Open secrets about Hacker News(bengtan.com)
bengtan.com
Open secrets about Hacker News
https://bengtan.com/blog/open-secrets-hacker-news/
209 comments
Do you mean on stories? I've noticed upvotes on stories don't give you 1 karma each, it's less. Not sure if it's a linear 0.5. But upvotes on comments seem to be 1 each.
I think the karma from a story is more or less capped to the number of comments on the story. At the same time, a story which gets more comments than upvotes quickly vanishes from the front page.
Both modulo moderation, of course.
Both modulo moderation, of course.
This is an interesting idea and another rabbit hole to fall into. There are this uninteresting posts that never get any attention (no upvotes, no comments) and there are the popular posts that get a ton of upvotes and comments. That much is understood.
Occasionally, though, I have this post that gets a decent amount of upvotes but not a single comment. I never understood why. I post for the comments and not for the upvotes. It is very frustrating, especially since it is a miracle to me what distinguishes these posts from the popular ones.
Capping the points on these makes a lot of sense though. In the end they don't contribute much.
Occasionally, though, I have this post that gets a decent amount of upvotes but not a single comment. I never understood why. I post for the comments and not for the upvotes. It is very frustrating, especially since it is a miracle to me what distinguishes these posts from the popular ones.
Capping the points on these makes a lot of sense though. In the end they don't contribute much.
If you want comments, just post something wrong!
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
>Cunningham's Law states "the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
>Cunningham's Law states "the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."
This is far and away one of my favorite metrics. If I see something with more comments than upvotes on here, I can expect an intense debate over something controversial. These tend to be some of my favorite comment sections.
my observation is that when you are starting out your stories generate more than .5 per comment, not sure if it is 1 per comment, but at a certain point you get capped to .5 per comment on story. Have not noticed any capping on favorites for comments though.
Yes, I observed it on stories. I don't remember if I ever looked into comments. Also my observation is from more than a year ago, so things might well have changed.
My bet is that some upvotes don't count either for your karma nor the karma of the post. And the upvotes that don't count are from account which HN considers as bots.
Just this week I had a submission hit the front page and end up with ~80 votes, but I only got ~40 karma, so I think this is still true.
A collaborative resource with more information about undocumented/norms on HN: https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented
> Personally, I’d stay at 3. I’d also wait at least a day between re-posts (and try re-posting at different time slots).
Wow, that's not how I parsed the very same reposting rules. If I'm about to submit something and I found an older submission with the same URL, my personal rule is that it should be older than a year ago before I'd submit it again. Three posts with the same URL for three consecutive days seems a bit too much.
> Hacker News is moderated mainly by dang aka Dan Gackle (pronounced ‘Gackley’). He’s not of asian descent
??? Is it common that people think he is Asian for some reason? What a strange paragraph to include...
> Personally, I’d stay at 3. I’d also wait at least a day between re-posts (and try re-posting at different time slots).
Wow, that's not how I parsed the very same reposting rules. If I'm about to submit something and I found an older submission with the same URL, my personal rule is that it should be older than a year ago before I'd submit it again. Three posts with the same URL for three consecutive days seems a bit too much.
> Hacker News is moderated mainly by dang aka Dan Gackle (pronounced ‘Gackley’). He’s not of asian descent
??? Is it common that people think he is Asian for some reason? What a strange paragraph to include...
> > Hacker News is moderated mainly by dang aka Dan Gackle (pronounced ‘Gackley’). He’s not of asian descent
> ??? Is it common that people think he is Asian for some reason? What a strange paragraph to include...
"Dang" is a surname in Vietnam, China, and elsewhere [1], which has led to subthreads like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643150 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25053380 in which, yes, people thought he was Asian.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dang_(surname)
> ??? Is it common that people think he is Asian for some reason? What a strange paragraph to include...
"Dang" is a surname in Vietnam, China, and elsewhere [1], which has led to subthreads like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20643150 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25053380 in which, yes, people thought he was Asian.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dang_(surname)
Cue the “You’re not Chinese?!?” joke from Seinfeld…
> ??? Is it common that people think he is Asian for some reason? What a strange paragraph to include...
Call me a fool, but it's never occurred to me that he wasn't. I've always pictured him as a Chinese gentleman, a sort of Confucian scholar in 0s and 1s holding up the mortal world to ancient standards of virtue.
I might come across as reading far too much xianxia, and that would be accurate.
Call me a fool, but it's never occurred to me that he wasn't. I've always pictured him as a Chinese gentleman, a sort of Confucian scholar in 0s and 1s holding up the mortal world to ancient standards of virtue.
I might come across as reading far too much xianxia, and that would be accurate.
> my personal rule is that it should be older than a year ago before I'd submit it again
That's indeed the rule, but only when the story has had significant attention (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html).
When a story hasn't had significant attention in the last year (or a bit longer), it's ok to repost a small number of times.
Past explanations here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
That's indeed the rule, but only when the story has had significant attention (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html).
When a story hasn't had significant attention in the last year (or a bit longer), it's ok to repost a small number of times.
Past explanations here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
China has not many surnames I think? A little google search showed that dang is one of them.
```
Chinese : The surname Dang comes from a branch of the ruling family of the Zhou dynasty (1122–221 bc) that spread to the state of Jin and the state of Lu. The character now also means 'political party'. German: from an old personal name Tanco, a cognate of modern German denken 'to think', Gedanke 'thoughts'.
```
So I'm guessing if you're from a country where that is a regular surname, you might assume it's like that and not DanG, so yeah I guess that happens
```
So I'm guessing if you're from a country where that is a regular surname, you might assume it's like that and not DanG, so yeah I guess that happens
I don't know about China, but in Vietnam there are 14 family names which account for about 90% of the entire population.
Roughly 40% of all Vietnamese people are called "Nguyen", which makes it one of the most common family names in the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_name#Family_name
Roughly 40% of all Vietnamese people are called "Nguyen", which makes it one of the most common family names in the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_name#Family_name
I remember a developer blog that had that lastname!
Also Diane in Bojack Horseman surname! Guessing she's of Vietnamese ascent!
Also Diane in Bojack Horseman surname! Guessing she's of Vietnamese ascent!
She is. There are two whole episodes dedicated to her vietnamese heritage.
I always thought he was of Vietnamese descent. Today I learned. I'm kinda glad that bit of information was added to an otherwise very mathematical post.
> ??? Is it common that people think he is Asian for some reason? What a strange paragraph to include...
I agree, the paragraph is strange and at best reads like a non-sequitur.
Then again I always associated the username "dang" with the word "dang", which I thought it was an amusing (and appropriate) choice of name for a moderator.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/dang
I agree, the paragraph is strange and at best reads like a non-sequitur.
Then again I always associated the username "dang" with the word "dang", which I thought it was an amusing (and appropriate) choice of name for a moderator.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/dang
> Then again I always associated the username "dang" with the word "dang", which I thought it was an amusing (and appropriate) choice of name for a moderator.
Right; it took me forever to realize that "dang" was "Dan G" and not just a word. Especially since HN usernames can have mixed case, so he could have picked "DanG" (which... I still would have probably read as a funnily-formatted word but it'd be more of a hint:]). Though for all I know he predates HN supporting uppercase in names, and stylistically I can totally see preferring lowercase.
Right; it took me forever to realize that "dang" was "Dan G" and not just a word. Especially since HN usernames can have mixed case, so he could have picked "DanG" (which... I still would have probably read as a funnily-formatted word but it'd be more of a hint:]). Though for all I know he predates HN supporting uppercase in names, and stylistically I can totally see preferring lowercase.
> ??? Is it common that people think he is Asian for some reason? What a strange paragraph to include...
Not just that, but for some time you could observe subthreads accusing him of being a chinese subversion of HN in china related discussions.
Not just that, but for some time you could observe subthreads accusing him of being a chinese subversion of HN in china related discussions.
