Dang is going to have 65,535 karma points soon

Allow me to chime in:

- the voting behaviour is just like reddit or rather just as bad - it is herd voting, flippant voting (but I really don't think how this can be fixed; maybe it can't be - but that is how it is to be honest and maybe it's time we acknowledged it)

- there is a sense of "aura/legend" attached to certain users, I find it maybe a bit extra weird because I am not from the US (later about it), and maybe not from the "in" crowd that I can't understand the why of it (I would not have known even if I knew of those users) - useless/meaningless/contentless comments get upvoted and reach the top -- not showing showing rank/voting might be a great idea imho (again, I really don't know how this can be fixed or whether this has to be fixed)

- HN seems like a "US only" forum largely, maybe that's the intention, I am not sure. I mean some comments and even posts just make it look like everything and everywhere works as it works in the USA

- Brigading or soft-brigading either just happens or maybe allowed as well - esp. on political threads - maybe just do not allow politics at all (no exceptions!) or those might need extra attention. I mean there is no point in allowing a political post when it ends up just getting raided. Also I often feel political posts specifically about USA are more kosher than political posts about other places.

- Encourage non-technical discussions more (but with the exception of political posts :P) - personally my best experiences on hn have actually been on non-tech/sw/hw posts really

One of the things I like about hn is its simplicity but maybe wouldn't mind "sections" or "categories" for different types of posts. Again this has its own trade offs.

I mean it's not so bad and whatever is bad maybe cannot even be fixed.

I keep starting and deleting a reply here. My moderating experience is with much smaller entities, but I've been here more than a minute and I think probably the best thing one can do is keep putting out accurate info about how the site actually works.

A lot of people who are stomping mad are mad because they think, for example, that you personally flagged #Thing and don't realize that's not how that works. A lot of that -- the best antidote is calm, cool education without getting cranky, etc.

In my experience and similar provisos.

A potentially small change, since there's a lot of space on the page where you reply. People tend to adjust behavior from small nudges - could adding a summary of the rules/hn guidelines on the reply page help avoid some less useful comments?

This could go after the reply button, before it, before the comment box even. Or, to get fancy, positioned based on karma (a little more in the way when it's low, more out of the way as it climbs).

No functional change.

I've found myself delete a lot of less useful comments when I stop and say "is this really helpful? Or am I trying to 'win' a discussion".

Don't change anything. I would wish the HN crowd would not be "Only the US exists" but it is what it is. Left a dozen times b/c of hate comments over the last decades, but always came back (with different accounts) because there are comments that are gold nuggets.

Hi dang, I hope this message finds you well. Although my reply may not directly address the original question, I believe it is relevant to the topic at hand. As a dedicated and experienced contributor to Hacker News for the past 14 years, I have occasionally participated in passionate discussions that have turned somewhat heated, and I have also submitted low-quality content on occasion. As a result, my account was placed in a restricted status, and I frequently encounter a "you are posting too fast" notification that hinders my ability to engage in discussions. I would like to suggest that you consider implementing an expiration date for this "special status" for users like myself.

This ongoing "you are posting too fast" notification has significantly impeded my participation in meaningful conversations. For instance, during a recent debate on the implications of artificial intelligence in the job market, I found it challenging to effectively engage with other users due to this restriction. Similarly, in another thread discussing the merits of various statistical approaches to a subject, my contributions were stifled by the same limitation.

I kindly ask that the administrators of Hacker News consider adopting a more flexible approach to managing user interactions. This approach should accommodate the occasional expression of strong opinions while preserving a respectful and productive environment for all community members.

(Ironically, this very comment was subject to the "you are posting too fast" limitation, which is why I could not respond sooner.)

I was being a little facetious. You can’t do anything about voting mob mentality, it’s just internet culture. You guys have been great at moderating verbal assaults and bullying.

If I could say anything, it would be to stand by your TOS and limit political threads. We are here for tech related news. That’s what HN is great at.

10 years now on HN.

Have you ran some experiments with giving different people different front pages?

To explain a bit more:

On the one hand, you need a critical mass of people to have a discussion. On the other hand, large group dynamics seem to be a problem.

HN is generally many multiples larger than the critical mass for the former, at least on the front page. Attention drops off a lot if you go further.

So as an experiment, you could do something like 'rendezvous hashing' to show each user a random 10% subset of submissions. (If you want to gradually introduce it, run the experiment on 20% of the users only, but show them a 50% subset, so that each of the longer tail items still gets 10% of total users? You can play with the numbers.)

