

Gaming HN for an Orange Name - A Warning - GavinB

My name, at the time of posting, is orange.  It's kind of nice to be recognized for being upvoted on average, even if I don't make a huge number of comments and will never be on the leaderboard.<p>However, it just feels wrong.  I've been unconsciously working on getting a high average for a while, and this will only encourage my unproductive behavior.  I sometimes refrain from posting when I know my comment won’t be read or won’t be upvoted.<p>In the spirit of pointing out the full effects of this change, I will now offer a simple list of guidelines so that you too can get your name in orange and feel like a real man/woman/entrepreneur.<p>As for me, I’m with tptacek—opt me out of a colored name.<p>1. Only post in threads that are on the front page or look sure to get on the front page. If no one will see your comment, no one will upvote you.<p>2. Don’t post on a front page post that already has more than a full page of text.  Your comment will appear at the bottom and no one will scroll all the way down there. You’re just yelling into the void.<p>3. When possible, reply to a highly rated comment that doesn’t already have replies. Particularly focus on getting your comment to appear "above the fold" when it is posted. This will ensure that your comment is read and enjoyed.<p>4. Don't post against the prevailing mood of a post.  If the mood of that article is pro-libertarian, beware critiquing that philosophy!  On the other hand, when the population is more balanced in that individual thread, feel free. In general someone who agrees is more likely to upvote than someone who disagrees, so you should get be ahead on balance.<p>5. As soon as you make a comment, upvote the article and all of the parents to your comment.  This will put your article closer to the public eye. If you want to truly join the dark side, vote down the other comments on the thread or other replies.  I’ve never done this, but it’s an option.<p>6. Say something interesting.  Without this, you’ve got nothing!<p>7. If you’re trying to be funny or sarcastic, make it incredibly obvious.  If it’s not incredibly obvious what you’re trying to say, don’t bother posting.<p>8. Don't get involved in a long discussion! This will only end with a bunch of 1 point posts that drag your average down.<p>Let me say in closing that HN is one of the best discussions on the net and I’ve been privileged to be here with you all. pg, thanks for all the work you put in.<p>Still, we should be realistic about the behavior that we are promoting. Goodnight and good luck!
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pbrown
I have to agree that the "orange names" are ripe for potential abuse. As
someone who has read HN for over a year now, and just signed up to actively
participate, the "orange names" somehow feels like encouragement for me to not
participate.

Maybe it's a self esteem issue (I blame my mother) but I suspect that some
people will skip the "gray name" comments and only read the "orange name"
comments. I know because I did, and I didn't even know what the orange was for
until I dug. If I make a comment in the forest, and no one is there to hear
me....

I understand what the goal was but, ultimately, I find myself longing for the
old days.

By the way, I upvoted the OP, and I tried to post above the fold, but the OP
was too darn long. <== Sarcasm there. How'd I do?

~~~
murrayh
Initially this struck me as a counter-productive and elitist measure, but it
didn't take me long to swing to a positive reaction.

Really, I want less crappy comments and more good ones. I've been skimming
comments for months now, for a variety of reasons, but mostly because I am
simply not that interested anymore.

Hopefully people do hesitate and refrain from submitting a comment, because
that is probably a comment I don't want to see. In the end, if someone really
cares, they will post a comment anyway, and that should give the 1 point
comments more perceived worth (maybe I will no longer treat them so harshly
during my skimming?).

~~~
sounddust
The problem is that highly rated comments are not necessarily good ones. The
comments that get the highest ratings are usually snappy one-liners or the guy
who posted first on the thread. People can't be trusted to use voting
correctly unless they know that their actions must stand up to some sort of
scrutiny and that it's a privilege.

What I think we should have instead are

1) a clear set of rules for when to vote something up, and when to vote
something down.

2) All comment up/down votes should be publicly visible.

3) There should be a group of people chosen by HN who are extremely well-
versed in knowing what a good and bad comment is, according to the principles
of the site. When these people vote a comment up/down, then it lowers the
karma of those who voted the opposite way of this person. If someone's karma
is low enough, they can no longer vote up/down on comments.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_The comments that get the highest ratings are usually snappy one-liners or
the guy who posted first on the thread._

Speaking as someone who, from the available evidence, can't clear his throat
in print without a five-paragraph running start [1]: What exactly is wrong
with one-liners? They are mercifully short!

Yes, it's possible for a social news site to be completely taken over by
short-form snark. But HN has resisted that pretty well so far. I mean, I
haven't given up yet. And, frankly, it's far better for half the posts to be
one line long than for half of them to be four-page harangues.

I will also note that my tendency to leave multi-paragraph monoliths in the
comments hasn't hurt my ratings any.

As for the tendency of people to get upmodded farther if they post sooner, or
if they respond to things that they also upvote: Last month everyone was
complaining that too many submissions fall off the /newest page without
receiving any upvotes or comments. What's wrong with having an incentive that
prompts people to analyze the new submissions as soon as they come through the
door? That's valuable work!

