
Hacker News supports browsing with a points threshold - martincmartin
http://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=55
======
jsdalton
I'll be the grouchy contrarian and observe that I frequently _don't_ like the
more highly voted submissions.

Seems the high point submissions are frequently pop science or culture
articles (e.g., "Amateur astronomers discover a planet with four suns" or "A
Very Unusual Camera That Emphasizes Time Over Space"), while the lower point
submissions are articles I actually learn from (e.g. "Exploring the Virtual
Database Engine inside SQLite" or "How to do a great product promo video for
less than $200").

I get enough of the former on Reddit; I come to Hacker News for the latter.

~~~
thebigshane
I would like to see a solution that addresses this issue too. Perhaps
something like <http://news.ycombinator.com/classic> but instead of users who
have been on HN for a year, you pick the users. Some AI programmers might
suggest that HN itself could figure out what users typically upvote the same
content as you -- no thanks, I can pick them out myself.

A tag/keyword system would be ideal but that's a lot of work and tags never
seem to turn out as good as they sound.

(also, `larrys`, you died yesterday -- hellbanned, and looking at your comment
history yesterday, seems like an entirely inappropriate response from the
mods)

~~~
papsosouid
>hellbanned, and looking at your comment history yesterday, seems like an
entirely inappropriate response from the mods)

Isn't that normally the case here? I've seen more people shadow banned for
seemingly no reason than I've seen shadow banned for a legit reason. The whole
point of shadow bans is supposed to be to waste the time of obvious trolls,
here it is used randomly and seemingly as the only response to any perceived
misbehaviour, so whatever wrong-doing is perceived never gets corrected,
people just make a new account and continue as before. By far the most
baffling and absurd aspect of HN.

~~~
aneth4
Any discussion of the hellban procedure seems a quick way to be hellbanned.

It's a horrible, unjust, arbitrary system and is generally abused by
anonymous, seemingly petty moderators.

My main account was hellbanned (also slowbanned, and my IP address banned) for
apparently replying to the wrong mystery moderator with something he/she
didn't like.

Hellbanning on HN is sorely in need of oversight and reconsideration.
Hellbanning should be used only for obvious trolls. There are other ways to
punish and train bad behavior from legitimate contributors.

~~~
tripzilch
> Any discussion of the hellban procedure seems a quick way to be hellbanned.

I haven't noticed this? I posted a few critiques on hellbanning over the past
few weeks and since most of them got some upvotes, I assume I did not incur
any mod wrath ;)

I was gonna say, maybe I've gathered sufficient points to get away with more,
but then I took a look at larrys user profile page
(<https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=larrys>) and he has accumulated nearly
thrice my score.

That's good. There's already sufficient naturally occurring social pressure
that lets older accounts get away with more, no need to inflate the effect
based on karma.

In larrys' case, I can't see anything that's remotely offensive in his last
few comments, so I'm going to _assume good faith_ and guess that the actual
offending comment probably got removed entirely.

It's a shame we have to guess about these things though. Wouldn't it be
trivial for moderators to leave a note about their reasons? Very short and to-
the-point, like a Wikipedia edit-summary. It wouldn't even require extra code
to start with, they can just edit it into the relevant post. I've seen very
large blog-type forums work that way. It merely requires moderators to decide
and agree to do it that way.

> There are other ways to punish and train bad behavior from legitimate
> contributors.

Yes. Problem is that while it does punish (in some sense), in no sense does it
"train" the affected users, because there's no telling when/if they will
_notice_ the punishment, it could be many _months_ , and even if by then the
user takes the trouble to figure out what post caused this sanction, the
complete lack in _immediacy_ of consequence entirely negates any effectiveness
in behavioural change (see: Operant Conditioning, there's a lot of research
that is directly applicable to online community moderation).

------
Arjuna
Here are some fun points-related search queries:

Comments with the highest number of points:

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=+&...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=+&sortby=points+desc)

Stories with the highest number of points:

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=+&#...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=+&sortby=points+desc)

Users with the highest karma:

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/users&q=+&sor...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/users&q=+&sortby=points+desc)

"Ask HN:" stories with the highest number of points:

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=%22...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=%22Ask+HN%3A%22&sortby=points+desc)

"Show HN:" stories with the highest number of points:

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=%22...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=%22Show+HN%3A%22&sortby=points+desc)

~~~
shrikant
Some "official" lists are here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/lists>

------
espinchi
Here's the _recent_ top ten submissions into Hacker News (all above 440
points). I'm happy to see the top ten has a pretty good variety of topics.

    
    
        * Conway's Game of Life, using floating point values instead of integers (jwz.org)
        * Show HN: We open sourced Lockitron's crowdfunding app (selfstarter.us)
        * 37signals Earns Millions Each Year. Its CEO’s Model? His Cleaning Lady (fastcompany.com)
        * Why is processing a sorted array faster than an unsorted array? (stackoverflow.com)
        * I Have 50 Dollars (ihave50dollars.com)
        * Why was a scam company able to raise $76 Million Series B?
        * The Five Stages of Hosting (blog.pinboard.in)
        * Where has all the money in the world gone? (reddit.com)
        * If Software Is Eating The World, Why Don't Coders Get Any Respect?
        * Hit men, click whores, and paid apologists: Welcome to the Silicon Cesspool (realdanlyons.com)
    

EDIT: As rwos as pooriaazimi point out, these are not the absolute top ten,
but only the top ten among the recent submissions. My bad!

