

Does removing "override" on noprocrast increase HN's market share? - niels_olson
http://nielsolson.us/Haversian/2009/02/how_pg_reduced_readership_clos.php

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jrockway
Is this modded up to #1 so we can all feel good about ourselves? "Everyone on
HN is so interesting I just can't get enough!!11"? Puh-lease.

Anyway, I used to be really bad about reading social news sites. The good news
is that programming Reddit eventually scared me away because people are so
willfully ignorant, and don't want to hear anything they don't already like.
Think religious fundamentalists, but even worse.

This has given me a lot of free time. Now when I feel like reading Reddit, I
instead open up my TODO list (a plain text file), and pick one thing to do.
While I'm there, I also add two more things. I'm not missing anything on
Reddit (if there's something really cool, it will be here), and I'm getting
real work done instead of wasting my life. (And not getting mad at 13 year old
kids that think they're programmers.)

Noprocrast _is_ nice, but it's even better if you convince yourself to not
even want to waste time.

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Jebdm
In short: "I used to open up another browser to bypass my Firefox anti-
procrastination software, Leechblock, so that I could override noprocrast and
read HN. This usually led to me reading other, less interesting sites like
Reddit. Now that I can't override noprocrast, I decided to use it exclusively
and removed HN from my Leechblock blocked list. Now I don't end up reading
Reddit afterwards. Thanks!"

Moderately interesting, but the linkbait title was unnecessary.

~~~
petercooper
Agreed. I think this post proves that people are voting up stories before
reading them.. not that that's a big surprise, but it's more associated with
Digg and Reddit :(

~~~
vlad
I usually upvote stories to save them or mark them to-read. I don't vote up to
thank or agree, though I still do it, subconciously. I reply with a thanks
instead. I'm probably starting to rely on other users to do the voting now
than it's not 100 users any more, so I guess am using this site selfishly.
Also, after 2 years here, I don't care about karma and post whatever I feel
(that relates to the topic.). I used to spend the entire hour editing a post,
but now I just come to read. Then again, I have to do homework and readings
for 7 CS/Math classes this semester, so I am not here so much to say something
about some random science topic. On the other hand, this site is great for
opening up my mind and feeling like I'm part of a bigger and insightful nerd
world. There are more submissions but much less startup advice that I haven't
heard before, compared to when this was Startup News. On the other hand l, it
is that breadth that I like while I'm in college. Any such stories with a high
score, interesting title, or high number of comments I make sure to save to
read later by upvoting (see /saved?id= feature). (I didn't save or upvote this
article because it's neither science nor start up.)

~~~
iamwil
Hey, you started 12 days after me. Anyway, same sort of thing here. Been
around for two years now, and I use to participate more. That's when I was
sorta at a phase where I was just consuming a lot of information that was new
to me. Now, not a lot is real news, so I'm starting to build more.

Nowadays, it's nice to see when you, mechanical_fish, Tichy, chaostheory, and
others that have been around for a while comment. And the occasional comments
from raganwald, buccheit, etc.

I still think that the front page shouldn't have upvote links, and that the
new page should have them only.

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mattmaroon
So you don't have the self discipline to just not waste a bunch of time here,
but you do have the discipline to not just find a workaround for the
noprocrast feature that you yourself set? Might I recommend the services of a
good therapist?

~~~
paulgb
It's a subconscious thing. For me, anyway. When I'm stuck on a hard problem,
my default behaviour used to be to alt-tab to my browser and see what's new on
HN. Now when I do that I'm blocked by noprocrast. Usually, this is enough to
get me back to the problem.

It's actually broken my procrastination habit enough that I can leave
noprocrast off most of the time and not have to worry about procrastinating.
Sort of like training-wheels for self-discipline.

~~~
blackguardx
I have the same problem as you, but haven't tried the noprocrast feature.
Maybe I'll give it a shot.

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MisterMerkin
The amount of kiss-assery in this post is disgusting. No offense, pg. _smooch_
_smooch_ _smooch_

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kwamenum86
The logic there seems faulty. Basically, "I can't read Hacker News as much so
now I don't waste time reading alternatives." So before when you couldn't
access HN you turned to Reddit, but now you do work/other productive
activities...seems like a stretch to attribute this change in behavior to an
HN tweak. Also seems like this behavior will not last.

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tptacek
Does Paul Buchheit have a secret HN alias I don't know about? Whoah, is Paul
Buchheit nickb?!

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rglullis
I'm pretty sure he is <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=paul>.

The account is one of the oldest. Hard to be a fake.

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jmtame
i was utterly confused the first time i read this.

