
Two HN Announcements - tilt
http://blog.ycombinator.com/two-hn-announcements
======
raldi
_> If we notice abusive vouches, we'll take away vouching rights_

That might scare some people away from vouching. Could you clarify whether
it'll be more like, "If you wrongly vouch for even one single thing, we'll
silently and permanently remove your vouching ability forever with no possible
recourse" or more like, "If you show a repeated pattern of bad vouching, we'll
reach out to you and explain what you're doing wrong, and only if it
continues, take away your vouching privileges as a last resort, perhaps only
temporarily" (or somewhere in between those extremes)?

P.S. I couldn't be happier to hear about Dan's promotion. He has an expert
touch for community management, and (I learned after an opportunity to join
him for beers one night) some deep wisdom on the subject, too.

~~~
dang
Please don't worry about this. It really is just like flagging. We only take
away flagging rights if someone repeatedly misuses them—never for one random
thing.

I wouldn't have even included the bit about taking away vouching rights except
I know that the question "What if people just vouch for all the bad comments"
was going to come up otherwise.

(Also, I don't think I've been promoted? But thanks—that's particularly
meaningful coming from a seasoned veteran of the early Reddit...)

~~~
dangrossman
> We only take away flagging rights if someone repeatedly misuses them—never
> for one random thing.

My flag link disappeared one day without notice or explanation, and stayed
disappeared for a year or so. I continue to fear using the flag link, even
when I think something should be flagged. There's no chance I'm going to vouch
for something other people have flagged: I'd never have enough certainty that
I'm more right than they are in your eyes. I value my ability to participate
in this community too much to help moderate it under threat of punishment for
doing so poorly.

Re: the replies below, the worst that can happen is not losing the vouch
button, it's being silently shadowbanned for something else, when that
wouldn't have happened if you hadn't put yourself on the admin's vouch review
list for extra scrutiny. I already fear that happening any time I participate
in one of those "what are you working on / what are your side projects"
threads and include a link to my site.

~~~
masterzora
> There's no chance I'm going to vouch for something other people have
> flagged: I'd never have enough certainty that I'm more right than they are,
> not enough to risk your retribution. I value my ability to participate in
> this community too much to help moderate it under threat of punishment for
> doing so poorly.

This is confusing to me. Unless there's something nobody told me (always
possible!) the only "punishment" they'd institute would be removing your
vouching privileges. Not making use of the vouch feature out of fear you won't
be able to use that feature seems entirely paradoxical. It's similarly
paradoxical to say "I value my ability to participate too much to actually
participate" unless I've simply missed some part where they say "we'll take
away your submitting/commenting ability."

~~~
RyanZAG
Welcome to human psychology! Yes, people are far more affected by losing
something than gaining it or even using it. If you give someone $50 and then
take it away, they will generally be very angry even though it's not like they
really lost anything. I read a study on it once, but I can't find it now.

~~~
bsandert
> I read a study on it once, but I can't find it now.

You mean you had it once, but now you lost it?

------
nkurz
If the purpose of flagging is to change user behavior (rather than simply
removing unwanted material from the site) it would seem important that users
are notified when their posts are flagged, but before they are banned.

Perhaps it would be good to show the "flag" count to the owner of a post, if
that owner is not already banned? This might be provide warning to a
perceptive user that their comments are considered inappropriate, while not
making it obvious to intentional spammers that they need to create a new
account.

For the same reasons, it might also be helpful to show the split between up-
and down-votes, rather than just the total. Since this is visible only to the
original poster, it wouldn't have much impact on the overall interface.

------
hackuser
'Vouching' will not improve the quality of HN discussions. It seems like the
result of an excessive focus on fairness, something I see in many online
communities. It affects only a few comments which are unlikely to be
particularly valuable anyway.

The quality of discussions is what brings me to HN, and IMHO the quality is
poor; it's just better than the alternatives. The vast majority of comments
aren't worth my time (or anyone else's, but they can speak for themselves). In
other words, there is much room for improvement and I hope that is Dan's
focus. I happily would accept unfairness, and suffer its slings and arrows
myself, for a higher signal-to-noise ratio. I'd happily lose a few good
comments in return for of better quality overall (i.e., false-positives are
not really a big deal - so what if my good comment occasionally gets voted
down or otherwise buried).

By prioritizing quality over fairness HN can best distinguish itself from a
million noise-filled alternatives where 'rights' are the priority. Everyone
has a right to their opinions, but not to my time.

EDIT: Several edits to explain myself better.

~~~
pcunite
Something that Arstechnica does that I really like is that it shows you the
up/down count on an individual comment. It allows you to see the struggle and
you can make a decision based on that to help it out.

~~~
scrollaway
As a frequent commenter on both reddit and HN, the hidden vote counts on HN
are _far_ better. Coupled with fresh comments showing up at the top sometimes,
they remove most parts of the mob mentality that goes on on reddit.

------
minimaxir
Very promising announcements, Sam and Dan, although I have a few questions:

1) How does spinning out YC as its own service affect a) the job posting
system and b) the YC class qualifiers in submission titles? / What does
"editorial independence" mean in the context of his announcement? YC
submissions had a lot of points, true, but I had thought that was attributed
to the high YC user base.

2) Will users be able to vouch for [flagged] submissions in addition to [dead]
submissions?

3) Due to the vouch system, will the use of banning in general be readdressed,
since there is now a way to address false positives/negatives? Shadowbanning
was implemented at Reddit as a last resort (that the new CEO wants to remove),
and it isn't respectful to the user to not know if they are banned.

EDIT: Reordered to match dang's responses.

