

Ask HN: Shouldn't the algorithm discount popular sites(TC) for frontpage? - vaksel

It seems like the whole story submission process is heavily biased towards popular sources.<p>A techcrunch story is pretty much destined for the frontpage, no matter it's content. Why? Because so many people read and submit TC stories, which drives the submission to the top, every time someone tries to resubmit the story.<p>Shouldn't the algorithm account for it? Something like requiring popular sources to have more points to better gauge the quality of the submission?
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socratees
I think HN should maintain a list of sites which should be given a different
weightage. Also, recently I've been seeing more standard news on HN than
startup news or discussions. PG should consider this while he works on the
future iterations of HN.

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rms
Some sites like xkcd are already weighted.

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jmonegro
No, because it's not a democracy, then.

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sharpn
Do you mean _populist_? I don't understand your argument otherwise. Popular
stories are destined for the frontpage - and the problem is?? I'm not being
snarky - I just don't understand your logic. Are you suggesting that HN should
only (or mostly) contain posts that we can't already get from more
'mainstream' sites? That makes some sense as an ideal, but would be very
subjective & I'm not sure that's what you mean. Please can you expand?

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vaksel
No, what I'm saying is that a popular source like techcrunch has a much easier
time making it to the front page, no matter the quality of content.

Mostly due to the simple fact, that a lot more people read that source. By
making popular sources, require more upvotes, it would make the front page
more merit based.

Let's face it, making the front page is pretty easy right now, I've had
stories I submitted hit frontpage with 2 upvotes. By making big sites like
techcrunch require something like 10 upvotes instead, it would at least
eliminate most of the fluff pieces.

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sharpn
Thankyou, yes I think I see your point & it is a valid one. But I suspect any
such complicating of the rating algorithm would be of very marginal benefit,
if any. For example, I enjoy not having to ever visit TC directly, knowing
that I can wait until a TC link gets enough points on HN & the HN comments
suggest it might be worth reading :o)

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tjr
I rarely read TC stories, and even more rarely upvote them here, simply
because past experience tells me I probably won't get much out of their
articles. But here, even an awful article can produce fascinating discussion,
so frequent TC stories on the front page doesn't really bother me.

