

Concerning trend in commenting on news.yc submissions - aston

Based on the few number of comments in most discussions on this site, you'd assume everyone's just reading for the links. Which is cool, I guess. Anyway, the only exception, it seems, are threads on Paul Graham essays in which everyone and their mother has something to say. We're talking something like an average of around 1 comment for most front page items vs. probably and average of 40 comments for anything PG's written. <p>Is everyone just sucking up/karma whoring by agreeing with PG? Or is PG the only thing worth talking about here? As I think the real value of having a community of hackers is talking, I'd really like to see more general chatter. Am I alone here?
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Goladus
_Is everyone just sucking up/karma whoring by agreeing with PG?_

I think the volume of comments is at least partially because everyone reads
them and thinks about them.

_Or is PG the only thing worth talking about here?_

Hardly, but given that it was his essays that brought many (most?) of us here
to begin with, it's something we all have in common. So his essays generally
get more attention. Furthermore, his essays tend to attract attention from all
over, and visitor comments probably wind up on news.yc.

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aswanson
[ascend to soapbox] [begin sermon] I like to think of news.yc as a social
learning machine. It would be nice to see karma computed more as a function of
the contribution to the community rather than pure popularity. In terms of
information content, the PG links are going to be low because almost everyone
here would have read the article regardless.

Seriously, is the 100 karma points gained through linking to a pg essay worth
as much as the 100 earned through 10 informative (in the classic _suprising_
sense) links? We seem to be converging to this eigenvector [a(1) a(2) ...a(n)]
where a(1) == pg_essay_link, a(2)== mattmaroon_essay_link...etc.

The reason I believe pg converted this forum to hacker news is that the
learning machine was stuck on the search surface in a local minimum and he
wanted it to 'learn' new things. We can't learn more if we reward behaviour
that is not truly informative. He could put a damping coefficient on karma
obtained from known links, but a better bet would be for the community to not
reward the links as much.

I have done my share of dumb, uniformative submissions and will try to make
better contributions in the future. [end sermon] [get off soapboax]

~~~
rms
In the end, Karma ends up rewarding activity. I'm not any better or smarter
than anyone else here, I just surf the internet a whole lot.

~~~
aswanson
Dude, I've seen your website. You are going to change the world.

~~~
rms
That's what we're going for. :) My partner Josh deserves more credit than me
because he's the actual biological hacker but we complement each other pretty
well.

Our make or break moment is in the next couple months as we launch. Here's
hoping...

~~~
aswanson
Hoping with you, man. Tell ingenium to keep at it.

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epi0Bauqu
No, you are not alone. But what do you propose? Like danielha said, some
stories are more interesting to talk about than others. On the features page,
I suggested separating ask news.yc posts into another area, so they don't move
off the front so fast and perhaps get more discussion going as a result.
However, no one has really up voted that suggestion. Another alternative is to
have a different site that is more of a message board like webmasterworld, but
for hackers. After all, this is Hacker News, not Hacker Discussion. This is
evident in the fact that it is geared more towards new links than open
discussion topics.

~~~
aston
I disagree about not everything being interesting to talk about. If anything's
worth reading, I think it's worth sharing your thoughts on. If you vote it up,
you must think it resonates well. Even sharing the reason why would be
interesting to others. If you don't vote it up, something must be wrong with
it. Et cetera.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
I think we are in agreement here. I just don't find myself upvoting that many
stories, and I generally try to comment on those I do. So I was just basically
saying the ones I don't think are interesting to talk about are the ones I'm
not upvoting. Obviously there isn't an exact 1 to 1, but generally that is the
case, at least for me.

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jkush
The site has lost some of its appeal since it was opened up to topics that
aren't strictly startup related.

I've noticed that accompanying the larger amount of posts, the quality has
been more spread out. It's no surprise that PG related posts attract more of
that quality.

~~~
pg
> The site has lost some of its appeal since it was opened up to topics that
> aren't strictly startup related.

To you perhaps, but pageviews per visitor are conspicuously up since that
change.

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davidw
Do you think there is a relationship between the two things, or could other
factors be involved (appearing on reddit, essays linking to yc.news...?).

To tell the truth, it seems that things have "got back to normal" - the meta
discussions have died down, thankfully not too many political discussions have
been started, and things seem to be going pretty well.

~~~
pg
More links from outside decrease pageviews per visitor, because they bring in
more visitors.

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jsjenkins168
I've had a few posts deleted which were "general chatter", but were directed
more towards one person. Thats understandable however as it can distract from
the topic of the post. But it makes it difficult to continue interesting
topics of conversation which are starting to diverge from the post. This is
where I think a simple messaging system for the site would be useful,
especially given the networking incentives of beginning startup
entrepreneurs..

I think there may also be a general reluctance to post things which are
challenging or negative for fear of either being downvoted like crazy, or
looking bad in the eyes of YC if you have plans to apply. I wouldn't go as far
as calling it sucking up, but it could refrain some people from saying whats
really on their mind.

The rate of submissions seems to be increasing too, which can make sifting
through the new postings more difficult. It also dilutes commenting I've
noticed. This could be why major posts like a new PG essay seem to gravitate
more discussion. I would personally be game for the idea of limiting the
number of new submissions a user can post over a given time. Maybe scale this
value based on karma. This would at least make people think more carefully
about what they are about to post. I understand this starts to limit the
"anyone can post" nature of the site, but it could reap an overall benefit for
all users by reducing information overload and concentrating discussion on
fewer, good submissions.

But you bring up a good point.. I'll make a conscious effort to post more
challenging, thought provoking comments. I've got karma to burn :)