~~~
dang
Doesn't affect (1) at all. As Sam mentioned, this is formalizing the de facto
structure that's been in place a long time, so that announcement doesn't come
with any changes to how HN works.

(2) Absolutely. Users can vouch for anything that's dead, including [flagged]
and [dupe]. I see the notational confusion there; will ask Sam to update the
post.

(3) Probably, but I'm not sure I agree with the line you're drawing from
vouching to banning. Today's release massively lowers the cost an account of
being banned. Instead of having your comments always stay [dead], they're now
up for review by your fellow HNers; the community can decide what's good and
bad. I'm not sure 'banned' is even the right word for it now— 'under
moderation' would be closer.

The reason I say 'probably' above and not simply 'yes' is that there are a ton
of issues to consider about it.

~~~
erik-n
>Users can vouch for anything that's dead, including [flagged] and [duped]. I
see the notational confusion there; will ask Sam to update the post.

If you were to rename the "duped" label, may I suggest "nuked"?

~~~
dang
Whoops, I meant of course [dupe], not [duped] (fixed now). The traditional pg
shorthand for duplicate. Not likely to change!

------
steven2012
I think more important than resurrecting posts from people who have squandered
their privileges are we need to allow for better and more convenient browsing
of comments, so that we can let the best ones shine.

1) native folding of comments, like reddit. I don't understand why this
doesn't exist yet, and is the single more important thing to going through the
comment list effectively.

2) better algos for upvoting and downvoting comments and threads entirely.
This is something that reddit is absolutely great at, the top comments on
reddit are generally the best or funniest, depending on the context. The top
comments here are generally the first ones posted, or the ones from people
already with high karma, and thus either the fast or the already-karma-
advantaged get more karma.

~~~
iak8god
> 1) native folding of comments

This one seems like such an obvious improvement that I've been assuming
there's some really principled reason I'm not aware of for why it isn't done.

~~~
nkurz
I doubt there is any principled reason for the lack. Rather, I think it's just
that the people in a position to make the improvement don't place the
importance on it that you do. Personally, it's not a feature I've ever wanted.
I'm using the [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hckr-
news/mnlaodle...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hckr-
news/mnlaodleonmmfkdhfofamacceeikgecp?hl=en) extension, which offers this, and
never once have I intentionally folded a comment.

Accidentally, I've folded comments many times. My main improvement to the
extension (if I were to write my own) would be to _remove_ the folding feature
and just have new comment highlighting (which I find much more important than
folding). Separately, if this is an important feature, why not use an
extension that offers it? Is there a reason it needs to be built in?

~~~
mattmanser
It's useful when a parent comment spawns hundreds of replies and you're not
interested in the direction the parent comment has taken the discussion, but
want to discuss other parts of the article.

It doesn't happen that often, but when it does it's annoying scrolling trying
to find the next top level comment.

~~~
nkurz
In theory, I wouldn't disagree. But in practice, I've been using an extension
that offers this capability for years now, and have never intentionally
collapsed a comment thread. The utility depends on your usage pattern, and my
point was only that it's not a universal desire. This doesn't mean it
shouldn't be added, but for me, it simply adds clutter to a clean interface,
with small buttons that I occasionally accidentally click and unclick. Do I
take it that you are using an extension that allows this, and find it useful?

~~~
tokenizerrr
On the other hand, I use [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-
news-enhanc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-
enhancement-s/bappiabcodbpphnojdiaddhnilfnjmpm) and collapse comment threads
daily. I find it to be very helpful to track of what I've read.

------
skrebbel
There used to be the occasional outburst of suspicion of mean moderators with
double agendas hellbanning great commenters. Dang's been very active presence
here recently to explain decisions that might've seemed fishy, and that has
already done a lot to remove that kind of thinking.

Nevertheless, the conspiracy theories and rebellious "<name in other thread>,
looks like you've been hellbanned by the evil mods!" comments are still
around, and I suspect that the 'vouch' feature will help kill the last of it.
I really hope that it'll work as intended!

(assuming it's all unfounded of course, which I believe it is)

~~~
ekiru
Although "<name in other thread>, looks like you've been hellbanned by the
evil mods!" comments are bad, I'm not sure I've seen them. I have seen
comments like "<name in other thread, you appear to have been hellbanned", but
I think they were sometimes warranted. The moderators do sometimes make
mistakes, and IIUC the normal way to resolve them is: user realizes they are
hellbanned, mails the mods asking about it, and the mods, if they feel the
user should not be hellbanned, unbans them. Alerting commenters that one
thinks may have been banned by mistake of their ban can either speeds this
process along or wastes comment space and moderator attention, depending on
whether one is correct.

I agree that hopefully vouching will kill the "<name>, you appear to have been
hellbanned" comments, though.

------
unabst
The biggest lost opportunity I find here on HN are not with the comments
moderated poorly or that were banned, but with the comments never posted and
the discussions that never happened because of harsh anonymous downvoting.