There's been a lot of misguided moderation that happens to be in favor of China. Earlier in the pandemic, the left bought into the propaganda that the lab leak theory etc were racist. I attribute the pro-China moderation to good intentions and ignorance.
I don't know if you're talking about HN, but what you're describing there is not the dynamic here.
That is true; I remember, early on, the lab leak theory (of which I am a proponent) received substantial and fair discussion with significant technical detail, long before it became a partisan thing.
I just assumed he had some intense business interests involving trade with China. He has had a heavy moderation hand when people are critical of the CCP or for example what was formerly thought of as the conspiracy theory about COVIDs likely lab leak origin. He seems to have come around a little bit on this maybe he read about the Uighurs or who knows.
It's true that I/we come down heavily on nationalistic flamewar, slurs, and groundless insinuations about spies and shills and bots and manipulators and all that kind of thing. But this isn't related to China—it follows clearly from the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and is the same whichever country or group is at issue.
Guidelines-breaking comments do frequently appear about China, but that is a function of geopolitical and media trends, not HN moderation. The way we moderate such comments has nothing to do with my/our personal views about China or any other country. If you stop and think about it and you know the HN guidelines well, this shouldn't be that hard to believe. The vast majority of these moderation calls are not borderline.
From a moderation perspective, everything in the above paragraph is obvious. From a user perspective, it's often impossible to communicate, because whenever someone has a strong feeling about $topic, their view about moderation is determined by their feeling about $topic. If they see us moderating something they agree with, they jump to the conclusion that we're secretly in cahoots with the opposing side. Of course the opposing side does the same thing.
Guidelines-breaking comments do frequently appear about China, but that is a function of geopolitical and media trends, not HN moderation. The way we moderate such comments has nothing to do with my/our personal views about China or any other country. If you stop and think about it and you know the HN guidelines well, this shouldn't be that hard to believe. The vast majority of these moderation calls are not borderline.
From a moderation perspective, everything in the above paragraph is obvious. From a user perspective, it's often impossible to communicate, because whenever someone has a strong feeling about $topic, their view about moderation is determined by their feeling about $topic. If they see us moderating something they agree with, they jump to the conclusion that we're secretly in cahoots with the opposing side. Of course the opposing side does the same thing.
I’m hesitant to respond because I don’t know that I can really add anything meaningful other to say that I think one day history will change the way you and others view some of those comments you’ve considered flamebait. Lab leak is one example. I think that’s now acceptable as a topic of discussion amongst educated adults, but it was deemed a “groundless insinuation” at one point and I believe something that would get moderated here, maybe I’m wrong about that. Meanwhile many comments get posted that make fair and strong criticisms of Facebook, or apple or the surveillance state in the USA, five eyes and so forth. I think you and others do a great job of moderating and I’m not trying to argue otherwise, just that I think flamebait is subjective and it’s possible to be overzealous and that criticism of the CCP is no less legitimate than criticism of the NSA, FBI, the prosecution of Julian Assange, etc… I say that with great respect and gratitude for the generally excellent work that you do.
And I agree with you enforcing the flameware rule because if that's not done HN won't be a discussion forum it'll be a cesspool of hate like Twitter or Facebook
OT pretty much — but not completely: My daughter had a wonderful first grade teacher of English descent named Emily Chewning. The kids called her "Miss Chew." On the first Parent-Teacher night many parents were surprised to learn that "Miss Chew"/[Chu] wasn't Chinese.
> Wow, that's not how I parsed the very same reposting rules.
Some posts get reposted a lot see this website for example https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=lihaoyi.com some were posted 7 times.
This thing is that almost any well written (and not too much technical) post can reach the frontpage it only requires 3-4 people who like the post enough to upvote it during the first 30 minutes. As a result reposting works for those kind of content. And as it is not forbidden, people do it
Some posts get reposted a lot see this website for example https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=lihaoyi.com some were posted 7 times.
This thing is that almost any well written (and not too much technical) post can reach the frontpage it only requires 3-4 people who like the post enough to upvote it during the first 30 minutes. As a result reposting works for those kind of content. And as it is not forbidden, people do it
Either I missed it or it does not mention "posting too fast" feature, which is very annoying, because if you commented on something you can be restricted from commenting on another, unrelated topic.
It's extremely annoying. It doesn't give you any indication how you triggered it, nor does it give you any indication how long you need to wait until you can post normally again.
What's more, since the people who wrote the code for this feature are pretty smart, it's hard to believe these two things are oversights.
Edit: In response to a now deleted comment on how this feature is intended to be annoying, because your contribution was deemed harmful, but not ban-worthy, I say this:
I disagree that this approach is correct in that case. If you want to discourage certain behavior, then, on a site such as HN, you should treat your users as adults and tell them what you don't want them to do. Simply locking them out for an unknown amount of time, for unknown reasons, is just going to drive them away. This is just basic operant conditioning. Presumably, driving the user away entirely is not the result one wants a significant portion of the time.
What's more, since the people who wrote the code for this feature are pretty smart, it's hard to believe these two things are oversights.
Edit: In response to a now deleted comment on how this feature is intended to be annoying, because your contribution was deemed harmful, but not ban-worthy, I say this:
I disagree that this approach is correct in that case. If you want to discourage certain behavior, then, on a site such as HN, you should treat your users as adults and tell them what you don't want them to do. Simply locking them out for an unknown amount of time, for unknown reasons, is just going to drive them away. This is just basic operant conditioning. Presumably, driving the user away entirely is not the result one wants a significant portion of the time.
Interestingly, I have never hit this. I heard about it before, and I have sometimes posted a fair number of comments over a fairly short amount of time too, but somehow I've never hit any limit on this.
This leads me to believe that in most (though perhaps not all) cases people are probably posting short comments. Nothing wrong with that sometimes, but overall it's the sort of thing HN tries to discourage, which isn't a bad thing IMHO.
This leads me to believe that in most (though perhaps not all) cases people are probably posting short comments. Nothing wrong with that sometimes, but overall it's the sort of thing HN tries to discourage, which isn't a bad thing IMHO.
I first experienced it a few weeks ago, coincidentally after I started experiencing some kind of weird, mass downvoting of basically every comment I write. For some reason, this mass downvoting is continuing.
I don't mean that literally every comment I write is getting downvoted to below zero. Rather, I'll write something, it will accumulate a couple to several upvotes, and then, those upvotes all go away over the course of a few more hours, sometimes to be replaced by net downvotes.
The end result is that I actually have less karma now than I did a few weeks ago. And, I wouldn't particularly care about those fake internet points, if the loss of them didn't seemingly come with these weird, arbitrary-seeming restrictions like "you are posting too fast."
TBH, it's getting to the point where I'm about ready to abandon this account.
I don't mean that literally every comment I write is getting downvoted to below zero. Rather, I'll write something, it will accumulate a couple to several upvotes, and then, those upvotes all go away over the course of a few more hours, sometimes to be replaced by net downvotes.
The end result is that I actually have less karma now than I did a few weeks ago. And, I wouldn't particularly care about those fake internet points, if the loss of them didn't seemingly come with these weird, arbitrary-seeming restrictions like "you are posting too fast."
TBH, it's getting to the point where I'm about ready to abandon this account.
Your account is rate-limited. I described this elsewhere in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29028227. Past explanations: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
If you want the rate limit turned off, we'd be happy to do that as long as we have reason to believe that you'll use the site as intended in the future. I'm sorry for the annoyance but we have to do what we can to prevent this place from burning itself to a crisp, and if you want to post without being throttled then we need your help with that.
If you want the rate limit turned off, we'd be happy to do that as long as we have reason to believe that you'll use the site as intended in the future. I'm sorry for the annoyance but we have to do what we can to prevent this place from burning itself to a crisp, and if you want to post without being throttled then we need your help with that.
