
How would you improve Hacker News? - josh_miller
http://branch.com/b/how-would-you-improve-hacker-news
======
ColinWright
Decide once and for all whether you think this is, or want this to be, a
single community.

If not, then allow users to have different "front pages" according to their
interests.

If so, then define clearly the policies and police them properly.

HN is currently sinking under a morass of links trying to reflect the ever
widening spread of interests of an undifferentiated mass of users. Any given
individual will find it harder and harder to find links that match their
interests, and the site will become more and more bland, culminating in a race
to the bottom.

Retaining the level of politeness is a noble aim, but in the end, strongly
technical people will find nothing of value here and will leave.

------
mquander
It's almost impossible to get some self-balancing system of karma incentives
to work out exactly right. But we don't _need_ to do that. There are lots of
smart, thoughtful humans here who will work for free or cheap in good faith to
keep things right. Why do we refuse to enlist their service?

Basically, just straight up steal the Metafilter model of non-shitty content.

\- Five bucks for an account. Maybe ten.

\- Tell the mods to actually moderate discussion _(instead of spending their
time changing good post titles to terrible post titles.)_ If there aren't
enough mods, then ask for more. There needs to be someone keeping discussion
on-topic and civil.

\- Self-links are OK only if they are really good. If someone sits around
posting every post on their blog to HN (or having their buddy do it) ban them.
We need less borderline-spam content on the "New" page.

\- Is this supposed to be "Hacker News" or "News"? If the former, actually
enforce it. Kill flamebait posts, political posts, recent dupe posts, and non-
tech/startup-related posts on sight. If someone does nothing but post crappy,
off-topic articles, ban them.

How do you prevent the abuse and evasion of all these vague rules? Easy. You
retain good moderators with community transparency of moderator decisions to
keep them honest. It works.

~~~
larrys
"Self-links are OK only if they are really good. If someone sits around
posting every post on their blog to HN (or having their buddy do it) "

Along those lines I'm wondering why a few words by the OP on this subject
simply asking a question and offering nothing more deserves to be on the front
page.

The OP is Josh Miller (by handle) who works at branch.com where the simplistic
post appears.

This essentially appears to be publicity for branch.com.

~~~
bpatrianakos
I think you're right about the publicity thing and I'm torn as to whether it's
okay or not. On the one hand we're all here to support each other in building
things and all that plus this really was a good way to show the HN crowd how
Branch is used/useful which I know would appeal to a lot of us. There's no
doubt having a guy from Branch post a Branch here is a great way to get people
using it and talking about it. But then again it also feels a bit sneaky and
just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. If we give him the benefit of the doubt
we can assume that because he's involved with Branch he uses it and also
wanted to pose a question to HN so in the end his use of Branch would seem
just this side of innocent. If we don't give him the benefit of the doubt then
I'm not sure it was right. I do give the benefit of the doubt though,
personally.

As to whether it belongs on the front page... Well technically the front page
is a reflection of this community. If its on the front page then it belongs
there because it was voted onto it. You don't have to look any further than
the front page to tell how HN is changing for better or worse. But I do know
what you mean when you say "deserves" and yeah, I'm right there with you.

------
arethuza
The problem I have with HN at the moment has nothing to do with what is on the
front page but everything to do with the tone of some of the comments - there
has, as far as I can see, a rise in quite openly hostile and blatantly _rude_
responses which I really don't remember seeing in the past.

NB One thing to note is that I'm _not_ talking about sw007's experiences but
comments containing lines like:

"So slow clap for writing some useless crap. Sorry for the vitriol, but this
shit is just dumb."

------
citricsquid
unlike most people I think that HN is pretty great. Sure the site has some
problems with being overly basic and not having anything that helps
foster/grow good discussion[1] but overall it's good. The problem HN has is
just like every other social site: people. People change; everyone is
different. HN is shaped by the people here and as they evolve so does the
site. What HN needs is:

1\. Proper guidelines about what is and what isn't appropriate here. Types of
content, subject matters and how to approach commenting. Systems to support
how much HN is growing, (eg: subreddit style system for show hn, ask hn, jobs,
new content types as they arise, like recently the blog posts responding to
another HN blog post)

2\. Active and transparent moderation. Submissions that don't meet the
guidelines should be removed, as should comments, but it should be done
transparently so that the community can see what is and what isn't acceptable.
If a comment doesn't provide value to a thread it should be removed and if
someone is consistently posting poor quality comments or comments that don't
fit with the guidelines they should be removed.