Donwvotes on HN are anonymous and silent. This equates to being slapped in the
face by someone with a mask on while you're in the middle of a conversation,
without knowing why, and not being able to do anything about it. In a real
conversation, disagreeing with someone involves actually opening your mouth
and talking to that person, and even then is not rewarded with an immediate
punishment to the person you're disagreeing with. This is what leads to a
discussion, or better yet, a debate. Instead, the only recourse on HN is to
change how you talk or to keep quiet.

But at this point I must assume this is an intentional design decision, and I
adjust my tone and substance accordingly. But I wouldn't be writing this if I
weren't okay with HN's rules.

\--

(edit/addendum: this isn't to say there are no discussions or debates on HN...
but I hope other's agree there is something uniquely HN about most of them)

~~~
InclinedPlane
I'd say that this has gotten worse over time. I haven't seen as many
interesting back and forth discussions on HN for a long time. There are
probably a lot of different factors behind that but the rise of downvoting as
a means of disagreeing with a comment hasn't helped.

~~~
dmichulke
It would be nice to know who downvotes how often in relation to others
(publicly or at the very least for the person herself)

People could then compare their behavior against the others and one could
define a "too often" in terms of std-dev from the mean or a quantile, both
within a specific time window (say last 365 days).

In this way one has at least a candidate set of abusers (for the "HN Mods")
and everyone could compare his downvoting behavior and adjust.

Additionally, since it's a simple statistic, it should be easy to implement.

~~~
Semiapies
The anonymity of votes is something that acts against the worst aspects of
groupthink and knee-jerk opinions in the HN crowd. I don't trying to literally
penalize disagreement with the median voter here would help at all.

~~~
dmichulke
The idea would be not to penalize local quantity (votes or downvotes on a
topic) but aggregated quantities. Chances are that if I downvote 10 times per
day (with say an avg number of down votes of 2 per day) that I am doing
something wrong or I five times as much as the average user. In both cases
it's food for thought.

Ratios of vote/downvote per user would probably also mean something.

Finally, I'd prefer to have these statistics private for each user, so there
is no way groupthink could get a hold.

------
paulirish
As part of the organizational change, I'd love to see a plan to making the
Hacker News site work great on mobile.

~~~
cm2012
Anecdote - I love the current HN experience on mobile. Fastest loading site I
use.

~~~
DanBC
I love the site on mobile.

I'd prefer a bit more separation between up / downvote buttons.

I'd prefer the text to be a bit larger, although I accept that some people
would hate larger text. Is this the kind of thing that HN could have a setting
for? optional style sheets? (Because users can't set their own styles on
mobile).

~~~
zeveb
> Because users can't set their own styles on mobile

Stylish works great with Firefox on my phone. Doesn't help you if you're using
another browser or stuck with a phone which doesn't let you choose your own
browser (do those exist?), of course.

------
gone35
Phew... Every time I see announcements like this I get scared. The other day I
literally had a _nightmare_ that HN had been "re-designed" _à la_ Slashdot (in
my dream, it turned out to be an April Fools' joke).

I know it is increasingly unfashionable to keep resisting "modern" trends and
leave the HN look as it is --maybe see it as a mark of prestige somehow? In
any case, _please_ never, ever the change the look. Please.

~~~
dang
You, Sam, and I are all on the same (information-dense, text-centric) page.
Besides, we need to keep the HN redesign side projects in business.

I must say your nightmares sound rather benign. Mine don't usually end with
"haha j/k".

------
blakeyrat
If improvements are in the pipeline, can you make the "vote up" link _not_
look like a disclosure triangle?

I've hit that thing by accident several times trying to expand open comments
because it's the exact same icon most applications use for disclosure
triangles, and it's at the exact same part of the post most sites put it-- and
there's no way to undo an accidental click of it (as far as I am aware.)

Just a suggestion.

~~~
jcr
Using the "Stylish" plugin or similar custom CSS injection, you can
substantially change how vote links look, along with adding space between
their placement.

My vote links read '▲sig' for up-vote (signal), and empty line of separation,
and then '▼din' for down-vote (noise).

    
    
      /* remove arrow background images */
      /* XXX Bug in chrome/webkit requires padding or margin */
      div[title="upvote"],
      div[title="downvote"] {
        margin:  0px !important;
        padding: 0px !important;
        padding-right: 1ex !important;
        text-align: center !important;
        display: inline !important;
        white-space: pre;
        background: none !important;
        background-image:  none !important;
        -moz-transform:    none !important;
        -webkit-transform: none !important;
        -o-transform:      none !important;
        -ms-transform:     none !important;
        transform:         none !important;
        /* width: 6ex !important; */
        /* width: 1ex !important; */
        /* margin-right: 10px !important; */
      }
      /* use unicode text arrows */
      div[title="upvote"]:after {
        content: '▲sig' !important;
      }
      div[title="downvote"]:after {
        content: '\A\A▼din' !important;
      }
      /* color unicode arrow text green-up, red-down */
      a[id^="up"] {
        color: #009900 !important;
      }
      a[id^="down"] {
        color: #990000 !important;
      }
      /* highlight arrows on hover */
      a[id^="up"]:hover {
        color: #00ff00 !important;
      }
      a[id^="down"]:hover {
        color: #ff0000 !important;
      }

------
wainstead
It's probably a good time to reread Clay Shirky's "A Group Is Its Own Worst
Enemy."

[http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enem...](http://www.shirky.com/writings/herecomeseverybody/group_enemy.html)

And I'm not making a wry comment on HN moderation, just that this piece never
gets old.

------
TheBiv
I am clearly in the minority here, but I really don't mind (and somewhat
enjoy) the mobile experience because I can glance at ~25 stories without
scrolling instead of the 3-5 stories that the HN redesigns typically show
without scrolling.