\---

[1] To quote Pascal: "I would not have made this so long except that I do not
have the leisure to make it shorter."

~~~
sounddust
There's nothing wrong with snappy one-liners getting modded up. It's just that
there are so many thoughtful, intelligent comments that get ignored and
buried, or even worse, modded down because their viewpoint is against the
common belief of the people participating in the thread.

There are so many arguments that would not get improperly modded down if votes
were public and subject to scrutiny. It only happens now because people know
that they can anonymously get away with it.

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swombat
Well, I don't actually care about orange names. I think the far more useful
change recently introduced is the -8 karma limit, which will prevent lynch mob
behaviour when someone makes a comment which a significant number of people
disagree with strongly.

As for the orange name stuff, who cares. Karma is not an objective, it's a
side-effect. If you do care about having an orange name, though, I agree that
the algorithm is a bit dubious...

~~~
tptacek
You know, I think the opposite: who cares about the score on one comment? But
the orange name thing follows you around.

But there is way too much drama about this stuff now, so the thing to do is
probably to let it go and see how it plays out over a few months.

~~~
Shamiq
I agree with the second statement. As a community we should wait a bit to see
how it settles. If we don't like it in a
week/month/quarter/trimester/whatever, it's just a revert back to the original
state, right?

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pg
Hmm. If people take number 6 seriously enough we may be net ahead.

~~~
GavinB
That's a fair point. It wouldn't be much of a hacker site if we didn't run the
experiment just to see what happens.

Sadly, I'm betting on "no measurable change."

~~~
unalone
Somebody in the first thread mentioned that he suspected an influx of witty
one-liners, since they're easy to read and quickly upvoted. I'm afraid that'll
be the case: we'll see a decline in good posts in favor of easily digested
posts.

~~~
kalvin
I'm much more likely to read and upvote longer comments, especially when
there's lots of comments in a thread, because my eye catches on them and I
generally think that if someone wrote a long comment they must have put in
some effort.

So if enough people are like me, it won't be the one-liners that benefit.

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coderrr
Something that would probably help is using javascript to track how many
people have actually had your comment viewable in their browser. Then take the
ratio of views to votes.

Eventually you might also find that you can determine the average # of views
of your comment purely based on the location of it on the page, in which case
the javascript tracking would no longer be necessary. Although it's also
possible that the characteristics of comment viewing are too complex to be
able to simplify it to that.

Also, maybe instead of a fixed score required to be orange, take a
distribution of all users and only make the top X percent qualify.

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Alex3917
My name isn't in orange, and yet I'm actually pretty happy with the quality of
my comments when I look back through my threads page. I have a bunch of
comments that I posted either to thank someone or to encourage someone or
whatever, that clearly have no value to anyone else but the person I'm
responding to. Certainly eliminating those would up my average comment score,
and yet I'm not entirely convinced it would make the community a more pleasant
place to spend time in.

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nihilocrat
At least #6 is true.

Unfortunately, #7 is also true. I've noticed too many comments downvoted where
the sarcasm was just too heavy for people to pick up on, apparently. Maybe
it's just my personality and background, but I think HN veers too much on the
side of serious.

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KaiP
I enjoy reading interesting (#6), serious (#7), and succinct (#8) comments.
Hopefully this new system will encourage such behavior.

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jraines
I see this as evidence that _no matter what_ change you make to a community
website, some people are going to react against it.

I half expect to see a facebook group: "One Million Strong Against The New
HN!"

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GHFigs
In every case, the behavior that is encouraged is one that benefits the reader
rather than the writer. I think this is a good thing.

1-3: Comments that few people ever read are inherently less valuable to the
vitality of the site than comments that many people read.

4: If people are encouraged to pick their battles rather than voicing their
opinion any time they have a comment box in front of them, so much the better.
It means less time wasted with the same stale arguments, and perhaps fewer
one-sided submissions.

I concede that this relies on the fragile notion that people will be willing
to acknowledge (by voting) when a comment they disagree with has merit, but I
suspect this would be easier if people had more experience with higher-quality
disagreement--say a 4, 5, or 6 on pg's hierarchy.

5: If a submission and thread was worth commenting in at all, it is presumably
interesting enough to deserve the up voting. Not a problem.

If people are discouraged from commenting on threads that they themselves do
not find worth voting up, that's a good thing.

If a significant number of people start commenting on and voting up stories
that they themselves don't find interesting--well, at that point I'd start
fearing for the survival of the human race.

6-7: Well, duh.

8: See 1-3. Long 1-on-1 discussions can be valuable to the individuals
involved, but they don't provide much benefit to the site as a whole.