HN is becoming diluted, but with a proper structure that is well enforced the
site will be able to handle it. It's hard to force a social site to remain the
same forever, but it's possible and in the case of HN I think it would be the
right choice.

The most important thing to remember: you can't solve people problems with
programming.

[1] To address this problem I would have a reddit style notifications system
and the ability to subscribe to favourite users.

------
politician
OK, I'll bite: how about a system where down-votes can be optionally
associated with descriptive tags like "dismissive", "mean", "irrelevant",
"false", or "disagree". The tag counts are hidden from everyone except the
comment's author.

------
bpatrianakos
As much as we all know HN has lost enough of its luster that it's worth
mentioning, I really do think at this point, unfortunately, the damage is done
and there is no going back. HN is old enough an large enough now that for a
while it'll still be awesome and beloved by many but soon enough it'll go one
of two ways: it'll either die, become lame, and it's only inhabitants will be
those it sought to keep away for so long or it'll continue to be high quality
but become more like StackOverflow or certain subreddits - having great
discussions and people but with everyone who knew HN it's prime knowing that
it doesn't hold a candle to what it once was.

That's the thing about subcultures which I think HN most definitely is in that
it is supposed to attract the most intelligent, entrepreneurial, techiest
people. When it's new it's great because it makes you feel like you're part of
not just a club but an elite club. Inevitably others who find out about your
club want to join because they feel they deserve to be part of the elite club.
Oh yes, they have all the makings of a genius and need to be part of it. This
kind of self selection sucks and what's happening to HN happens to everything
on the web that can be considered cool. RIP HN. We can bury its remains in the
same plot as MySpace, Digg, and soon enough Facebook.

Although I would've hated it when I created my original account, I wonder if
having an invite process would've helped like Dribbble and Forrst have.

------
russtrpkovski
1.Making the front page should be based on a black box score comprised of
upvotes and comments. This would avoid the piling on effect.

2.Throttle user's ability to submit content based on their karma score. Users
should participate and add meaningful comments in order to be able to submit
content. HN is more than an SEO best practice.

3\. If its not your content, you don't deserve the karma. Users should be
rewarded for submitting their own content (URLs would need to be added to
profiles). I think HN overcompensates content submission from a karma
perspective.

------
jseliger
I don't think there's a technical way. I think the problem is (mostly) social
/ cultural, and I wrote about it here:
[http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/08/04/comment-when-you-
ha...](http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/08/04/comment-when-you-have-
something-to-say/) .

------
gte910h
3 things would improve hacker news:

Better dedup

Report suspected PR (the Atlantic, for one, is hitting HN big now that reddit
banned them)

Removing submission abilities from the newest of users, and of users who get
flagged above a certain amount.

------
jon6
Stories should be able to be tagged using an arbitrary set of tags similar to
stack overflow. Possibly only people with a certain karma should be able to
tag stories. Then let people filter stories by the tags it has. This would
alleviate the concern of "too many YC posts" because they can be all tagged
'YC' and I can filter those out.

~~~
ColinWright
I refer my learned colleague to the following ancient poll and discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2367949>

------
j45
More startup focus, less general cool hacker stuff.

I've haven't been here as long as others, but I've definitely noticed the
signal to noise ratio respective to startup threads changing.

If it could be tagged and have both, it would be nice. Such features might
border on the beauty and simplicity of this site, though.

------
biznickman
How about we improve this post by making it "Ask HN:" :) Not sure why this is
linking to branch

------
dotcoma
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

~~~
ColinWright
You really think it "aint broke"?

~~~
itmag
I agree with this. Hating on HN is the new meme, but it still is an excellent
community IMHO.

My main gripe with HN is the influx of snarky/obstinate people. I've come to
expect a certain feeling of frustration/resignation after posting a comment.
"Great, soon I will have to read 3 snarky comments nitpicking over my wording
and enumerating every possible objection to my argument, no matter how far-
fetched."

------
mgkimsal
Make viewing points optional. If I want to see them, let me see them. If I
don't, don't. Points viewable only by logged in users, perhaps.

------
xqyz
Any reason why this discussion should not be held inside of hacker news
instead of on a third party website?