I can't provide you with that assurance without more specific information as to what exactly I've done wrong. You've removed the punishment so far from the act being punished, then hidden it behind a cryptic error message, so that I have no idea what not to do in the future.
Rather than prostrate myself before the mod team, only to end up having this happen again, I'd honestly rather flush this account down the toilet, go grab a VPN and start again. If nothing else, I'm guessing that would get rid of the random, mass downvoting that's driving me crazy, and it would save us both some time.
Rather than prostrate myself before the mod team, only to end up having this happen again, I'd honestly rather flush this account down the toilet, go grab a VPN and start again. If nothing else, I'm guessing that would get rid of the random, mass downvoting that's driving me crazy, and it would save us both some time.
[deleted]
I always read it as dang! the exclamation!
There should have been a spoiler alert.
Oh, well -
>Three posts with the same URL for three consecutive days seems a bit too much.
The article is talking about stories that haven't got much attention. You can infer it from the quoted text mentioned just before the 3 rule:
>If a story has not had significant attention in the last year or so, a small number of reposts is ok. Otherwise we bury reposts as duplicates.
The article is talking about stories that haven't got much attention. You can infer it from the quoted text mentioned just before the 3 rule:
>If a story has not had significant attention in the last year or so, a small number of reposts is ok. Otherwise we bury reposts as duplicates.
Dang is a Vietnamese surname (I know more than one "Dang"), which is why I also assumed he was Asian.
Interesting how that page doesn't cover shadow muting. If too many of your comments hit -4 in too short a time period you'll get nothing but "you're posting too fast" messages for several hours, possibly a day.
You get this regardless of score I think. I was excitedly posting on a Dune thread the other day with all comments +4 and still got told to settle down lol.
Mine were spaced over an entire day. They just happened to be consecutively downvoted.
I have found when your account goes into this "you're posting too fast" purgatory, you can't post more than (I think) five times in some time period (12 hours?? not sure). My account somehow always ends up in this purgatory. It seems like something automatic triggers it and then you have to always E-mail them to get out of it, so I don't even bother anymore.
It's not automatic, it's manual. We rate limit accounts when they post too many low-quality comments too quickly and/or get involved in flamewars. If you keep experiencing this after you emailed us to remove the limit, it must mean that you reverted to posting low-quality comments or (more likely) getting involved in flamewars. Or at least a mod saw it that way.
Interesting, thanks for the explanation. I'd argue that since there is no notice and no feedback as to which particular comment(s) triggered the action, then it may as well be automatic. I've kind of just learned to live with the limit, as I find it a little distasteful to have to keep E-mailing to justify myself, when I don't know what, in particular, got me into the state I need to justify myself out of.
Perhaps the purgatory state could expire after some fixed (weeks, months) cool-down period, I don't know. Just a suggestion.
Perhaps the purgatory state could expire after some fixed (weeks, months) cool-down period, I don't know. Just a suggestion.
I got good results from paying attention to what topics are particularly sensitive in the HN community and just not commenting on them.
Something not mentioned in either article is how karma is handled on submissions. 1 comment upvote = 1 karma point, but 1 submission upvote isn't. E.g. this [0] post got 286 points but the submitter only has 118 karma. Also, what's the deal with the "prev" and "next" buttons that just appeared in the last few minutes?
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28996500
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28996500
I suspect that I might be part of the reason for the prev and next buttons. HN has bad accessibility when it comes to screen readers and following the parent/child relationship between comments. Some time ago I answered to the wrong person for the wrong reason and a commenter said that they will ask the HN staff for a solution. If my case was not unique, those comments might be the answer. In terms of accessibility, those buttons are not as good as using the semantic html <li> tag, but they help somewhat.
I don't think it is anyone in particular, it is hard for everyone to follow threads where there is an extended subthread. This makes it easy to follow the discussion you care about when a subthread goes on a tangent you don't care about (or flamewar, etc.). I am super excited to see it and would have missed it for a while if not for this discussion.
Edit: Oh yeah, there has been that tiny collapse button for a while, I somehow never got into the habit of using that one and forget it is there. I wish there was a setting to use the words "up vote" "down vote" and "collapse" rather than needing to pixel hunt :/.
Edit: Oh yeah, there has been that tiny collapse button for a while, I somehow never got into the habit of using that one and forget it is there. I wish there was a setting to use the words "up vote" "down vote" and "collapse" rather than needing to pixel hunt :/.
These were added sometime in the last day or so, I believe.
I always assumed he was from the Far Side, not the Far East.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29026166
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29026166
[deleted]
it took me ages to realise dang was actually his first name/surname initial tho i get the handle's other meaning is intentional.
> ??? Is it common that people think he is Asian for some reason? What a strange paragraph to include...
I don't see how it matters whether he's Asian or not. For all I care, he could be a sentient pineapple tree and it wouldn't matter at all to my HN user experience.
I don't see how it matters whether he's Asian or not. For all I care, he could be a sentient pineapple tree and it wouldn't matter at all to my HN user experience.
This would be quite fascinating, as pineapples don’t grow on trees. Your point is well-stated, nevertheless.
I thought he was asian lol, cause dang is an asian name
Similar article from 2013 but with much more numbers and analysis / reverse-engineering:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799854
Fun fact: there are manual keyword penalties, such as for bitcoin, and back around 2013 there used to be a penalty for "NSA".
Explanation by dang: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9097596
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799854
Fun fact: there are manual keyword penalties, such as for bitcoin, and back around 2013 there used to be a penalty for "NSA".
Explanation by dang: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9097596
> he is the best moderator in the world
Yes he is. Dang, you are amazing. Thank you for tending this beautiful garden in the middle of a sad and boggy Internet.
Yes he is. Dang, you are amazing. Thank you for tending this beautiful garden in the middle of a sad and boggy Internet.
Reposting my tribute to Dang (with archive.org links when possible) from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18513120 :
As a tribute to Dang, whose name you say when you make a mistake, here are some of my favorite Far Side cartoons:
Some Weirdo: https://web.archive.org/web/20190901100845/https://i.pinimg....
Monster Jobs: https://web.archive.org/web/20211028134713/https://i.pinimg....
Vultures: https://web.archive.org/web/20211028134854/https://i.pinimg....
Construction Birds at Lunch: [missing] https://i.pinimg.com/564x/3b/c5/fd/3bc5fd323e791b6879529e6a5...
Blizard's A-Comin': https://web.archive.org/web/20200509234955/https://i.pinimg....
The Creeps: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5a/1c/5e/5a1c5ef2e9ab19d27970...
Superman In His Later Years: https://web.archive.org/web/20211028134903/https://i.pinimg....
Before Paper and Scissors: https://web.archive.org/web/20211028134904/https://i.pinimg....
Sorry, Buddy: [missing] https://i.pinimg.com/564x/49/6b/3a/496b3a234ddeca894887b249e...
Nerd! ...: https://i.pinimg.com/564x/c9/08/a0/c908a02a8dfa42db9973f743b...
The Thanksgiving themed one that I googled and googled and googled for but couldn't find, which was taped to my mom's refrigerator, was the disappointed bird standing in front of the open refrigerator, lamenting: "Dang, somebody ate the middle out of the daddy longlegs!"
As a tribute to Dang, whose name you say when you make a mistake, here are some of my favorite Far Side cartoons:
Some Weirdo: https://web.archive.org/web/20190901100845/https://i.pinimg....
Monster Jobs: https://web.archive.org/web/20211028134713/https://i.pinimg....
Vultures: https://web.archive.org/web/20211028134854/https://i.pinimg....
Construction Birds at Lunch: [missing] https://i.pinimg.com/564x/3b/c5/fd/3bc5fd323e791b6879529e6a5...
Blizard's A-Comin': https://web.archive.org/web/20200509234955/https://i.pinimg....
The Creeps: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5a/1c/5e/5a1c5ef2e9ab19d27970...
