
Tell HN: Please don't add noise to the conversation - vecter
I&#x27;ve noticed that it&#x27;s become more acceptable to add noise and meaningless comments to HN threads. I came across this thread yesterday: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;ZZt3F0M.png. The parent comment about the wingsuit flyby was somewhat relevant to the original topic. The subsequent replies were silly noise.<p>Please refrain from writing comments that don&#x27;t add anything meaningful to the discussion. Hacker News is <i>not</i> a place to post chains of memes. If you want to do that, go to reddit where it&#x27;s an accepted and important part of the culture. Please do your part to keep the signal to noise ratio here high. Thank you.
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oldmanjay
I was getting the feeling that Slashdot had finally given up the ghost, or
some subreddit that mainly attracts teenagers had posted an HN link for some
reason. I mean there have been pun threads on HN posted recently, and
reference "humor", and meme chains. It was enough to make me not even look at
this site for a week.

I really hope it turns around. I can't take another site I love turning into a
cultural "me too" wasteland.

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fao_
In my honest opinion, I think that it is worse knowing that the guidelines
were created specifically to stop HN from degenerating into Reddit and
Slashdot.

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Mandatum
Doesn't every community need guidelines/rules on the internet? Without them
you get wild-west-style communities. I think HN works BECAUSE it's heavily
moderated. In the beginning we could rely on a small user-base to self-sustain
discussions, but we've reached such a wide audience now I don't think that's
possible without mod assistance.

Would be interesting to implement a veteran-only view to only show user's
posts and comments that reach a certain karma or age threshold. Neither of
which would correlate with conversation quality, however you'd likely see on-
the-whole more 'classic HN'-style discussion as you've filtered out the vast
majority of new/'casual' users.

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fao_
I think you misunderstood my comment, I did not mean to state that I thought
the guidelines are bad -- I think that they are very good for the community
(In fact, imo it's what makes this place better and more informative than
Slashdot). What I meant to state was that the increase of the signal-to-noise
ratio is a _bad_ thing, that is happening _despite_ the extrememly well
written guidelines.

Anecdotally, I would say that this could indicate that either the guidelines
are not being enforced (However, from what I can tell they are being
enforced), or that the guidelines have a black spot that could be filled
(Whether this would cause more harm than good is debatable).

~~~
Mandatum
An increase in shadow-banning would be very effective, but there's a lot of
push-back against that form of penalty.

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minimaxir
Those types of comments are downvoted to hell 99% of the time. I'm actually
surprised that thread wasn't.

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vecter
Yes, I was surprised they weren't downvoted into oblivion either.

edit: as bradfa pointed out, this comment is the exactly the kind of noise we
want to avoid. shame on me. I'll leave it as an example of what _not_ to do.

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bradfa
Is your comment here an example of what you'd like to see less of?

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vecter
Yes you're right actually. Thanks for pointing that out.

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trentmb
That's the great thing about threaded commenting, as opposed to the typical
sequential forum style- it's easy to mentally block out a bullshit thread.

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l33tbro
Parsing for quality signal here can be tough with an article with over a 100
comments. Screen real estate can be hogged by the noisier threads, making it
difficult to track a meaningful discussion.

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l33tbro
Another reason we meed collapsable threads here. You'll never stop "noise"
entirely, but bullshit threads that sparked by OT comments could be easily
snipped with collapsable threads.

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cmg
I've been using the Hacker News Enhancement Suite[1] for a while in Chrome.
Among RES-style features like keyboard navigation it also enables collapsable
threads. The source[2] is available on GitHub.

[1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-
enhanc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-
enhancement-s/bappiabcodbpphnojdiaddhnilfnjmpm) [2]
[https://github.com/etcet/HNES](https://github.com/etcet/HNES)

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justin_vanw
Please don't post AskHN threads that aren't in the form of a question just to
try to impose your personal preferences and discourage your personal pet
peeves on the rest of us, because that is a stupid and immature thing to do.

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dang
It's more than a personal preference; vecter is representing something about
the culture of the site.

It isn't just about community preference, either. HN is a democracy, but a
constitutional one. The constitution is
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

> _stupid and immature_

Speaking of which, please review what the constitution says about not calling
names in arguments!

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mintplant
I'm sorry, I just downvoted your comment but I meant to upvote.

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dang
If it helps, the data says you did neither :)

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s_kilk
Come on guys, this isn't Reddit. Leave the gag threads at the door.