~~~
AdamGorman
For the lazy:

1\. <http://www.jwz.org/blog/2012/10/smoothlifel/>

2\. <http://selfstarter.us/>

3\. [http://www.fastcompany.com/3000852/37signals-earns-
millions-...](http://www.fastcompany.com/3000852/37signals-earns-millions-
each-year-its-ceo%E2%80%99s-model-his-cleaning-lady)

4\. <http://stackoverflow.com/q/11227809/399268>

5\. <http://ihave50dollars.com/>

6\. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4592778>

7\. <http://blog.pinboard.in/2012/01/the_five_stages_of_hosting/>

8\.
[http://www.reddit.com/r/finance/comments/utf5u/where_has_all...](http://www.reddit.com/r/finance/comments/utf5u/where_has_all_the_money_in_the_world_gone/)

9\. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2919708>

10\. [http://www.realdanlyons.com/blog/2012/02/13/hit-men-click-
wh...](http://www.realdanlyons.com/blog/2012/02/13/hit-men-click-whores-and-
paid-apologists-welcome-to-the-silicon-cesspool/)

Original source:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=440>

~~~
negativity
Usually the comments are more interesting than articles:

1\. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4642133>

2\. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4643175>

3\. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4449680>

4\. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4637196>

5\. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4395665>

6\. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4592778>

7\. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3078128>

8\. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3526767>

9\. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4149943>

10\. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2919708>

~~~
nekojima
I often skip the articles, or skim very quickly, and read the comments much
more closely, leaving those tabs I found most interesting open for the day and
refreshing for updates.

------
speleding
Shht, don't tell anyone! I always user Hacker News with a threshold of 100,
but the more people start doing that the fewer there will be left to upvote
new articles.

And then there will be nothing to read or I will need to lower my threshold or
wait for other people to do that. Prisoners dilemma.

~~~
jeremyjh
I'll see your prisoner's dilemma and raise you a repugnant conclusion: I think
we get the most total utility if everyone reads lots of low-quality articles
and up-vote the few good ones.

------
no_more_death
Really saves time.

I used a threshhold of 35 at first, then I upped it to 50. These days you
probably want 75 or 100 if you really want to sift through the less important
items.

Or you can just subscribe to daemonology's RSS:
<http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/index.rss>. This summarizes the top ten
every day. These are most of the important articles; of course you will miss
some important things.

On the other side of the scale, you should try
<http://news.ycombinator.com/newest> every once in a while as well. The fact
is, the HN point system ends up filtering a lot of things by whatever's
popular or in sync with the groupthink at the moment. Newest can help you
avoid this "filter."

~~~
jtheory
I use the daemonology top 10 list, but most days I end up reading that, then
_also_ scanning the front page directly, because occasionally there are posts
I'd like to discuss -- and if I only see the top 10 from yesterday, the
discussion is already over and done.

Obviously this defeats the purpose of using a cut-down list to save time, but
so it goes; I may try the points filter approach instead of bothering with HN
Daily.

------
ishkur101
I also like browsing the site in classic mode
<http://news.ycombinator.com/classic> for submissions upvoted by long term
members

~~~
verganileonardo
When does a user become 'long term member'?

~~~
zargon
When classic first launched, it was accounts older than 1 year
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=607271>). It might have changed since
then.

------
danielhughes
I'd love for there to be a "Show HN" filter as well. My favorite part of
Hacker News is seeing what others have built.

~~~
qeorge
I think the "Ask" link at the top does this - it actually shows Ask HN _and_
Show HN posts.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/ask>

~~~
_delirium
The "Ask" tab shows any post that has a text body rather than a link.

------
arbuge
Only one post crosses into 4 digit territory...

<http://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=1000>

...it's an interesting one though. Justifies sticking with HN as your news
outlet.

~~~
iamben
There's been more than just this post that have got 1000+. I'm guessing this
filter doesn't search the entire archive of submissions.