Superman In His Later Years: https://web.archive.org/web/20211028134903/https://i.pinimg....
Before Paper and Scissors: https://web.archive.org/web/20211028134904/https://i.pinimg....
Sorry, Buddy: [missing] https://i.pinimg.com/564x/49/6b/3a/496b3a234ddeca894887b249e...
Nerd! ...: https://i.pinimg.com/564x/c9/08/a0/c908a02a8dfa42db9973f743b...
The Thanksgiving themed one that I googled and googled and googled for but couldn't find, which was taped to my mom's refrigerator, was the disappointed bird standing in front of the open refrigerator, lamenting: "Dang, somebody ate the middle out of the daddy longlegs!"
Dang is amazing because he's got a weirdly razor sharp ability to keep a relatively huge overton window without removing much, but still keep the discussion going without entering chaos.
Compared to the strictly moderated Reddit forums that are completely useless for perspectives outside of the status quo, often to a frightening degree in all directions.
Thanks dang!
Compared to the strictly moderated Reddit forums that are completely useless for perspectives outside of the status quo, often to a frightening degree in all directions.
Thanks dang!
I can't emphasize this enough. When I see dang gently remind folks to not engage in ad hominem, or post thoughtful explanations of why controversial comments or articles were left up or taken down, I am encouraged to be a more thoughtful contributor on the internet.
I'm always amazed by how attentive dang is. I think he's a huge part of why this community is somewhere I visit multiple times per day. Thank you, dang!
I've often wondered if dang is more than one person!
Just one person with a lot of keyboard shortcuts.
One thing I really appreciate about dang is how he links to previous related discussions on similar articles. This has helped me to find many interesting discussions!
> he is the best moderator in [the](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25051566) world.
Oh, hey. This is my moment of glory, I guess!
The number of people I moderate has only increased since then. I still stand by those words.
Oh, hey. This is my moment of glory, I guess!
The number of people I moderate has only increased since then. I still stand by those words.
Thanks for this. The article was a nice read, and one I hadnt seen, though I'm relatively new to participating here. Interestingly I noticed this comment [1], which was basically what happened to me when i emigrated to reddit back in 2006 from Digg.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25049415
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25049415
> In other words, the story must persuade 13.3% or more of readers to up-vote. That’s a pretty high conversion rate.
This I feel is a very good thing. Up-votes to readership is a good correlation and is better than Reddit's hotness algorithm for finding good content which seems to be just up-votes over time.
The main contribution to article goodness seems only to be the choice of those that read and up-vote however and there is no system that can replace that yet.
This I feel is a very good thing. Up-votes to readership is a good correlation and is better than Reddit's hotness algorithm for finding good content which seems to be just up-votes over time.
The main contribution to article goodness seems only to be the choice of those that read and up-vote however and there is no system that can replace that yet.
>That’s a pretty high conversion rate
Hence the constant stream of articles confirming tropes that play to the HN demographics.
It's basically impossible to have a reliable 10+% conversion rate without targeting the lowest common denominator.
Hence the constant stream of articles confirming tropes that play to the HN demographics.
It's basically impossible to have a reliable 10+% conversion rate without targeting the lowest common denominator.
> A story needs to accumulate 5 points to appear in the Live List.
I don’t think this is right. During quiet times, I’ve definitely seen stories in the “live list”, and even on the front page, with only 3 points.
I don’t think this is right. During quiet times, I’ve definitely seen stories in the “live list”, and even on the front page, with only 3 points.
You're correct. It's 3, not 5.
Was it on the bottom half of the front page? If so, it might fall under the moderator-curated group that the author mentions. Or, if it was lower, it might have been there earlier.
This story is currently at position 5 with only 3 points:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024572
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024572
From my experience, its the speed that a post gets points/comments that matters. If you get three quick enough you should get on the front page.
[deleted]
Without getting to robotic: given how I also think dang is awesome, has anyone ever tried to compile of list of tactics dang employs to receive such high praise by almost everyone on the site? Meaning, like some sort of case studies that map back to higher order principles/values he's acting on.
If you read through dang's comments he is very articulate about his values and tactics. There was also this recent self-referential article linking to some particularly incisive comments between another commenter and dang, with associated discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28853335
I'm really curious about voting ring detection. Oftentimes I've seen posts from the same company hitting the front page over and over again, and none of them was particularly interesting, nor was the company any of HN's "love children" such as Stripe. I can't recall any specific example, but when looking a bit closer it was usually some small- to medium-sized startup with maybe 10-100 people, which would technically be enough to make a big dent into a post's score.
On the one hand I'd love to know more about the detection algorithm, on the other hand that information would be inevitably abused by those shitposters to game it.
On the one hand I'd love to know more about the detection algorithm, on the other hand that information would be inevitably abused by those shitposters to game it.
You can email dang and ask that he looks into a specific case in more detail (although usually the answer is "looks natural")
"I'm really curious about voting ring detection."
I am curious about this as well.
When I read "voting ring" I think of accounts trading votes - a group of accounts votes for each others' stories.
But your description (possibly accurate) is that asking people to vote for a story is a "voting ring".
Once in a while my company makes an announcement of some kind and emails that announcement to some portion of our customer base. Sometimes that announcement includes a link to an HN story that I create with an invitation for discussion. We never make any mention of voting or scoring.
This makes good sense because we don't have a forum and everyone prefers the HN user interface anyway.
Is this a voting ring ?
If this is not a voting ring, per se, is it likely this still trips the voting ring detection ?
Is this poor HN etiquette ?
I am curious about this as well.
When I read "voting ring" I think of accounts trading votes - a group of accounts votes for each others' stories.
But your description (possibly accurate) is that asking people to vote for a story is a "voting ring".
Once in a while my company makes an announcement of some kind and emails that announcement to some portion of our customer base. Sometimes that announcement includes a link to an HN story that I create with an invitation for discussion. We never make any mention of voting or scoring.
This makes good sense because we don't have a forum and everyone prefers the HN user interface anyway.
Is this a voting ring ?
If this is not a voting ring, per se, is it likely this still trips the voting ring detection ?
Is this poor HN etiquette ?
Ring detection works for people who don't know it exists. And thus works well a lot of times. But is very easy to bypass, and I won't tell you how.
And if I recall well, dang has already said several times that he will not disclose the algorithm https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
And if I recall well, dang has already said several times that he will not disclose the algorithm https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
> But is very easy to bypass, and I won't tell you how.
That really depends on how it works, and whether you know how it works. Simple signals such as IP location and temporal distribution of votes are easy to use for detection, but also easy to manipulate. On the other hand, if you employ a graph of user associations based on votes and comments in the past, you can detect clusters among them, voting collaboratively. This is way harder to circumvent in the long run, but also extremely difficult to implement accurately.
That really depends on how it works, and whether you know how it works. Simple signals such as IP location and temporal distribution of votes are easy to use for detection, but also easy to manipulate. On the other hand, if you employ a graph of user associations based on votes and comments in the past, you can detect clusters among them, voting collaboratively. This is way harder to circumvent in the long run, but also extremely difficult to implement accurately.
It's pretty easy to generate new accounts here
One thing I’ve never understood is I can only upvote, but some comments are greyed out as if they’ve been downvoted. How does this work?
You need a higher level of karma to downvote.
Specifically > 500: https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented
Why would you downvote something? 'You weren't invited, just move along', exists.
Happy to say, I only ever upvote.
Silly replies (like you might get on many Reddit subs) get downvotes. But so do comments that contain factually wrong information. Particularly if the author uses the falsehoods to attempt to convince.
These posts typically have a top reply comment correcting the parent.
The downs help people reduce or avoid being influenced by even glancing at information that is no good.
These posts typically have a top reply comment correcting the parent.
The downs help people reduce or avoid being influenced by even glancing at information that is no good.