You could make this opt-out, too, so that people don't create ten accounts in the hope of seeing everything. Direct links would also still work.

I take this occasion: I think some extra way should be devised to avoid losing important submissions in the flow of new ones.

Some of them are not exactly idle: just a few hours ago I submitted a piece about an epidemic of "voice scams", AI boosted: the idea was that it is not simply "intellectually interesting", but important, urgent and pressing, and especially calling for the awareness of the community.

I have put some consideration on the matter to come up with proposals, but no good idea yet.

How do you attempt to counter groups who deliberately game things?

Newer, widely purposed tech that hasn't taken hold yet is the one I see most often. Where people have invested non-trivial time. Eg the rust crew which I choose as an example because I quite like rust so I'm not bashing the tech here.

There are bogus "here's a cool library/app/thing" articles which get to the front page where I scratch my head and then discover "oh, it's boring as hell but in rust." I see people expressing legitimate points of view (which I frequently disagree with) about cases where C might be a better choice or where a rust re-write doesn't buy the user much that are immediately massively downvoted. It's mob mentality, is it organised or self-organising? Doesn't matter either way. Makes rustaceans look pretty stupid though. And yes you can do this for non-rust stuff and it happens. And it's easy to see why. You invest a ton of time into a tech you really want it to succeed to maximise the payoff for doing so.

What do you do to counter it? Anything at all?

HN is gamified on karma - an idea taken from slashdot with a mildly different implementation but a really good idea that has been under-applied accross the web. In this game popular in the zeitgeist massively trumps interesting, well written, thought provoking and well supported. Sure by the time you've got 50 points you probably should stop caring and you've got karma to burn to be thoughtfully unpopular, but if you take the time you probably want that seen and it's the stuff you want to see - which is kind of the point.

The other question I have is why has there been next to nothing here (that I've noticed - maybe I missed it?) About the twitter files revelations and their importance or lack thereof? Intervention? If so please would you share the thinking behind it?

The point being, to suggest what you could do differently requires a clue on what you actually do now, which I'm not at all sure I have.

I have no idea what current tech is, but here's something from 20 years ago: Slashdot makes downvotes have a reason, and has a metamoderation.

So I post a well-researched article that refutes something the parent says. There's no reason that should be downvoted past 1.

- On HN someone downvotes it because they don't like the article

- On Slashdot someone downvotes it because they don't like the article. The pick "-1 flamebait" as the reason because "I disagree" isn't available, and because they are happy to lie. Then someone else metamoderates - "is this flamebait Y/N?" they say it isn't. The moderator then has their moderation judged as unfair and their moderation powers limited.

How is it determined what posts reach the first page?

I visit hacker news so that I can avoid current affairs news, but all too often non "hacker" stories appear on the feed and it feels like they shouldn't have made it out of New

What HN is missing above all else is a section for meta posts, i.e. posts discussing HN itself, where questions like yours can be elaborated in detail.

It's ridiculous that this impromptu feedback session is happening here in a sub comment of a trivia thread that many users will just overlook. Feedback and community engagement should be an ongoing, (semi-)formalized process, not an ad hoc, once in a blue moon type of thing that will have been buried under a deluge of garbage by tomorrow morning.

Add “transparency” logging for all users.

From then on, whenever a user takes an action on the site (posting, commenting, voting, flagging, etc.) they are prompted to provide an explanation as to how their action contributes to the community. All actions and their transparency notes are stored in this log.

Make it so that it can be skipped, but where applicable the action is delayed, marked with a sigil, and down-weighted.

I don't really feel like reddit is a fair thing to compare this site to.

I dunno, something about the text-only medium seems to keep a lot of junk at bay.

I’d appreciate if you made it transparent in the rules how many points are required to post in Ask HN. I recently posted a job related question there, but it never posted. I didn’t even receive a response as to why. Felt like I wrote a letter, handed it to someone, and they tossed it into the trash without even opening it.

This isn't true. I'm a member of a sailing forum and this doesn't go on there. Karma is probably part of it. Hard to interpret and subjective rules are another. No value outside of to YC is another. Etc etc. This isn't a community. It's a news aggregate.

An obvious thing that comes to mind is how downvoted comments are grayed and purposely made difficult to read, and flagged comments aren't readable at all. Being downvoted or flagged means (regardless of what they're supposed to mean) literally nothing other than "goes against the mob's mentality," so comments are penalized in a functional manner for going against the mob. They shouldn't have the power to artificially make opposing thoughts more difficult or impossible to read. Maybe control it with settings similar to showdead, for those who like the mob to curate the thoughts and ideas they're exposed to for them.