Think about it this way: all you need to do to maintain a 3 point average is
to write comments that at least two people find interesting. Just _two_
people. All that the orange name signifies is that on average your comments
are interesting to more than one other person on the site. I think that's
worth rewarding.

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josefresco
1, 2, 3 and 8 are harmful to the community. There should be some sort of
reward for deep conversations, commenting on unpopular stories (which would
then promote them) and not simply replying to a highly rated comment so it
will be "above the fold".

None of this is rocket science, so I don't fault tptaceck but I hope most of
this advice is not taken (except for 6+7).

I always thought Digg needed a new category called "Stories that get no
respect" which are picked by editors or highly rated members as quality
stories and put on a special page to promote going deep on HN.

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biohacker42
Isn't Slashdot's whole karma system designed specifically because us hackers
find it irresistible to play games.

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bdfh42
Spot On! Perhaps we should esteem those without Orange Names as (perhaps)
frequent contributors to the more start-up/software related posts rather than
the more generalised new items.

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icey
Meh. I think it's time to take an HN break for a few days until all the "Oh
the humanity!" hand-wringing about the community bursting into flames has
blown over.

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jacquesm
is this the shortlist on how _not_ to behave on HN ?

~~~
GavinB
Well, are any of the individual activities by themselves _bad_ things to do?
Most of them don't actively detract from the discussion, they're just a bit
selfish and egotistical in aggregate.

~~~
jacquesm
They make the 'score' the goal, whereas the goal is to have meaninful
discussion about stuff interesting to hackers (unless I got that wrong).

It's an inherent risk in any situation where a number is brought in to play,
there will be people that are going to focus on maximizing that number, not on
the original goal the number was supposed to help achieve.

------
casta
Orange names? I'm almost color blind and my LCD screen doesn't display the
color in the right way, I never noticed the colors. :°(

~~~
nihilocrat
Apparently they're a very, very recent addition. I of course can't speak for
you, but you might be able to tell them apart because the orange ones are very
dark. Compare a comment made by pg to most of the comments in this thread.

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sam_in_nyc
Opting out. I'd rather speak my mind then play games. You've suggested how to
do both, but I can't help it if sometimes I want to reply to non-popular
threads.

------
lionhearted
Some really great points. Couple very quick thoughts, and then ideas about
your points. First, you only need to average 3.5 to be oranage if that's a
concern, meaning posts around 2 or 3 don't set you back much, and just a few
+10 or +20 comments here and there means you can comment totally freely and
stay orange.

2\. Don’t post on a front page post that already has more than a full page of
text.... You’re just yelling into the void. --> I actually think this is
GREAT. People won't post into an already largely full thread unless they have
real insight that's bursting to get out, instead of rehashing some obvious
observation.

3\. When possible, reply to a highly rated comment that doesn’t already have
replies. Particularly focus on getting your comment to appear "above the fold"
when it is posted. This will ensure that your comment is read and enjoyed. -->
If it gets abused for gamesmanship, that's ugly. However, an insightful
follow-on or dissent from the top comment IS more read, and thus does create
more value, and thus, more karma. But we should be vigilant as a community to
these karma-jackers.

4\. Don't post against the prevailing mood of a post. If the mood of that
article is pro-libertarian, beware critiquing that philosophy! On the other
hand, when the population is more balanced in that individual thread, feel
free. In general someone who agrees is more likely to upvote than someone who
disagrees, so you should get be ahead on balance. --> At first, this really
upset me. I've seen a lot of warm'n'happy comments get upvoted more than an
insightful point I made that I assume took heat from people with a different
opinion based on the voting patterns around it. Then I realized - if you're on
something controversial, it's got to either be balanced, or really good to get
community respect. If people reflect for a minute before spouting talking
points, that could be a good thing.

5\. As soon as you make a comment, upvote the article and all of the parents
to your comment. This will put your article closer to the public eye. If you
want to truly join the dark side, vote down the other comments on the thread
or other replies. I’ve never done this, but it’s an option. --> Yeah, could be
a big problem - will be interesting to see how it plays out.

6\. Say something interesting. Without this, you’ve got nothing! --> This is
awesome.

7\. If you’re trying to be funny or sarcastic, make it incredibly obvious. If
it’s not incredibly obvious what you’re trying to say, don’t bother posting.
--> I'm not everyone, but I HATE online sarcasm. It's cheap and easy to get
that ANYWHERE. The internet is overflowing with sarcasm. I like that Hacker
News is really an intelligent discussion place, and humor is used less
frequently and more judiciously than elsewhere.

8\. Don't get involved in a long discussion! This will only end with a bunch
of 1 point posts that drag your average down. --> Finally, I just realized
something. I try to check my comments later and see if anyone replied to me.
I'm going to make more of an effort to upvote 1-karma posts that were late to
the party if they offer even a bit of insight, as a way of saying thanks for
keeping the discussion going.

Cheers Gavin!

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giles_bowkett
orange name == massive design flaw

