more than the author.

Next, "interesting" content usually involves a mental challenge just slightly beyond the comfort zone. And so, given greater breadth of topics, which compromises depth, there will be enough submissions that are "interesting" to most people, including the 14 year-olds. To phrase differently, my knowledge in Latin American history might be comparable to a 14 year old, so we both find similar articles interesting. A BBC documentary link can easily be top quality, but appeals to all experts and novices alike.

The way you write it, is like 14 yos have an aversion to knowledge. Even if many Diggers seem immature, I'd bet they are more educated and tech-inclined than most in the same age.

Oops. Just reread the thread and your followup in the other branch.

Paul's point: immature 14 year olds tend to be attracted to shiny things. If they're mature, they'll prolly look past the outer appearance of the site...

I like what edw519 says. The community filter's itself via up arrows. If fluff reaches the top - isn't that what the community wants? Though, I do think we should put the following message at the top of the site: "If you vote for fluff then you really, really suck." :-)

I disagree. As the site gets more popular, there is going to be more incentive to game the system. Digg and Reddit are both victims of their own success. Once you start getting traffic, you start getting page rank. And, once you get page rank, your outgoing links are that much more valuable, and there is a greater incentive to game the system.

I think that safeguards need to be at least thought about to try and keep the quality of the site up. Case in point: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=121534

I suspect the site's already being gamed.

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