Some preliminary ideas that could probably be refined:

1. Remove non-hacker type content (i.e. news concerning the death of the Queen and anything Trump). Or move it to an off-topic list that doesn’t appear on the front page or other lists. It’s not in the spirit of the site, and I come to this site to avoid it. I treasure the actual hacker discussions on this site and feel like those articles do not add to or even diminish the value. Plus many of those stories that make it to the front page tend to be very focused on America / the English-speaking world.

2. Remove karma or deemphasize it. Discussion is important. Arbitrary numbers are not and (unintentionally) influence how people engage.

3. Add a higher barrier of entry. It’s great how you have to earn 501 karma before you can downvote. Perhaps up that limit and/or require a year old account. Prevent new accounts from posting for a period such as 3 months. This would allow people to pick up on the culture and etiquette before they begin commenting; like an apprentice studying under a master before beginning his own work. I’d even consider adding a simple quiz to create an account. Something that proves you’re a hacker in spirit. The purpose of all this is to prevent the website from stooping to Reddit standards and keeping the quality of content high. Those who engage in discourse on this site should be here because they really want to be part of the community and are willing to jump through a few hoops.

4. Create smaller communities. Find a way to group people across time zones into smaller pockets. A classic issue on Reddit is that smaller subreddits for niche hobbies are often great until they reach critical mass. Past a certain number of users, the culture is lost and everything appeals to the lowest common denominator. If hn is to grow too large, perhaps there could be a way to artificially divide it up.

5. Increase the damn font size!

Thanks for all that you do :)

Downweight posts and comments based on the frequency and positive sentiment. IE things that are posted often and with high positive comments should bubble to the top less often.

Reset karma for everyone. Your top karma people abuse their authority and you don't even notice. If a post is flagged, show who flagged it and for how long.

I consistently wonder why posts critical of HN-affiliated companies that have stats like upvotes per hour and number of comments that would theoretically make them the top story getting pushed off the front page.

Are there people whose upvotes count for more than others? Or are these actively suppressed? Either way, it makes it hard to have important/robust conversations when the people seeing them gets suppressed

Make humor legal again on HN for a start?

And either ban "this is offensive" comments or politics altogether.

Remove downvote.

Some users submit via "shotgun" method, posting 20 or 30 articles per day.

It reminds me of my former neighbor's dating strategy. A few times I used Python and the HN API because I was interested in the average karma per submission for top users and whether it matches my own opinion about their post quality. It led me to believe maybe a good metric for limiting the number of submissions someone makes: daily submissions allowed = average karma per submission (once you've reached 20 or 100 submissions)

It's not something I can relate to---why people do this shotgun thing; shoving a mound of potentially interesting (and often not self-written) articles in hope that two or three land on the front page. The karma doesn't do anything except give you validation that your contributions "mattered", but if you repost someone else's work (or even your own from the past) you're basically getting validation that other people might care about this thing you care about... which feels empty, to me.

I personally can't develop something technical and interesting more than once per week, and then I doubt how many users want to read about my really obscure and often futile interests (automating cloud publishing of ABC files, trying/failing disassembling an obscure DOS game, random SCAD files for one-off minor life improvements, buggy Python libraries for poker/tailoring/instrument tuning, learning just enough to almost push a stylus driver for two unpopular Linux laptops)

Mostly, I like reading the articles by people who do something technically cool and new and put a lot of effort diving into that thing and sharing its secrets, like this CAN injection post. The expectation is that those users can only post a few times a month unless doing cool stuff and writing about it is their full-time passion/job. Another expectation is that there are enough of these people that the front page can stay full with technically cool/new posts.

The third---and by far, the hardest---expectation is that great* (by my own flawed definition) posts need to be promoted reliably and without bias from /newest to / while also working to reject only-fanboy-/self-voted content or poor quality wikipedia links and seventh "own repost" in four years and New Yorker articles about hip-hop...

I used to flag bullshit articles right away, but they arrive like waves on the beach, and I've learned to filter past the stuff I dislike rather than bother losing some unseen privilege because I get put on a "user who flags too much for bad reasons" list.