~~~
jordanlev
I agree that information density can be lacking with some of the redesigns...
but I want to point out that if you're able to read HN on a mobile screen it
is because you are blessed with youth and/or good vision.

A lot of us can't make out the text when it is so small, so a ton of pinch-
zooming is necessary, which is a rough user experience.

(That being said, at least pinch-zooming is an option... nothing bothers me
more than when a site actively disabled zooming on mobile with the god-
forsaken "user-scalable=no" meta viewport attribute!)

~~~
tempestn
For me the ideal solution would be if you could pinch zoom and have the text
wrap to the viewport. Best of both worlds. A handful of sites seem to support
this (at least on the browser I use), but it's unfortunately not very common.

~~~
derekp7
Try using Opera (just for HN), which lets you set text reflow when you pinch
to zoom.

------
jacquesm
Congratulations Dan, and thank you for the work on this feature. Rescuing
comments that fall through the cracks is an important instrument in improving
the quality of HN. I'm currently very busy with other stuff so I'm just
reading HN on my breaks right now and not participating much but I've been
looking forward to this going live for everybody. Thanks for all the hard
work!

------
p4bl0
Do we really need these "vouch" link? It seems like complicated for no
reasons. People with showdead could just be able to upvote [dead] comments
just like other comments (is it not the case already?) and a [dead] comment
with enough upvote should be unkilled. And then a banned account with enough
unkilled comments should be unbanned. Seems like a simple solution with no
changes in the UX.

~~~
dang
This reads like a transcript from our early design conversations! What swayed
us in the end is that the upvoting and flagging mechanisms are qualitatively
different. (In fact it's crazy how different they are.) Whatever's going on
there is an important psychological distinction, and collapsing upvoting and
flagging for technical reasons—an obvious simplicity win—loses out to that.
It's also worth noting that flags are treated differently by the software than
downvotes are (or would be if we had them, in the case of stories).

Once we recognized the distinction between voting and flagging it seemed more
natural to have this new feature be on the flagging side, hence vouches. The
jury's still out on whether it's a good idea or not, though; if it turns out
bad, we might consider reverting to the voting idea.

~~~
p4bl0
Ah, fair enough. Thanks for taking the time to explain :).

------
brobinson
Great! I do see legitimate [dead] comments occasionally.

How will this affect shadowbanned users, though? Can a shadowbanned user's
comment ever be vouched from the grave?

~~~
dang
If I understand your question correctly, then yes, that's why we did it. The
vast majority of banned users' comments belong under community review.

I should add that moderators are still going to intervene sometimes—just
hopefully not very often. For one thing, some decisions only we have the data
to make. For another, some decisions are based on the values of the site and
those are not open to change. But the long-term vision for HN is to make it as
self-regulating as possible, and it's been obvious for a long time that the
bulk of HN moderation should be done by the community. The only question is
what the right mechanisms are to get us there, and vouching is a big
experiment in that.

------
publicfig
I believe along side of the changes mentioned for Vouching (which I think is
an incredible idea), I'd like to see changes to the way that submission titles
are changed. I'm actually very much for changing titles that are clickbait-y
or misleading, but I feel like sometimes the original intention of the article
is lost when the titles are changed. I think it would help a tremendous amount
if a changed headline is noted as changed (for example, with an asterisk like
the on on this post) so that users know that they aren't the original
submission. I think it would be even more helpful if hovering over that
asterisk to show, or including a link to show, the original title would help.
That way it's hidden from being easily influenceable on voting but still
allows the initial context of the submission to be present

Otherwise, I think both of these announcements are great news and would like
to offer congratulations to Y Combinator, Dan and the whole community for
keeping this such a useful site and community through all these years, even
despite growth and changes to members.

------
dtertman
(possibly insane) Idea : Open-source the Hacker News code. You have a self-
selecting community of hackers. I'd bet some of them would work for free on
the site. It is easier to review patches than create them!