~~~
ColinWright
Yes.

There are several recent items about this question here on HN, the threads are
long, the same points made over and over again, very little insight, and
nothing will happen.

More, threads about HN have a tendency to disappear without trace, because
meta is usually frowned upon. There are a few exceptions, but if you want to
go all meta, it's better to do it somewhere else and have a semblance of
control.

------
itmag
Have a private message system which mods can use to send warnings and such to
obnoxious users.

------
gojomo
My mind often wanders over a 'laundry list' of possible interface innovations
to improve social news site interactions. A few of the items:

(1) _2-dimensional comment rating_. The 1-dimensional upvote/downvote
conflates 'advances the discussion' and 'agree': there's no simple way to
register, "good comment but I disagree" (other than another written comment).
This makes some simple disagreements earn downvotes, and because downvotes
have a connotation of censure (and even censorship as the comment descends in
visibility), increases negative/adversarial feelings. Hiding the net comment
scores has helped a bit (with other costs), but adding a 2nd-dimension -- a
little compass-rose -- to ratings would let up/down be "worthwhile/unworthy"
while left-right could be "agree/disagree". And, the separate agree/disagree
counts could be shown, the give a sense of magnitudes rather than just net
differences. My theory is that by providing an outlet for non-suppressive
disagreement, fewer full replies would be necessary. Everyone could 'weigh in'
without so much of a corrosive sense of status-retaliation/tribalism.

(2) _separate parallel stream per-item (or per-comment) for
'carping'/correction comments_. Often a headline sucks. Or an article or
comment has blatant logical, factual, or grammatical errors. The community
can't resist racing to point these out... and to some extent that's necessary,
and can result in an headline/article/comment improvement for
clarity/correctness. But it's also somewhat distracting and low-value,
especially if the carps persist after a correction makes them redundant, or
the carps become more prominent that substantive points. So give them their
own tab. By convention, corrective/meta comments should go there, and
moderators (or community votes) could also move misplaced comments there. My
theory is this would retain their corrective value (especially for those most
interested in that sort of precision) without clogging the 'main' thread with
their bulk and hypercritical mindset.

(3) _community rewritten/ranked headlines_. Abusive headlines often waste
readers time, create unnecessary discussion tangents based on misconceptions,
and bias talk in a more adversarial direction. But corrections by moderators
are inconsistent (and themselves often controversial). So maybe let the
community propose alternate headlines, and vote on which is best. Only the top
headline, presumably improved by group action, appears on the summary list
views... the alternative proposals on the detail page.

(4) _subheads (aka 'dek' or blurb/tease)_. Allow a second-line in submissions
for display in list/summary views, as is common in many journalistic
presentations. More context can help save time/attention. Because writing
these can be as challenging (and subject to the same abuses as headlines), if
the headlines can be community-corrected per the above, the subheads should as
well.

(5) _event/topic clustering (a la Techmeme)_. Interleaving 10 stories about
some attention-grabbing new release or controversy with 20 stories about other
things heightens a false sense of novelty/urgency but doesn't lead to more
coherent evaluation/discussion. All the stores about "Company X releases Y"
(and similar) could be grouped as a contiguous block. The block might
rise/fall on total votes to all stories; the relative prominence of the
stories within the block could be based on their individual votes. They'd have
one comment thread, avoiding redundant comments (and comments like, "as I
mentioned in the other thread"). The groupings could be moderator-controlled,
algorithmically-controlled, or even community-influenced.