To elaborate my skimming: in this moment, there are two reasonably popular but reasonably "not so techy" Wikipedia articles in the front page 30. There are two non-tech (historical) posts---one by a hit-or-miss "often poster" and another by someone who basically only posts non-tech/historical subjects---although in this case, once every two weeks. Five users I recognize as "I post all the damn time" users, although I only consider one of those in the "I post all the damn time and it's annoying" camp. I instantly recognize one repost, but it's one I would find interesting if I saw it for the first time. The majority is stuff I find appropriate for HN, and a minority of that is stuff I personally find interesting. If I get two or three decent articles on the front page and one from /newest, that's still 20 minutes of content that I enjoy, and the HN status quo gives me this.

"GPT, express all the above thoughts and sentiments but only using 30% of the characters I used and with far fewer personal pronouns."

My least favorite part of Hacker News are the folk who complain about the invention of slate tablets because it means people will no longer remember things because they can write them down. Not automatically wrong, but the top comment on every new thing being "this isn't new, the old thing was better, just [niche Linux sysadmin stuff]" is a bit tiring.

The idea is to optimize for the community as a whole. It turns out responding to trolls (edit: yes I meant moderators responding, sorry) is good for that. Or at least I think it is.

The other aspect (which is hard for a lot of people to admit) is that trolls often have good points. They're mostly standing up for things that have been excluded by the majority.

Edit: they're also usually not trolls, in the sense of deliberately trying to stir up drama. Mostly they're people with strong feelings who (let's call it) underestimate how they come across to others.

agreed - the times dang called me out were fair

i was mad about it at the time tho lol

That's true. I think Dang is a good person.

Yes.

> ['dang': ] (3) it's what you say when you make a mistake

For the philologist, from around 1780, The chapter of accidents: a comedy by Sophia Lee.

> Jacob: Dang it, doan't I zeay, I'll tell thee present...

> dang it, I thought at first I ha' zwounded...

https://archive.org/details/chapteraccident00leegoog/page/n4...

...But I also immediately think of Gary Larson.

I always thought it was 3)

Dang, because of the lowercase g I've always read it as Dang and said it with a twang in my head.

> and a picture

I thought it was the only picture not published on YC and kept private.

Same. An unconscious bias buster.

And truly, thank you. Rock solid. Steady hand.

TIL I don't have enough karma to vouch. But this is a funny and insightful comment.

Excuse me sir this is HN.

What kind of leaderbordses? Ratio character/upvotes? Leaderbord of flagged persons. Leaderbord of long discussions -> i.e. people responding in the same thread. Leaderbord of most flagged comments and people w/ most flagged. Leaderbord on people who use the word karma often.

Kill it with fire in the meantime.

I had just stumbled across a short film version of this the other day.

https://youtu.be/UtvS9UXTsPI

I find your experience and insight immensely valuable. As far as I'm concerned you don't!!

<insert joke about how everyone on the leaderboard is a loser with no life>

Apparently not enough though.

It wouldn't feel right so I added a line of code to exclude admins years ago.

Hey, patio11 doesn't post that often.

You really only have to worry if HN goes away.

No, if an overflow at 65535 occurs it would be to 0, not negative.

signed 16-bit ints are -32768 to 32767, unsigned 16-bit ints are 0 to 65535

arc is written in scheme, it never overflows. both mzscheme and racket have proper integers, it is not C.

Just keep adding karma

What do you believe is a fair salary for him?

HN is written in Arc, a Lisp that pg created. Hardware hasn't changed much since https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16076041. I believe traffic is closer to 6M now.

That's a really good list, thanks!

(I'm familiar with ... all or nearly all of it, but a one-stop-shop for HN features and behaviours is quite useful.)

The points= parameter is quite useful, and one I'd either not known or forgotten. E.g., posts with >100 votes: <https://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=100>

Or with no limit given a CSS manager / mangler :P

Dred's HN CSS Madhackery: <https://pastebin.com/gLXiqKyd>

Dred's HN CSS Madhackery -- Dark Mode: <https://pastebin.com/6PF3dCXH>

Recent local tweak highlights mod comments as well:

  /* Highlight mod(s) */
  .comhead .hnuser[href="user?id=dang"],
  .comhead a:link.hnuser[href="user?id=dang"] {
      color: #ff6600;
      color: #dd5500;
  }

I'm aware that HN prefers to deprecate author over message. I disagree with that somewhat --- context, authority, identity, and reputation matter. Note that HN does distinguish new ("green") profiles.

The other HN superpower, available to anyone with an email account regardless of karma, is to email the mods. That's how I started interacting with dang, and still do generally a few times per week/month, mostly for mundane stuff (titles, link disambiguation), occasionally to vouch killed stories, or to point out spammish or hostile behaviour (rarely on the last, flags really do most of the work here).

It got a lot harder after 2^17 ;)