~~~
pen2l
It's already available:
[https://github.com/wting/hackernews](https://github.com/wting/hackernews)

Though they probably will not share the code for rankbanning mechanisms and
such, since the code will help out people who might want to go around it.

~~~
e12e
That's not the code that currently runs hn - AFAIK it's the code that ran hn
at some distant point in the past. I'm not quite sure what's the best current
path for those that want to run their own hn, on (something similar to) arc
probably anarki?:

[https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki](https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki)

Possibly arc-nu?:

[https://github.com/arclanguage/arc-nu](https://github.com/arclanguage/arc-nu)

At least it appears arc3.1 runs under racket (not sure how long that's been
the case, but presumably for a while):

    
    
      $ racket -v
      Welcome to Racket v6.1.
      $ wget http://ycombinator.com/arc/arc3.1.tar
      $ tar xf arc3.1.tar
      $ cd arc3.1/
      $ echo admin > arc/admins
      # WARNING: running random code from the Internet
      # downloaded over an insecure link is not a good idea!
      # But a checkout from https://github.com/wting/hackernews.git
      # *failed* to run under racket...
      $ racket -f as.scm 
      Use (quit) to quit, (tl) to return here after an interrupt.
      arc> (load "news.arc")
      nil
      arc> (nsv)
      rm: cannot remove ‘arc/news/story/*.tmp’: No such file or directory
      load items: 
      ranking stories.
      ready to serve port 8080
    

I don't know if
[https://github.com/wting/hackernews.git](https://github.com/wting/hackernews.git)
is a reflection of the updated hn source - I don't think it is. For one thing,
if we look at:

[http://arclanguage.org/item?id=19174](http://arclanguage.org/item?id=19174)

"Ask Arc: How to add a toplabels in news.arc?"

> On Hacker News, the ask and show pages are implemented just like the > front
> page, but they filter the item list based on title or whether or > not
> there's a link. > > And yes, that means they won't show items not already
> loaded into RAM ;)
    
    
      (defop ask ((p page))
        (pagepage ranked-stories* p
                  [and (askpage-filter _) _]
                  "ask" "Ask"))
    

> The magic is in askpage-filter:
    
    
      (def askpage-filter (s)
        (and (astory s)
             (blank s!url)
            (~begins (downcase s!title) "show hn")))
    

There's no -filter, in the github repo:

[https://github.com/wting/hackernews/search?utf8=&q=-filter&t...](https://github.com/wting/hackernews/search?utf8=&q=-filter&type=Code)

------
paloaltokid
This is exciting! I look forward to seeing the vouch feature in action. I
notice a certain classes of stories regularly being flagged off the homepage,
mainly those that deal with racism or sexism in the tech community. Being able
to rescue quality stories on those topics should provide some interesting
fodder for discussion.

~~~
brudgers
I'd like to be optimistic. Yet the issue I experience with stories on those
topics is that the discussions tend to attract trolling behavior and the exact
sort of expressions of outrage that behavior seeks to evoke. To me, the
quality issue isn't the story. It's the counterproductive comments.

------
conductor
Thanks for the "vouch" button. I think it should be also enabled for the posts
which are flagged but still visible.

------
mck-
> Currently, when an account is banned, a software filter trips

Is there a way to check if an account is banned?

EDIT: FYI, my karma counter has stopped accumulating points, and popular posts
don't get on the front-page (e.g.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10301364](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10301364)
– which has 4 points in 23 minutes – clearly higher than frontpage story 28
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10300732](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10300732)
– 4 points in 2 hours)

~~~
empressplay
I think the algorithm for story ranking is a bit more complicated than that...

------
tptacek
Do you have any thoughts on the metrics you might use to evaluate the success
or failure of the "vouch" feature?

~~~
dang
Yes. We're going to look at all the vouched comments and the feature succeeds
or fails to the degree that those follow or break the HN guidelines by our
usual moderation standards. Not sure if that's a "metric" but that's the idea.
Beyond that, the only thing that would make us retract the feature is some bad
consequence we didn't foresee.

During testing we did notice an unforeseen consequence, but it was a good one.
Reviewing vouched comments naturally leads to looking at the history of a
banned account, and in a few cases we just unbanned it. Some had been banned
for an obvious reason in the past, but recent comments were fine. Others had
been banned by mistake, such as by a rogue spam filter. So although this
feature applies on a per-comment level, it can have per-account side-effects.

This also raises the question of whether we can take this feature all the way
to letting the community manage which accounts are banned (presumably with
occasional moderator overrides). That's on our list, though it's too soon to
tell if it will work.

------
bane
I can't help but like the spirit of the vouch system, and I'm sure quite a bit
of thought went into it. But at the same time I'm wondering if the site
_really_ needs two different versions of up-vote/down-vote with different
different semantics.

Still, I get it, it's a kind of super-vote, reserved for people with a little
karma (i.e. some "skin in the game"). Out of curiosity, how'd you guys arrive
at 30 for cutoff?

~~~
dang
30 is the flag threshold and has been for years. I don't know how pg picked
it. It works well, though, and we like that it isn't a high bar.

You'd be surprised at how different votes and flags are in effect. The
upvoting system is a lot more broken than the flagging system is. People tend
to upvote as a reflexive "me like" instead of a reflective "this is
interesting". (That's not a criticism—it's simply the chemical reaction of the
voting mechanism and human nature.) Flagging is much more reflective in
practice. You can think of vouches as an experiment in seeing whether up-
flagging can contribute as much value to HN as down-flagging has.

~~~
jccc
It's a bit startling to read an acknowledgement that up/down voting conflates
disagreement with lack of value, and that this effect is undesirable. Debate
over this point continues to bubble up every once in a while on HN, with some
commenters pointing to pg's casual statement from some time ago that he was
okay with a downvote meaning "I disagree."

Is it important to the design of HN that the community engage with (i.e., not
shun into oblivion) worthy points of view with which it disagrees?