When I disagree as a matter of opinion, I don’t have an urge to downvote. Sometimes I respond when I’m moved to, otherwise, like you, I just keep perusing.
Fortunately I don’t see many comments that are so wrong that I can say they are in fact false, but it does happen. In those cases, I think a downvote is valuable.
Fortunately I don’t see many comments that are so wrong that I can say they are in fact false, but it does happen. In those cases, I think a downvote is valuable.
Why would you downvote something?
Sometimes people are mean about React and they must be punished.
Sometimes people are mean about React and they must be punished.
And sometimes people say things that are unsubstantial, deliberately obtuse, and don't really contribute to a useful discussion.
>HN’s anti-voting-ring software is now so strict that the main thing we have to do is turn it off when a submission is good enough
A chilling effect of this can be that moderators have a much more direct hand in choosing what kinds of content is successful if their criteria for "good enough" is not the same thing as "was not actually a vote ring". There are a few other sources of bias introduced by the human/automation moderation relationship.
Another issue is that HN's flagging system is routinely abused by small groups of users to remove content which does not actually run afoul of the guidelines. It's effectively a super downvote: it removes content entirely, works for posts and comments, has a much lower minimum karma threshold, and it's very hard to rescue a flagged post, and you can't "vouch" before a post gets flagged - only after.
A chilling effect of this can be that moderators have a much more direct hand in choosing what kinds of content is successful if their criteria for "good enough" is not the same thing as "was not actually a vote ring". There are a few other sources of bias introduced by the human/automation moderation relationship.
Another issue is that HN's flagging system is routinely abused by small groups of users to remove content which does not actually run afoul of the guidelines. It's effectively a super downvote: it removes content entirely, works for posts and comments, has a much lower minimum karma threshold, and it's very hard to rescue a flagged post, and you can't "vouch" before a post gets flagged - only after.
Another open secret is that you can have the history of any posts' position here : http://hnrankings.info/
But they don't seem to compute the ranking exactly as HN does it. I guess they use the same formula but HN discard some upvotes from 'bots' accounts
But they don't seem to compute the ranking exactly as HN does it. I guess they use the same formula but HN discard some upvotes from 'bots' accounts
Add to the list, users can also be shitlisted instead of shadowbanned. If dang doesn't like your account, you will start getting rate limited with extreme prejudice with the message "You are posting too much".
One of the things about Hackernews karma system is that a lot of downvotes get filtered out as fraudulent. However, once you are “targeted” that filter is removed and downvotes against you become more powerful. I used to have a very high karma nearing 1000, and then one day it’s like a switch got flipped and my karma began a decline that never stopped, a year later I’ve been completely drained of karma. I might never really recover. It’s a bad feedback loop because when you know nothing you say or do can make things better there is less incentive to be cordial in your messages.
You're talking about the mechanism that sama wrote about here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7605973. We recently restored the code to mostly work the way it did before that, so this effect should be less strong than it was. On the other hand, if you were to do a slightly better job of using HN in the intended spirit (and sticking to the site guidelines - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), we'd be happy to take the penalty off your account. The problem is that you're still posting comments like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29026954.
It's really hard to devise software protections to help HN stay within its mandate that don't at the same time end up penalizing a certain amount of benign activity. It's a bit like how white blood cells also kill some things that aren't a threat. But the solution is not to turn off the white blood cells - that would be really bad.
It's really hard to devise software protections to help HN stay within its mandate that don't at the same time end up penalizing a certain amount of benign activity. It's a bit like how white blood cells also kill some things that aren't a threat. But the solution is not to turn off the white blood cells - that would be really bad.
It must be no coincidence that my karma lately has seen a modest boost, rising out from the negatives.
Personally I think downvotes should also be calibrated by user, a person who rarely downvotes should carry more weight in a downvote than someone who downvotes everything, and perhaps even have user-to-user calibration where your downvotes against someone become weaker the more you target them. It would help nerf people who scour a post history looking for more comments to downvotes, and help prevent downvote gangs of people who consistently downvote the same person no matter what they post.
A certain amount of dissenting opinion is necessary to keep discussions novel and break up echo chambers, but you don’t want to allow so much that you become poisoned by it.
Personally I think downvotes should also be calibrated by user, a person who rarely downvotes should carry more weight in a downvote than someone who downvotes everything, and perhaps even have user-to-user calibration where your downvotes against someone become weaker the more you target them. It would help nerf people who scour a post history looking for more comments to downvotes, and help prevent downvote gangs of people who consistently downvote the same person no matter what they post.
A certain amount of dissenting opinion is necessary to keep discussions novel and break up echo chambers, but you don’t want to allow so much that you become poisoned by it.
if i may, some constructive feedback...
try to make something like this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=xwdv
more like this:
[edit deln.] How can you want to be part of something when you don’t even know what it’s like on the inside?
What happens when you are given a task you do NOT want to be part of? What happens when a task has moral gray area? What happens if you suddenly decide you really want to be part of something else?
[edit deln] if you’re hiring someone you want someone with valuable skills who is ready to be of service, ready to do whatever you ask, and will remain loyal so long as they are paid. You don’t want people to be nice, you want them to be predictable. That’s true value.
try to make something like this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=xwdv
more like this:
[edit deln.] How can you want to be part of something when you don’t even know what it’s like on the inside?
What happens when you are given a task you do NOT want to be part of? What happens when a task has moral gray area? What happens if you suddenly decide you really want to be part of something else?
[edit deln] if you’re hiring someone you want someone with valuable skills who is ready to be of service, ready to do whatever you ask, and will remain loyal so long as they are paid. You don’t want people to be nice, you want them to be predictable. That’s true value.
> Hacker News has software to detect vote manipulation (ie. asking friends to upvote)
Putting on my conspiracy robe, I imagine it's not just about 'friends upvoting friends', but the relative ease at which new accounts are created (No SMS one-time-tokens, not even email required to register etc); and then using those accounts to artificially inflate certain stories.
If there are accounts being created for the purposes of artificially inflating stories, and their 'score value' then I would hope it's about interesting content, and not some politically tainted fluff piece used to persuade and misinform/dis-inform.
Largely HN seems to work in favor of interesting content, and I agree with this article when it says: "If you get past the voting ring detector, you won’t get past the readers."
I mean, if you somehow developed a voting ring, you would have to jump even more hoops to get that article/link the respect it deserves. And the HN audience are very articulate in pointing out flaws in services/articles/sites in general.
Putting on my conspiracy robe, I imagine it's not just about 'friends upvoting friends', but the relative ease at which new accounts are created (No SMS one-time-tokens, not even email required to register etc); and then using those accounts to artificially inflate certain stories.
If there are accounts being created for the purposes of artificially inflating stories, and their 'score value' then I would hope it's about interesting content, and not some politically tainted fluff piece used to persuade and misinform/dis-inform.
Largely HN seems to work in favor of interesting content, and I agree with this article when it says: "If you get past the voting ring detector, you won’t get past the readers."
I mean, if you somehow developed a voting ring, you would have to jump even more hoops to get that article/link the respect it deserves. And the HN audience are very articulate in pointing out flaws in services/articles/sites in general.
There are also a ton of ongoing news stories and stories in that past which were completely censored off HN. I cannot talk about them or link them here, but please know that they exist.
Why not? I'd like to see them. I also think that if you're going to make grand claims like that, you should include links so that readers can make up their own minds.
Just in recent memory:
Anything relating to the scam MMO known as Dreamworld that Y combinator funded, and how its funding was possibly due to nepotism.
Anything relating to the admin of KiwiFarm's rebuttal [1] of Byuu's attacks on his forum or how her suicide was proven fake.
[1] https://kiwifarms.net/threads/my-response-regarding-byuu-nea...
There are others but either I can't remember them right now or I don't have adequate sources to them.
