

Ask HN: Is there discrimination towards new users here on HN? - solipsist

I don't mean to offend anyone with this question, but I've definitely seen cases where a user's creation date is brought up in the conversation - an event that is prone to lead to some form of discrimination. Many users have claimed that the newcomers, in general, are bringing down the site's quality. I'm almost positive that this is true to some extent, but obviously it doesn't apply to every new user.<p><i>What do you think we should do about it?</i><p>For those that respond, please keep your answers civil as to avoid this thread removed by the moderators.
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jcr
Look at it this way; your account is 10 days old and my account is over 1000
days old, so by this metric I'm 100 times "better" than you. In contrast, your
account has a karma over 600 and my account has a karma of a bit over 100, so
by this metric you are 5 times "better" than me.

The real answer is, the metrics are flawed.

One of the more interesting ironies is the people claiming the quality is
declining due to new users are actually new users. Ask PG what he thinks, and
you might be surprised.

The dynamics of open groups necessitates a group will change over time as its
membership changes. It is unavoidable. But change can be for the better.

~~~
solipsist
> _The real answer is, the metrics are flawed._

Not sure what you're saying here. The metrics of karma, whether you like it or
not, is what Hacker News is based off. It would be hard to say that we are
discriminating against posts with less karma by not letting them be on the
front page. However, the other metric system of the account's age is unrelated
for the most part and therefore should not be a factor in most things.

> _One of the more interesting ironies is the people claiming the quality is
> declining due to new users are actually new users_

I'm not sure if this is entirely true. PG is an exception, but he doesn't
speak for all of the early-adopter users.

~~~
jcr
What I meant by "the metrics are flawed" is, how you personally evaluate the
reputation of another user is a personal choice based on very limited and
potentially deceptive input. Additionally, how the system itself evaluates
reputation of a particular user, article or post is also imperfect.

Only part of the algorithms for evaluating reputation are revealed in the HN
source code [1] but other parts are not public. PG has stated HN runs with
some of his own personal, unpublished modifications for the sake of preventing
people from gaming an imperfect system.

The up/down vote and 'flagging' feedback from users is important input, and
does help the system more fairly evaluate things. Since the vote/flag input is
from human beings basing their decisions on incomplete information and
personal preferences, you can see how the system will remain imperfect.

A good example is below I cracked a joke about divulging PG's secret to
success being talking to himself in a soundproof closet... --the downvote I
got tells me someone didn't find it funny. Such is life.

On the bright side, if you can think of a way to avoid the imperfections in a
reputation evaluation system, you could make millions, and you would certainly
have PG's attention. It's a painfully difficult problem to crack, potentially
undecidable, so even a better imperfect solution would be extremely valuable.

[1] <http://www.arclanguage.org/>

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bartonfink
If you have enough karma to vote a negative post down, then do so. I don't see
how bringing up anyone's account creation date adds anything positive to a
discussion, and I'm sure it occurs as a blatant ad hominem more frequently
than not. Upvotes are the primary mechanism for ensuring the cream rises to
the top here, but downvotes also exist to actively suppress something that is
distracting or even detrimental to the community, and I think these sort of
cases count.

I understand and agree with the reasoning behind granting increased privilege
to older members, but any community has to toe a fine line between inclusivity
(leading to an Eternal September) and exclusivity (leading to pg talking to
himself in a soundproof closet).

~~~
jcr
SHHHHHHHH!!!!111oneoneone

You're not supposed to reveal PG's secret to success!

Next you were probably going to reveal that all of the old accounts are really
an AI that PG wrote.

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gregschlom
PG's take on the decline of HN: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2073513>

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hardik988
The fact that HN gets over 80k unique visits a day means _you_ can hardly do
anything about it. It's a community and you gotta accept it how it is. Even PG
can't do much, as far as 'attitude' towards newcomers goes.

Think of this: You have the same rights as everybody on this forum. You can
comment and submit stories, but what you cannot control is how the HN crowd
will react to your submissions/comments. I guess that's where one needs self-
introspection.

Also, I don't want to sound like I'm accusing you, but in the 11 days you've
been on HN, you've submitted 66 items. Now, I am no one to judge, but that's a
tad bit on the higher side. You may want to recount what you said about
bringing down the site's quality.

Edit: Grammar

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wladimir
In my experience, this has been the case on every discussion site. Slashdot is
another prime example of a site where people hit each other over the head with
the size of their UINs.

It's a bit childish because being around on the site longer doesn't magically
make posts better, I think it's best to be wary of discrimination of new
users, otherwise only the morons will stick around. Which is exactly the
quality drop people are tring to avoid :)

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Mz
Newcomers to any social setting have the disadvantage that you don't know them
as well as people who have been there longer. You have less context for trying
to interpret their remarks, so a joke or humorous remark can be badly
misinterpreted. Also, as a site like this grows, you get more diversity and
that makes it harder to figure out how to properly place people in pecking
order and all that. I'm not a fan of pecking order, so I don't much care. I
continue to struggle with my own questions, which greatly precede my discovery
of this site, concerning social reputation/influence. On the one hand, it
seems you can't get anywhere without some positive reputation of some sort. On
the other hand, I am extremely leery of the tendency for people to abuse their
influence and make "proof" about who said it more than about what was said. I
don't have any good answers yet. Maybe I never will.

Peace.

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rick_2047
I am no authority to talk about it, but usually I do not require an authority
to talk about most of the things. The point is that I evaluate a comment on
the basis of the content and not the author. This is why I learned that many
of my favourite comments are written by patio11 only after some article were
written about him. And even now I usually have no idea who I answered to. If
someone is providing a nice line of logic and some good proof who cares who
said it.