If that is valuable to the design of HN, may we simply accept that voting
registers agreement and let another mechanism such as the flagging system be
the place to register a comment's value? Perhaps we can display the measure of
agreement in a more subtle way than is presently the case and refrain from
pushing those comments completely out of the conversation.

~~~
dang
Oh dear. Nothing that I said was meant to express any policy about downvoting
and certainly not any change in policy about downvoting. It's just a separate
topic.

~~~
jccc
I didn't interpret it that way, and I apologize if it seemed that I did.

I was actually hoping for some read on the two questions I gave because I
believe these are important issues, and your comment prompted an opportunity
to raise them.

~~~
dang
Please, no need to apologize. People have really strong opinions about this,
as I'm sure you know, and I'm not sure yet how to comment on it in a helpful
way.

------
mildbow
Awesomeness.

I think this is a great idea for the community. I applaud this decision
because there are quite a few accelerators, but the special part about YC is
HN. Being open enough to give it it's own editorial steering wheel is a great
indication of goodwill to the community :)

Now that HN is it's own thing, maybe we'll see access(api?) for vote
attribution?

Is that even remotely possible? Or, are the implicit privacy issues too much
of a burden?

~~~
dang
If you mean publishing people's votes, I can't imagine that we'd ever do that.
Vote data is intimate and we have a duty to keep it secret.

~~~
mildbow
Yeah, you are right.

I was thinking it would put rest to the voting rings theory if anyone had
access to everyone else's vote history. But, the cost probably isn't worth the
benefit.

------
lifeisstillgood
Would you mind curating the experiments you do. For example, and it may just
be me, but suddenly there is a "past" and a "web" link. I would be interested
in reading a short but about them and of course the explanation for why it did
not work and got removed. (I think the Google search link is gonna be a
mistake but I will enjoy reading about it anyway)

~~~
dang
Did you see the thread on that?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10223645](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10223645)

~~~
lifeisstillgood
No I am afraid I missed it. It's probably me, but Perhaps these threads might
be more widely read if there was say a link to a curated list on the FAQ page.

I think HN has gone from "we can expect everyone to pick it up" to needing a
few more signposts. That's an interesting post but it passed by on my timezone
/ holiday / daily lack of caffeine hour.

Eventually we get the knowledge spread around, so it's no biggie. Just an
idea.

Edit: of course you could improve the number of reads by changing the
headline: "How Megan Fox taught herself Clojure in three weeks, launched a
bitcoin healthcare startup that raised $4 million - all from her Apple Air"

Now, hell I would have read that. It's amazing what cat, pipe and the HN
headline generator can do.

------
forgottenpass
In light of this, what about the submissions that don't allow comments?

I've never really understood what those are in the first place, and am curious
what they'll be following this statement of editorial independence. Are those
advertisements dang does and will continue to pick and choose? Not that I
really care, but they've always seemed a bit out of place.

~~~
dang
Are you talking about the job ads that YC startups are allowed to post to the
front page? Those are described in the FAQ.

Other than that, I think all live posts are open to comments.

~~~
forgottenpass
In that case, you just might want Sam to tone down that "full editorial
independence" statement. It's fine that you give special treatment to YC, but
please don't claim a virtue you don't have.

~~~
dang
I'm not sure I agree with you there. Doesn't the term "editorial independence"
come from newspapers? Those always had ads.

Indeed the nice thing about the current arrangement is that the YC startup job
ads are completely up-front, always work the same way, and have a fixed effect
on the front page. So it doesn't affect editorial judgment at all. (Except
that we try to take linkbait out of the titles and I'm surprised that no YC
startup has asked us about that yet.)

~~~
forgottenpass
I'm not talking about ads _in general_. I'm saying that when the only "ads"
run are for the editorial outlet's parent company's investment interests,
well, isn't that a bit... I dunno... incongruous with the nature of
advertisement in a paper?

~~~
dang
I understand editorial independence to mean that we make decisions based on
what's best for HN and its community, not YC's immediate business interests.

I qualified that with "immediate" because an independent HN focused on
intellectual curiosity _is_ what's best for YC's business. That's the global
optimum. It would be foolish to trade it away for any local one (e.g. handling
a particular YC-related story differently). What makes HN valuable to YC is
optimizing its value to the community. Everyone at YC knows that.

The main benefit of today's announcement is if it helps us make that clearer
to others. Understandably, people sometimes take it for granted that since HN
is owned by an investment business, it must directly serve that business.
Those concerns won't go away, but it will be nice to be able to point to the
org structure and say that's why it's set up that way.

------
cryoshon
Cool update, I am happy to see Sam's vision for HN is the for it to be
independent and a robust institution for the tech community. I think the vouch
feature might be cool, but we'll see how it plays out since honestly I don't
experience many incorrectly killed comments.

------
creullin
Cool. Any word on a responsive template for the site?

~~~
dang
We're working on it and it's coming. No one will be happier than I am when
it's out, though I'm worried that it will be impossible to please everyone,
because the specific requests we get are disparate and even contradictory.
We'll have a considerable period of testing and feedback though.

~~~
ars
> because the specific requests we get are disparate and even contradictory.

The typical solution to that is to give the users a setting page where they
can pick between the two contradictory options.

~~~
dang
The typical solution leads to a combinatorial explosion of complexity, which
is no less worrying.