Anything relating to the scam MMO known as Dreamworld that Y combinator funded, and how its funding was possibly due to nepotism.
Anything relating to the admin of KiwiFarm's rebuttal [1] of Byuu's attacks on his forum or how her suicide was proven fake.
[1] https://kiwifarms.net/threads/my-response-regarding-byuu-nea...
There are others but either I can't remember them right now or I don't have adequate sources to them.
You're off on the first one. There was a lot of discussion:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27319457 - May 2021 (238 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26898266 - April 2021 (195 comments)
Not only did we not censor that, I recall holding back on moderating it. We moderate HN less, not more, when YC or a YC-funded startup is involved (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...).
You're right about the second case - we moderated that as not on-topic for HN.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27319457 - May 2021 (238 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26898266 - April 2021 (195 comments)
Not only did we not censor that, I recall holding back on moderating it. We moderate HN less, not more, when YC or a YC-funded startup is involved (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...).
You're right about the second case - we moderated that as not on-topic for HN.
What if you create an article listing all of them, submit it to HN and post a link here in the comment? I routinely check dead links to see why a few people found it so controversial to censor it. I'd say 80% are true positives - spam, SEO junk, or some utter nonsense. The remaining 20% is content that is controversial to some people for some reasons. I learned quite a lot from it. There are days when this censored content is more interesting than top submissions.
I also happened to submit one such article somehow. I found an article on BBC saying things that are controversial today. It was flagged very quickly. It was interesting to me because BBC is a relatively reputable source and they don't publish junk.
I also happened to submit one such article somehow. I found an article on BBC saying things that are controversial today. It was flagged very quickly. It was interesting to me because BBC is a relatively reputable source and they don't publish junk.
Actually, I would be interested to know how the comments are sorted.
This story makes no sense to me. For example, he says
“Chance of escaping sandbox = upvote conversion rate x views”
“Chance” must be a probability. But this formula will yield a chance > 1 most of the time. That makes no sense.
His example is 30 page views and an upvote conversion rate of 13.3%, which means the “Chance of escaping sandbox” = 3.99.
Reading more, I see that most of the math makes no sense. But I’d love to “triple” my chances of getting to the front page by making my probability 11.97.
“Chance of escaping sandbox = upvote conversion rate x views”
“Chance” must be a probability. But this formula will yield a chance > 1 most of the time. That makes no sense.
His example is 30 page views and an upvote conversion rate of 13.3%, which means the “Chance of escaping sandbox” = 3.99.
Reading more, I see that most of the math makes no sense. But I’d love to “triple” my chances of getting to the front page by making my probability 11.97.
i don't get it. This looks like seo spam and is well below the usual high standards of hn. I agree about dang though, this place would fall to pieces without him. I would add that the guidelines are incredibly well written. Dang gave me the link once and i read it 5 times to understand what he wanted from me
If pool is curated by moderators and dang is the only moderator, does it mean that pool is actually dang selection?
:)
:)
I'm not the only moderator, and there are a few non-moderators who also contribute to pool selection.
I'd really like to open that mechanism up to the community but it's still not obvious how to make that work well. Most ways of doing it would just recreate the voting system, and we already have one of those.
I'd really like to open that mechanism up to the community but it's still not obvious how to make that work well. Most ways of doing it would just recreate the voting system, and we already have one of those.
> I'm not the only moderator
I misunderstood the article and translated "main" to "only". Thanks for the clarification!
I misunderstood the article and translated "main" to "only". Thanks for the clarification!
It's possible for HN readers to make suggestions for the pool, and I'll do this periodically.
Usually it's for a story which simply died in queue, which as TFA notes, is the default. Occasionally it's to see if a discussion might get "re-railed" after it's gone off on some tangent --- people responding to a title or an early comment, most often.
I don't nominate my own posts, of course.
It may be a matter of how many such nominations occur, but I'd say my success rate is >50% in having those accepted.
TL;DR: it's not just dang, and normal HN'ers can participate.
Usually it's for a story which simply died in queue, which as TFA notes, is the default. Occasionally it's to see if a discussion might get "re-railed" after it's gone off on some tangent --- people responding to a title or an early comment, most often.
I don't nominate my own posts, of course.
It may be a matter of how many such nominations occur, but I'd say my success rate is >50% in having those accepted.
TL;DR: it's not just dang, and normal HN'ers can participate.
It's nicest when people don't nominate their own posts, but plenty of users do that as well.
I didn't know we could do that. What's the process for nominating a story?
I'll just email with a title "2nd-chance nomination: story-ID title"
And include the link in the post.
The story-ID is the numeric part of the post URL.
For this thread, where the post URL is
(Moderators can use the story-ID via browser extensions / bookmarklets, I just learned yesterday.)
Similarly, include the story-ID for other issues (e.g., editorialised or clickbait title, suggesting a canonical URL, vouching flagged stories, spam).
And include the link in the post.
The story-ID is the numeric part of the post URL.
For this thread, where the post URL is
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024032
(Moderators can use the story-ID via browser extensions / bookmarklets, I just learned yesterday.)
Similarly, include the story-ID for other issues (e.g., editorialised or clickbait title, suggesting a canonical URL, vouching flagged stories, spam).
My front page metaphor:
You’re taking off in a plane, down the runway
If you get clicks / comments you get lift
Not enough of them, you run out of time, hit the end of the runway- crash and burn
If you get off the ground you may go far but only if you keep getting lift from all those click/comments
If you get clicks / comments you get lift
Not enough of them, you run out of time, hit the end of the runway- crash and burn
If you get off the ground you may go far but only if you keep getting lift from all those click/comments
> He’s not of asian descent.
What?
What?
I thought he was a Chinese guy until I read an article about him. I'm sure a lot of people thought similarly, that it was one syllable "dang!" rather than Dan-G.
"Dang" is still a common word in English though. It sounds like the article implies it's a common name or something, but Asia is a pretty big place
>"Dang" is still a common word in English though
Dang is a common euphemism for the swear word damn, https://mashable.com/article/origin-of-swear-words - the euphemism "dang" was first used around 1780.
I believe it is also regional and somewhat archaic in use now unless you are real religious and probably also rural.
>but Asia is a pretty big place
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dang_(surname)
surname in China, Vietnam, Korea, and India.
Also apparently in Germany.
Dang is a common euphemism for the swear word damn, https://mashable.com/article/origin-of-swear-words - the euphemism "dang" was first used around 1780.
I believe it is also regional and somewhat archaic in use now unless you are real religious and probably also rural.
>but Asia is a pretty big place
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dang_(surname)
surname in China, Vietnam, Korea, and India.
Also apparently in Germany.
>HN users have an intense emotional relationship with the front page
this is interesting if you only see it like once per year or less, when logging in on a new device. I'm not a daily user, but I exclusively come in via RSS and a direct link to a post.
this is interesting if you only see it like once per year or less, when logging in on a new device. I'm not a daily user, but I exclusively come in via RSS and a direct link to a post.
Something I've never seen anyone mention:
You can use the "hide" link to hide a thread, so that you wont see it and comments will not show up under the "comments" link. However this appears broken for Ask HN links.
You can use the "hide" link to hide a thread, so that you wont see it and comments will not show up under the "comments" link. However this appears broken for Ask HN links.
> Most stories ‘fail’ and have only one or two points
Stories are like startups it seems :-)
Stories are like startups it seems :-)
Far too many of them are all about JavaScript?
>readers reacted negatively, even violently, to seeing [...] stories that were placed there randomly
>HN users have an intense emotional relationship with the front page
If a "greatest 80s hits" radio station started broadcasting music from the 00s and people got pissed off you wouldn't say "listeners of this station have an intense emotional relationship with it". When they tune in to the "greatest 80s hits" station, that's the only thing they're looking for; they don't want to listen to random songs.