(6) _ignore 'sunk time' in ratings decay_. Consider story A, submitted at an
inopportune time, say time 0. It starts with one vote. Over the next 6 hours,
4 more votes/resubmissions trickle in. It never hits the front-page and
quickly leaves the 'new. Now, at hour 6, elsewhere on the net, story A gets
more attention. It's wrapped/aggregated as story B, which is also submitted.
In the next 15 minutes, say that A gets another 25 upvotes, while B gets 20
upvotes. I have the strong impression that B will shoot up to the front page
-- 20 votes in 15 minutes! - while A will still languish in obscurity --
merely 30 votes over 6 hours. And yet, for the overlapping, recent 15 minute
period, story A got more votes. I suggest it ought not be penalized for the
prior hours it spent in the doldrums, before it really 'broke' more widely.
The right decay function (looking back from now rather than forward from
submission time) could make this work. My theory is that removing this extreme
recency bias would mean some slow-building stories, from more foundational
sources, would get better treatment than well-timed later
sensationalizing/oversimplifying rewrites.

------
tokenadult
The submitted article (blog post) has an interesting factual claim with which
I disagree, but that leads to a technical suggestion that I find intriguing.

"I'll start: for me, the main problem with HN is that it's extremely hard for
new links to reach the front page, or even get more than one or two upvotes."

I disagree that it's extremely hard for new links to reach the front page.
Most newly submitted links don't deserve to get to the front page, and too
many of the links that reach the front page are still not the best links that
were submitted on the same day. (For the record, each time I visit the front
page, which is several times a day if I am interspersing breaks into working
in my home office, as I am right now, I then go to the new page. So I am
scanning the new page often to look for good new links to upvote. I upvote
them if I see them. Some of them make it to the front page, but many do not.
Many worse links receive no upvotes at all, not from me and not from anyone
else, but some worse links, for example links with linkbait titles from low-
quality sources, nonetheless make it to the front page.) Every link has some
shot at making it to the front page. The front page will best reflect
community consensus about what belongs on the front page if all experienced
users who have reviewed the site guidelines

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

(which were recently updated) take turns scanning the new page from time to
time to look for the good stuff.

While I disagree with what the main problem identified above is, the
suggestion in the submitted blog post about what to do about it is not half
bad:

"One way to solve this might be to reward people who "discover" promising new
links, i.e. give them their first couple upvotes. For example, if you're one
of the first 5 people to upvote a post that eventually goes on to earn more
than 20 upvotes, you get extra karma."

What this helps deal with is the first-past-the-post problem in submitting
articles, which is that some people are all too aware that they get NIL karma
from a submission unless they are the very first to submit that link, so they
use RSS feeds and scan titles (without fully reading articles) to decide what
to submit. That often results in submission of inferior articles and
especially it results in submission of noncanonical URLs that mess up the
operation of HN's duplicate detector software. So I would not be against
implementing this idea, which would put the community on notice that everyone
can take time to READ articles before deciding what to submit, and indeed
everyone has something to gain from promoting a good article from the new page
to the front page.

On the other hand, if I were directly answering the question "How would you
improve Hacker News?" with a focus on software and interface tweaks, I would
put a prominent link to the site guidelines, or perhaps even a snippet of key
guidelines in every submission form and every comment form, and I would
implement pg's idea and my follow-up to that

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4397542>

of looking at how users use their comment upvotes as a signal of which users
are most determined to uphold the community guidelines here, adjusting their
voting influence accordingly. In general, I think that most good stuff
submitted to HN, either as article submissions or as comments posted to other
people's submissions, gets too few upvotes. Look for good stuff and upvote it
early and often is my approach to improving the community.

~~~
larrys
"which is that some people are all too aware that they get NIL karma from a
submission unless they are the very first to submit that link"

As a side note to this if you submit a link that has already been submitted
you bump up the karma on that by one point. So even if you submit a link first
(by the method you describe) and it doesn't make it to the front page or get
"organic" upvotes the mere fact that someone else has the same idea, but was a
minute late, gives you an extra karma point.

Added: So the conclusion is that if you are trying to get karma it pays to
spend time adding the obvious suspects rather than the outliers (say a story
from the NYT or Techcrunch that others will do the same.)

------
Toshio
I would disclose who is upvoting/downvoting whose comments. There are cliques
on every social news site. Some of those cliques are genuine communities of
technology enthusiasts, but others are like little armies of trolls which have
been set up by aggresive PR firms and marketing departments of large tech
companies. I have never on any social news site seen a system that gives you
insight into whether upvoting/downvoting is honest-grassroots or organized by
some PR firm for the benefit of some corporate entity.