~~~
kgermino
It only looks at articles that are in memory. You'll notice that the Steve
Jobs article has made it there now that people have been opening it.

~~~
Achshar
I see, that makes sense, but why is it so? Aren't the posts stored in a
database somewhere? How does it work?

------
sjs382
There are also independent RSS feeds that only post feeds over a certain
threshold.

I wish there was a browser extension that only showed highly-ranked (or
sufficiently new, maybe) comments, too. It would be useful on the comment
threads I find most interesting, but probably be too much of a detriment on
others to actually be implemented.

Wait... did I just advocate turning HN into Slashdot?

~~~
joeshaw
And also Twitter feeds, which along with Hacker News Daily
(<http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/>) is the primary way I browse the site:

<https://twitter.com/newsyc20> <https://twitter.com/newsyc50>
<https://twitter.com/newsyc100> <https://twitter.com/newsyc150>

(I find the 100 point threshold to be the sweet spot.)

~~~
sjs382
I actually subscribe to 100+, 20+ _and_ the regular feeds. If I'm having a
busy day (or skip a few days), then I'll just look at the 100+ and mark the
rest as read.

------
joshuahedlund
This is cool, and I will probably use it sometimes to help force myself to
waste less time, but isn't there some risk of a 'tragedy of the commons'
(maybe not the right game theory term, but one of those) where too many people
want to see only high point submissions so fewer people are around to vote low
point submissions into higher ones? Maybe even some adverse selection where
now the people viewing lower point posts are the ones who care less about
discovering high quality posts, thereby making it harder for those posts to
get high points?

------
chmike
Great option. I was waiting for such an option.

Another problem I have is that I keep scanning the front page list of
references to see if a new article popped in somewhere in the list between the
last time I checked.

This is inefficient. My impression is that providing a list of references
sorted by the time they reached the threshold would do the trick. Though, this
would require a significant amount of work to produce. Being able to
precompute the sorted list and share it with many users would allow to cache
it.

So I raise the question if it is not preferable to propose predefined
threshold values. How much difference would it make to have a threshold at 55
and 54 anyway.

Let say you propose a treshold at 10, 25, 50, 75 and 100 for example, the
pages could be precomputed and cached.

A script on the browser side could keep track of the last references seen and
show older articles in gray for instance.

~~~
pooriaazimi
<http://hckrnews.com> is all you need.

~~~
lleims
That's the exact reason why I use hckrnews.com - to be able to easily figure
out what's rising to the top and also to have the most popular threads in
chronological order.

------
smiddereens
Still not implemented: Next page that doesn't expire.

------
bhavin
Great feature!

I had a suggestion: This feature gives you stories 'above' a certain
threshold. I think it would help a lot if there was an option for stories
'below' certain threshold.

Rationale behind it is that lots of folks here (like me) don't check the New
Submissions section regularly and lots of good stuff never gets much love. If
there was an option for generating a front page for stories below certain
points, a user can review them and upvote worthy ones, which eventually can
feature on normal front page. Any opinions?

~~~
sholanozie
What's the difference between your suggestion & the 'new' feature?

~~~
bhavin
The prime difference is that the proposed feature would rate the stories
according to HN algorithm (taking threshold into account) not chronological
order as 'new' does. It'd give a filtered-out 'new' section. As in, a story
that is upvoted by 2-3 people and has made to second/third page of HN but
never makes it to front page. Few good stories deserve wider audiences IMO.

~~~
sholanozie
Ah, I understand. Wasn't sure if you were being sarcastic in your original
post!

------
fredley
Just out of interest, how did you discover this?

~~~
aeurielesn
He _knew_ about this.

Check pg announcement: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1998376>, almost 2
years ago.

~~~
martincmartin
Bingo. I figured many people either would either have missed that post, or
have joined in the last 2 years. Either way, it seems like something people
didn't know about and are happy to hear about it.

------
niels_olson
could we also get under? Or a range? Instead of just new and top, (and now
"over"), we could hang out in the 5-10 land and see what's just above "new".
Other people might want to hang out in 15-30 land and see what's decent, but
potentially getting untoward social effects.

------
dahumpty
On a related note, here's a search tool (though not perfect) I wrote some time
ago that helps filter out stories by points, age & #comments:

<http://searchyt.twittrank.info/>

------
hackerpolicy
There's no way to get a filtered feed (I couldn't find one), so I suggest:
<http://feedhint.com/>

------
spullara
Slashdot actually got the deep filtering right. Mainly because that was the
only way a sane person could consume it.

------
AznHisoka
When I click on that link.. it goes back to the main homepage, not the
article. What gives?

~~~
kibibyte
It links back to your main homepage that has been filtered to the articles
above a certain points threshold.

------
charlieok
Can this be used to get filtered RSS feeds?

------
Dramatize
Is it time for Hacker News sub-categories?

ie /h/something

------
tomrod
Fascinating. Only 2 articles above 3000.