>HN users have an intense emotional relationship with the front page
If a "greatest 80s hits" radio station started broadcasting music from the 00s and people got pissed off you wouldn't say "listeners of this station have an intense emotional relationship with it". When they tune in to the "greatest 80s hits" station, that's the only thing they're looking for; they don't want to listen to random songs.
HN is not a “greatest 80s hits” radio, though. Users submit links and users vote on them. There is nobody making editorial decisions about what goes on the front page, beyond extreme cases. Sure, there is some tweaking, but in the end it’s all stories posted and upvoted by us, collectively. So it is entirely pointless to whine about the content: it is what the community wants to see.
There is nobody making editorial decisions about what goes on the front page, beyond extreme cases.
HN is more actively moderated than this, you can find piles of moderator comments about it.
HN is more actively moderated than this, you can find piles of moderator comments about it.
YC companies can put in an submission; it goes to the front page but sinks fairly rapidly and can't be commented on. I think that these are usually employment ads.
I also think that's the only direct placement, but I can't be certain.
I also think that's the only direct placement, but I can't be certain.
There's more than that. Actually, this story mentions it:
> Moderators and a small number of reviewer users comb the depths of /newest looking for stories that got overlooked but which the community might find interesting. Those go into a second-chance pool from which stories are randomly selected and lobbed onto the bottom part of the front page. This guarantees them a few minutes of attention. If they don’t interest the community they soon fall off, but if they do, they get upvoted and stay on the front page.
> Moderators and a small number of reviewer users comb the depths of /newest looking for stories that got overlooked but which the community might find interesting. Those go into a second-chance pool from which stories are randomly selected and lobbed onto the bottom part of the front page. This guarantees them a few minutes of attention. If they don’t interest the community they soon fall off, but if they do, they get upvoted and stay on the front page.
There is the second chance, but stories that don’t resonate disappear quickly even after that. I included this in the tweaking the mods can do. I guess I went a bit far about editorialising, but it’s still a minor effect.
I don't think it's a minor effect and without quite a bit of active fiddling, the front page would be full of meta, dupes and pitchfork-fetching-exhortations. This even comes up in a mod comment in this very thread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29028421
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29028421
Interesting perspective, thank you. Though it's more about removing things from the front page than putting there things that people don't want.
You can't scroll past a song on the radio
Radio is a one way medium though. HN missed an opportunity to sell users on it but adding it as an opt-in/invite feature instead.
So as long as something doesn't challenge our beliefs, values, opinions or prejudices it's OK.
The parent is trying to tell that off-topic is not welcomed by some users. I am the same opinion, I don't want to see on HN news about some non-technical political thing in LA or India , or see 3 days in a row someone toy Rust project.
You can try to change my mind that I should never use GOTO, some fanatic submitted such articles and comments using the "NEVER" and I will be happy to reply because is still on topic. But don't submit something like "God says vaccine is bad but hearth pills are good" since is obvious off topic , though I am curious about such illogical believes if I want to learn more there is a better forum for that.
You can try to change my mind that I should never use GOTO, some fanatic submitted such articles and comments using the "NEVER" and I will be happy to reply because is still on topic. But don't submit something like "God says vaccine is bad but hearth pills are good" since is obvious off topic , though I am curious about such illogical believes if I want to learn more there is a better forum for that.
Entirely agree about political stories and rust projects du jour (I’d go as far as associating out-of-topic posts on $random_software about how it’s be much better in rust).
Just ignore/downvote/flag and move on, though. Nobody is forcing anyone else to read anything, and it’s normal that some people here are interested in things in which I’m not. None of us is the arbiter of what should or should not be on HN. Not us mere posters, anyway.
Just ignore/downvote/flag and move on, though. Nobody is forcing anyone else to read anything, and it’s normal that some people here are interested in things in which I’m not. None of us is the arbiter of what should or should not be on HN. Not us mere posters, anyway.
I am not clear about flagging, I don't want to get myself tagged because I flag-ed someone 3rd submission of his weekend Rust project, or those COVID conspiracies/magic cures, I could offend some free-speech extremist if I have the opinion that the HN is not the correct place for that.
Yeah flagging is the most extreme, for things that really don’t have anything to do here. It’s rare that a flag-able story ends up on the front page, to be fair, but a COVID magical cure or a propaganda piece for the usual quacks would fit all the criteria to be flagged to oblivion.
I don’t flag random projects, just ignore them (I know some people here like them, it’s not my thing but it is harmless). I downvote obnoxious comments about how something needs to be rewritten in rust in unrelated threads, though.
I don’t flag random projects, just ignore them (I know some people here like them, it’s not my thing but it is harmless). I downvote obnoxious comments about how something needs to be rewritten in rust in unrelated threads, though.
there are times when a very good post contains discussion that quickly goes "lord of the flies" with controversy polarity and off topicality.
this is a case where i would flag the post rather than spend hours flagging comments, that would result in jail time if said IRL.
this is a case where i would flag the post rather than spend hours flagging comments, that would result in jail time if said IRL.
> You can try to change my mind that I should never use GOTO …
It’s handy for jumping to the bottom of a control loop if the language lacks a CONTINUE statement - the sin being outweighed by cleaner and easier to maintain code.
It’s handy for jumping to the bottom of a control loop if the language lacks a CONTINUE statement - the sin being outweighed by cleaner and easier to maintain code.
Sure, but even if you have continue some languages give you the GOTO so you can exit out from nested loops, useful when you need to work say with pixel colors in a big image, you need all the performance you can get.
I don't think it is hard to pick clear examples. It is harder to pick clear policies for examples that end up in some gray area.
Sure, but the parent was implying that if we reject some content is because we don't want our mind changed. A forum should have a scope/topic and it should reject off-topic posts.
I love subreddits with clear rules, then you don't see articles or comments that go in tangents, memes or american or international politics. The moderators can decide the gray area after user report. So trying to post some COVID or politics stuff in one of the good moderated subreddits will be removed and it is not because we don't want to open our mind.
I love subreddits with clear rules, then you don't see articles or comments that go in tangents, memes or american or international politics. The moderators can decide the gray area after user report. So trying to post some COVID or politics stuff in one of the good moderated subreddits will be removed and it is not because we don't want to open our mind.
The parent actually didn't refer to off-topic posts. It referred to posts that "challenge our beliefs, values, opinions or prejudices".
>God says vaccine is bad but hearth pills are good
Anyone else wondering what a "hearth pill" is?
Anyone else wondering what a "hearth pill" is?
Possibly, the word “health” was mis-typed on a phone and then wrongly auto-corrected to be “hearth”.
>Anyone else wondering what a "hearth pill" is?
typo/bad spell, I meant heart
I am not attacking Trump or americans here, is a story from my country where in a very religious family the daughter failed to convince her mother to get the vaccine, the reason was soem Jesus /God does not allow it but for some reason God allows the mother to take pills/medicine for her heart ... makes no sense , if God gifted you a bad heart then WTF do you take unnatural pills, why did you vaccinated your children but for COVID you somehow found in the Bible that this vaccine is too much.
typo/bad spell, I meant heart
I am not attacking Trump or americans here, is a story from my country where in a very religious family the daughter failed to convince her mother to get the vaccine, the reason was soem Jesus /God does not allow it but for some reason God allows the mother to take pills/medicine for her heart ... makes no sense , if God gifted you a bad heart then WTF do you take unnatural pills, why did you vaccinated your children but for COVID you somehow found in the Bible that this vaccine is too much.
Probably a "horse dewormer pill", which is what all the Trump supporters are popping these days instead of getting vaccinated and wearing masks, because they don't trust doctors or medical science or vaccines.
> So as long as something doesn't challenge our beliefs, values, opinions or prejudices it's OK.
You're trying way too hard to make this about bias. There are more charitable and simpler explanations, such as signal-to-noise ratio and the expectation that submissions to HN are focused on geek-oriented science and tech topics.