~~~
ars
It can I know, but it doesn't have to.

With some careful design, and not overdoing it on options you can please most
(but not all) people.

------
bootload
_" Everyone at YC knows that it's vital for HN to have full editorial
independence, and we have absolute trust in Dan's decision-making in product,
engineering, and moderation."_

Go @dan, thanks for listening, then doin' something about it.

------
adrusi
Traditionally the karma points were supposed to indicate what you felt
contributed to the discussion, then I think it was pg who said that using them
to indicate agreement was also okay. So now there's essentially a second point
system, for indicating what does and doesn't belong in the conversation, but
they are much more serious.

I guess I can see people flagging posts that are relatively unconstructive
more liberally now, things that would maybe just be ignored before. Maybe
that's a good thing, I don't know.

------
anigbrowl
Good stuff. I'd like to express my admiration for dang and the other
moderators, as well as the larger team at YC and of course pg himself for
building such a valable community resource.

------
aubreykilian
Wow, you think you're going to read some comments about a community update,
and you end up reading a mass of comments delving into the human psyche.
Damnit I love HN.

------
alanh
Non-HN but YC-related question: Is there not going to be a Startup School this
year? I have gone to 2 of them, and it’s always an inspiring, memorable
experience.

~~~
dang
Me too!
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10235123](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10235123)
answers your question. It will be back next year.

------
andrewstuart2
Will flagging be undoable or at least require confirmation? I can see the link
already but I don't want to run any tests in case it's not undoable.

I can think of many times where I've unintentionally clicked the downvote
button while meaning to upvote, and had no way to "unbury" the good comment I
mean to hoist. I'd hate to accidentally flag and not be able to rectify the
situation.

~~~
dang
Yes. Both flagging and vouching are undoable.

~~~
andrewstuart2
Awesome, good to hear. :-)

------
ww520
Unlinking HN from YC is a fantastic move. It removes any lingering doubt about
bias or censorship in regarding to the YC funded companies.

------
jglovier
Will the ycombinator.com banner ad finally be replaced with an HN symbol that
links directly to the index? :-p

Also, a while back I made a little Hacker News logo concept.
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4731140](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4731140))
If you're thinking responsive redesign work, just hollar. ;-)

------
empyrical
Will HN move to its own domain now that it's going to become its own thing, or
will it stay a subdomain of YC?

~~~
dang
I don't think we need to move it. It's comfortable where it is.

------
misnome
Editorial independence; Does this mean that we will be able to comment on the
YC job postings that flurry through?

~~~
dang
No. Those aren't intellectually interesting stories. They're job ads. If
there's an interesting story about a startup, post that and we can all discuss
the startup there.

------
BinaryIdiot
Isn't an upvote something you feel should be on the front page? What's the
different between the way upvotes count and the way vouches will count? Does
one weigh heavier? Was it not in the cards to make upvotes "vouch" for a post?

~~~
dang
I'm not sure I understand all those questions, but years of experience have
shown that votes and flags are radically different things, and vouches are
very much on the flag side of that distinction.

------
arihant
I'm fairly certain a lot of wrongful flagging is a direct consequence of fat-
fingering the flag button. I've been there, and my fingers aren't that fat.

~~~
DanBC
flags can be undone.

------
Mickchicken2
If you could make it so when ever company X is hiring one or more staff you
could share the location of these hires in the link. I would appreciate it
thanks.

------
nsomaru
Wonder if this means Terry Davis gets to live on HN? It will be interesting to
see how this system handles "controversial" user accounts.

~~~
dang
"Gets to live"? That wording gives me the willies. But if you see substantive
(e.g. on-topic technical) comments that are [dead], you should definitely
vouch for them.

~~~
Semiapies
Is it really any creepier than using "dead" for comments not being visible by
default?

~~~
dang
I'd say very much so. One refers to a comment, another to a person.

------
revelation
It's official, HN is doing more in community development than Reddit managed
in ... 5 years?

~~~
on_
Hacker news is analogous to a single subreddit. Many subreddits do have this
level of interaction with the "mods" of the subreddit. While I am no longer a
reddit user, I recognize that while supporting the long tail by having
subreddits and promoting diversity, they have a massively difficult time
communicating and pleasing their users.

------
Justin_K
Can we please get this site to be mobile friendly?

------
geoffmac
who is Dan. always mention full name at least once

~~~
DanBC
Mod dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dang](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dang)

------
MrBra
> [...] art and science of HN [...]

I like it.

~~~
MrBra
Sorry for having hurt you, you downvoter cold scientist.

------
huhtenberg
Dan, speaking of experiments, can I pitch an idea?

    
    
        Mix a random story from the New page into the front page on each page load. 
    

This should get more eyeballs on new submissions, with more even exposure
across HN populus and ultimately increase the overall appeal of the front page
material. Should make the FP a bit more dynamic too.

~~~
dang
We alpha-tested that and it didn't work. The median item on /newest is far too
low-quality (by HN's definition) for randomness to do much good there. In
practice, it just mixes junk onto the front page—the worst thing that can
happen to the front page.

(I've posted about this a few times; let me see if I can find the links.)