~~~
cstejerean
I'm not sure if I like the idea of reducing the amount of links one can post.
While certainly sifting through new items becomes harder the interesting ones
will gravitate towards the top. As long as submissions aren't completely off
topic I'm interested in reading them.

~~~
jsjenkins168
True, but the limit need not be anything aggressive. Just simply having it and
users knowing it is there could subconsciously promote more thoughtful
postings. If anything, its good protection against a malicious flood attack
(since users currently cant bury posts). Just an idea.

Also, some of the most interesting postings to me personally never got upvoted
by others very much. Was I not watching the new queue all the time I would
have missed them completely..

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brlewis
I don't think people are sucking up, because a lot of the threads for the most
recent pg essay were disagreeing with parts of it.

I don't think people are karma whoring, because that would mean commenting on
lots more stories. The average comment is more likely to be upvoted than
downvoted, so a karma whore would comment as much as possible.

I don't want to see more general chatter. I just want interesting comments.
I'd rather see no comments than uninteresting ones.

~~~
aston
I think we should encourage commenting at all costs. The karma system can
handle not showing you the uninteresting/bad ones.

Actually, now that I think about it, the karma system could be the reason
people don't post as many comments. If you submit, you're looking at all
upside. But you can hurt yourself by saying something dumb, so people opt to
say nothing at all.

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charzom
<http://news.ycombinator.com/active>

~~~
aston
Cool link. The fact that this thread is already 20th on that list probably
proves the point.

edit: it's slow enough that I don't think pg's planning for many people to be
looking at it...

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marrone
I see what you are saying. For example, I posted this link which I think is an
awesome read for everyone on hear, and it got squashed:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49579> Read it people, read it!

But I don't think there is any karma whoring going on. I think PG articles
come with a pretty safe bet of being a good read. Whereas you aren't sure what
you are going to get with the others. Im assuming pretty much everyone reads
the PG essays, and thus there is more discussion to be had. Whereas I would
like to know the proportion of people who read all the other links submitted,
as opposed to just their titles.

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dood
People expect much discussion of a new pg essay, partly because its his site,
partly because of trends in this site so far, and partly a stop-over from the
old reddit days. A guaranteed-attention feedback loop, dragging in anyone with
an inclination to chat or have a little limelight, lurkers and regulars alike.

I too would enjoy more general chatter (of the thoughtful, interesting kind).

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thomasptacek
The RSS feed for this site doesn't offer a link to comment pages; I've only
commented on a few submissions that were themselves just links back into
new.ycombinator.com.

There is an element of suck-upness ("I hear what you're saying but what I
think Paul Graham is looking for in a submission is XXX") that is off-putting,
but, I mean, it's Graham's site.

~~~
dpapathanasiou
_The RSS feed for this site doesn't offer a link to comment pages_

Yes, it does: the comment tag is defined in each item.

~~~
inklesspen
Great, show me a real RSS client that uses those. So far, the only one I've
heard about is rss2email, which seems like utter stupidity instead of a real
client.

~~~
dpapathanasiou
Well, SeekSift.com does ( _disclaimer: this is my current project_ ), so feel
free to give it a try.

If you click "Sources" -> "Add a Source Not on this List" -> "Search for
Sources" and type "Hacker", you'll see the news.yc feed.

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byrneseyeview
Nothing sinister, just network effects. If twice as many people read PG's
essays, that's four times as many potential conversations.

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webwright
I've noticed a TON of comments anytime someone posts "Just launched my
startup... Feedback please!"... Just as a counter-example.

~~~
cellis
and by startup, they mean website. Big difference, usually.

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cellis
While the number of "10 ways to do x", "10 x about y" , articles have
decreased, there are still a lot of links that, frankly, I could find on
another site, and have little or no relevance to software/web startups or
hacking.

I come here mostly for the discussions, essays, and new idea posts, not to
learn what I can get on google/news

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merrick33
No earth shattering news here, but discussions have comments and news links
don't have as much. When someone asks for help understanding something by
asking a question, the community lends it expertise. If more questions were
asked, more discussion would proceed.

\- my 2 cents

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FatBastard
I am, in fact, a PG fanboy. If I wasn't I wouldn't have noticed this site.
That has to skew your results. It will be a while before the site attracts a
population of people who don't find his topics of interest. Meanwhile, why
worry? You could go back to Reddit.

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danielha
Some stories are more interesting to talk about. I wouldn't much further than
that.

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nreece
PG is a VC. I won't consider him a technology evangilist in a broader scope.
Sometimes agreeing with a VC is simply agreeing with a non-evangilist.