You're trying way too hard to make this about bias. There are more charitable and simpler explanations, such as signal-to-noise ratio and the expectation that submissions to HN are focused on geek-oriented science and tech topics.
I'm saying there is bias. And I'm saying it because it is healthy to acknowledge that we're both capable of bias and denial of same.
The reply you are quoting is currently at -3. Voting is more about about affecting visibility than whether one agrees or not. Or ideally should be. Does this tell us something? Doesn't it kind of prove my point for me?
The reply you are quoting is currently at -3. Voting is more about about affecting visibility than whether one agrees or not. Or ideally should be. Does this tell us something? Doesn't it kind of prove my point for me?
I downvoted it because it's just a boring snipe and has no real substance. This comment, while ever so slightly more substantial, is still little more just some vague claims and accusations.
As far as I'm concerned that it's downvoted only "proves" that people tend to prefer more substantial conversation than this. If you had posted something of value I wouldn't have downvoted it, even though I probably would have disagreed with it.
As far as I'm concerned that it's downvoted only "proves" that people tend to prefer more substantial conversation than this. If you had posted something of value I wouldn't have downvoted it, even though I probably would have disagreed with it.
> I'm saying there is bias. And I'm saying it because it is healthy to acknowledge that we're both capable of bias and denial of same.
I'm sorry but you're just doubling down on your baseless assertion. Just because you argue everyone might have their personal bias that does not mean that everyone around you is desperately trying to not challenge their beliefs. That's a very specific and very personal interpretation that you're trying to pin on everyone around you without any basis.
Meanwhile, there are simpler and reasonable explanations that you somehow decided to ignore.
I'm sorry but you're just doubling down on your baseless assertion. Just because you argue everyone might have their personal bias that does not mean that everyone around you is desperately trying to not challenge their beliefs. That's a very specific and very personal interpretation that you're trying to pin on everyone around you without any basis.
Meanwhile, there are simpler and reasonable explanations that you somehow decided to ignore.
bborud(1)
Playing 00's music on an 80's radio station isn't challenging someone's fondness of 80's music, it's just annoying.
I was disagreeing with the premise that Hacker News is, or should be, very narrow in scope. Though I'll grant you that there are certainly degrees to this. There are regularly posts that make me wonder why they were posted to HN when I first see them here - and yet, these often manage to enrich my day.
There are risks to making too many rules about who gets to be a member in your club.
There are risks to making too many rules about who gets to be a member in your club.
What I was talking about in the quoted bits of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024069 didn't have to do with topic scope. It had to do with article quality, which is orthogonal to that. I agree with you completely that HN should be broad rather than narrow in scope—that's highly desirable and we spend a lot of time trying to nudge and nurture things in that direction.
Just for clarity, when I was talking about how users are emotional about the front page and react intensely when they see something they don't think belongs there, it was in the context of an experiment we'd run to randomly place stories from /newest on the front page. Users reacted disastrously, not so much because of scope but because the median article's quality is just really low. That's true about in-scope topics like programming as well as other topics. I hope that makes sense.
As for 'who gets to be a member' - we don't restrict that nor want to restrict that. Everyone with intellectual curiosity, i.e. everyone, is welcome. The only requirement is actually using the site in that spirit. This is not so easy, of course, especially when the more activating topics show up.
Just for clarity, when I was talking about how users are emotional about the front page and react intensely when they see something they don't think belongs there, it was in the context of an experiment we'd run to randomly place stories from /newest on the front page. Users reacted disastrously, not so much because of scope but because the median article's quality is just really low. That's true about in-scope topics like programming as well as other topics. I hope that makes sense.
As for 'who gets to be a member' - we don't restrict that nor want to restrict that. Everyone with intellectual curiosity, i.e. everyone, is welcome. The only requirement is actually using the site in that spirit. This is not so easy, of course, especially when the more activating topics show up.
There are risks to making too many rules about who gets to be a member in your club.
And no risks in being too open about who gets to be a member of your club?
And no risks in being too open about who gets to be a member of your club?
Of course there are, but it can be hard to keep in mind what one is trying to achieve. It is easy to think you are doing one thing while really living by a different set of principles.
For instance I've worked for companies (at least two) where, the set of goals for the hiring process, and what was actually practiced, were pointing in somewhat different directions. In the end it really came down to "how like us is the candidate". All while sailing under a "diversity is good" flag, being convinced that we lived our values, and (in one case) increasingly experiencing the problems stemming from a hardening monoculture. What happens when you try to resolve that situation is, to put it carefully, "interesting".
For instance I've worked for companies (at least two) where, the set of goals for the hiring process, and what was actually practiced, were pointing in somewhat different directions. In the end it really came down to "how like us is the candidate". All while sailing under a "diversity is good" flag, being convinced that we lived our values, and (in one case) increasingly experiencing the problems stemming from a hardening monoculture. What happens when you try to resolve that situation is, to put it carefully, "interesting".
Is the sandbox the same thing as "new"? I've literally never visited there and had no idea that it had any role in things moving to the front page.
Anomaly: How can a thread quickly get a lot of points, many more points than posts? So, who is voting up points but not posting?
I'd reckon the majority of users, you see this all over the internet where there's ability to vote or 'like' something; Twitter, Youtube, Facebook etc - the vote will usually outweigh the comment count.
On HN the culture of 'nothing good to say?; say nothing' is fairly baked in so will create this effect even more so.
Voting allows lurkers a voice, who often are the majority of users (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lurker citation 11).
On HN the culture of 'nothing good to say?; say nothing' is fairly baked in so will create this effect even more so.
Voting allows lurkers a voice, who often are the majority of users (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lurker citation 11).
Impressive how this has managed to get to #1 right in the middle of the temporal 'dead zone.'
It's quite possible meta stories are the most upvoted category of all. I posted an article about how HN was moderated and it netted more karma than anything else I've ever done on this site, by a wide margin.
Meta is the crack of internet forums, so mostly* a bad thing. We downweight it pretty proactively. There would be a lot more of it if we didn't.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpxuvOs0NkM#t=210s
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpxuvOs0NkM#t=210s
Exactly, the "self analysis" bias is very strong and probably has its roots in psychology. HN's psychologically mature audience and mods (comparatively) probably tones down that tendency a bit, but many platforms need a separate meta category to prevent the community from spiraling around itself.
Europe's been awake for several hours already.
Sometimes my rank/points go up or down without any vote change?
Best is the page I visit. How is "best" determined?
I wish some of this information was in the FAQ.
What specifically?
Honestly, everything! I just think that, if it's on your site, it should be in your voice.
I've always wanted to know a bit about the algorithms putting, and then keeping, stories on the front page.
I also understand if there are certain details you don't want to call attention to because you don't want others gaming the system.
I've always wanted to know a bit about the algorithms putting, and then keeping, stories on the front page.
I also understand if there are certain details you don't want to call attention to because you don't want others gaming the system.
Where did you sort all this stuff out?
one thing not mentioned:
new accounts are heavily penalized when posting.
new accounts are heavily penalized when posting.
and I thought dang was a bot!
[deleted]
Open secret: dang encourages using archive links to bypass paywalls on a site where people complain that content creators should get their fair share
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HNSucksAss(1)
This might be true internally and initially, before any ant-spam, anti-upvote-ring detection takes place. Effectively, from a user point of view it is not - at least for me.
When I look at the points one of my submissions get and compare my increase in overall karma it is very roughly 50% most of the time. Needless to say that I never participated in things that would be considered unethically (voting-ring etc.). Also not a complaint at all, just an observation that goes against what is often written in "about HN" type posts (but not OP).
EDIT:
1. My observation is from more than a year ago, so things might well have changed.
2. As lordnacho points out below this seems to be true only for stories. Regardless why it happens, awarding stories with less points than comments makes a lot of sense to me. After all posting a suitable story is much less effort than writing a decent comment.