Edit: I found some of them, in addition to the ones scott_s mentioned
downthread.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20%22median%20story%22...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20%22median%20story%22&sort=byDate&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

~~~
scott_s
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9866140](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9866140)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8790134](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8790134)

~~~
dang
Those links are about an experiment we tried that did work, and which we've
expanded. If you get an invitation asking you to repost a story, that's the
latest incarnation of this. Where we're stuck is on figuring out a way to let
the community manage it that wouldn't just reduce to how upvoting works now.
We're working on it though.

~~~
scott_s
The latter also mentions the old thing that did not work, where you just
pulled a random post for /newest, and put it at the bottom of the front page.
I see the current, successful, technique as an iteration of the failed one.

~~~
dang
Ah thanks!

------
feedjoelpie
Serious question, not rhetorical:

I have noticed there appear to be artificially-bumped posts from time-to-time
that relate to YC companies. Is HN providing extra clout to YC companies' PR
above and beyond organic community moderation, and if so, will HN's extra
autonomy in any way change that?

~~~
dang
We definitely don't give special treatment to YC companies' stories and I'd be
happy to look at links if you have any you're wondering about. But make sure
you're not looking at the job ads as described in the FAQ. Those are indeed
reserved for YC companies. (That is the main thing that HN gives back to YC in
return for funding it.)

~~~
mahouse
Does HN really need that much money? Sorry for the indiscreet question.

~~~
dang
The costs are all low except for paying people.

------
happyscrappy
>I don't plan to be very involved--other than as an enthusiastic user (who
would, however, prefer that it be easier to read on a phone)

I always assumed not having a mobile style sheet was intentional to slow down
eternal September, but if sama is asking for it then that can't be the case,
right?

~~~
krapp
But most of the complaints about that are coming from existing Hacker News
users, for whom the experience on mobile is terrible.

If Hacker News was as adamant about stopping the Eternal September effect as
some people believe, they would demand references and a CV before letting
anyone join, or else be invite-only like lobste.rs. Not having a mobile
stylesheet doesn't really seem like it would help in that regard.

Cynicism and incivility are far more corrosive to this community than the
Eternal September effect could be, anyway.

~~~
grayclhn
> But most of the complaints about that are coming from existing Hacker News
> users, for whom the experience on mobile is terrible.

I'm not sure what your argument is here. Who else would complain? The people
who have been driven away?

~~~
krapp
My argument is that not having a mobile stylesheet isn't keeping low quality
users from showing up, it's mostly annoying the ones who are already here. As
a way of holding back the Eternal September effect, bad mobile UX seems like a
specious idea at best - which is why I doubt that has anything to do with the
state of the mobile experience here.

~~~
grayclhn
"Looking at who complains" isn't evidence of that, though. One could argue
that the low quality users are so turned off by the mobile experience that
they can't even complain about it.

That said, I wouldn't mind a better mobile site. If we want to be elitist
about it, just make it available for users with > 10 karma. ;)

------
throwawaymaroon
How will I know if my comments have successfully been vouched for?

~~~
dang
For now, you still have to view the page logged-out. We're probably going to
change this eventually. It's clear that better feedback mechanisms to let
people know when they've violated the site guidelines—and when they
haven't—could add a lot of value to HN.

------
vestaton
Shouldn't editorial independence mean that Michael O. Church is unbanned? Or
is Hacker News still committed to Y Combinator's feud with him?

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
That guy was a terrible poster, and I thought it was particularly pathetic how
he tried to argue his way out of his final straw.

------
rebootthesystem
The first thing I would is change the rules to ban all discussions not having
to do with technology. I've been more than guilty of stretching a number of
non-tech discussions. Every time I do so I feel horrible for wasting my time
(and other HN'ers time) on non-tech threads.

Second --and this could be quite complex-- let me, the reader, decide who and
what I want to read. In other words, let automatic moderation have a light
touch and let me, as a reasonably intelligent adult, decide what I want to
see.

For example, an obligatory "tech"/"non-tech" tag could allow readers to choose
not to see anything that isn't tech related.

I know, tag hell could be horrible. Yet, there probably exists a reasonable
set of tags that could allow users to moderate their own feeds rather than
having to worry about central moderation.

I could see new posts being tagged "non-tech" by default unless the poster
chooses another tag. Tags could include "art", "politics", "religion",
"economics", etc.

I'd keep them to a very short set, perhaps five or ten. No more. Too many tags
and HN becomes something it isn't.

Within the concept of allowing the reader to shape their own feed there's the
idea of "private hell banning" if you will. In other words, if I don't want to
see posts from specific people that should be my prerogative, perhaps others
are OK with the posts while I am not. Let me mute someone personally rather
than centrally muting them as if the entire community thought exactly alike.

I know running communities is extremely hard work. I have in the past and have
zero interest in doing it again. HN has really high S/N and that's why I like
to read it every day. I've been guilty of adding to the noise here and there.
I'm only human. I have tried to self correct when that's happened, mostly by
tying to stay away from non-tech threads.

~~~
DanBC
HN is not tech only. HN has never been tech only.

Perhaps you mean that people should stop posting political articles l? (I
agree, these are usually hopeless).

~~~
rebootthesystem
Yeah, I can agree with that. Every time I get sucked into a political
discussion on HN I hate myself so I am as guilty as anyone else. At least I
recognize HN would be better without these threads.

