

Ask PG: Can't you turn off new account signups to increase HN quality? - eriktrans

There's always been the talk of HN's comment quality deteriorating.<p>Why not turn off new account signups for a while to combat this problem?<p>Or even have more friction in the signup process. (Maybe I'm looking at the wrong part of the problem.)
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tubbzor
I'd opt for a 'post anonymously' button as staunch suggested.

The only reason is not everyone that uses throw away accounts are doing so to
troll others. I've seen several submissions where a person posts something
extremely personal (ie. problems with their current job to dealing with
depression or contemplating suicide) and they would not post under their real
account for obvious reasons but still seek the support of this community. It
could be a bad idea to hinder the ability of these people to post situations
like this anonymously and promptly.

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brudgers
The account which posted the question is 33 days old. Alas, I have pledged
myself to avoid gratuitously beginning my comments with "ironically."

HN is a gateway to and a tool of Ycombinator. The gateway function means that
there will always be some degree of endless September by virtue of its
purpose.

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tokenadult
What kind of friction are you looking for? A coding test? An IQ test? A
general knowledge test? (Each barrier to participation would select a
different group of participants.) Or should cash money be the sign-up
criterion? If so, should high-karma participants get a share of the proceeds?

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minimaxir
Turning off new account signups won't reduce low-quality comments, unless in
the rare case that HN is being raided. (i.e. during the Adria Richards
incident)

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krapp
Indeed. If the assumption is that the bulk of _current_ accounts are also low-
quality, and that (for whatever reason) account age is a good indicator of
quality, you would have to follow up the cutoff of new account signups with a
mass deletion of accounts (including OP's) until you got to the 'quality'
line.

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xauronx
If you turn off new accounts, how do you know you're not pushing away 10 high
quality new users to avoid one negative user signing up?

The only thing I could suggest would be to lower the bar for downvote
capability. Or is that not an option at all? I thought I was told at some
point that once you reach 200 "karma" you get that ability, but I don't have
it.

~~~
caw
I thought it was 500 karma, and gets periodically karma inflation adjusted.

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DanBC
My only suggestion is to add a "save to local" button. That would mean that I
would save most of my comments to a local store, instead of posting them to
HN.

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adamconroy
It is worth contemplating that 'quality' doesn't exist without a 'subject' and
an 'object'. There is no such thing as universal quality. In other words, what
you might class as poor quality might be good quality to someone else (some
other 'subject').

So, given I don't think you can actually say that the quality is
deteriorating, the question is flawed.

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staunch
$5 to register, proceeds to the EFF would work. We'd want a "Post anonymously"
function first though.

~~~
tptacek
I do not think a good solution to HN's quality problem is to make its
participants feel more entitled to post.

~~~
staunch
I don't actually think it's a good idea at this point either. Just throwing it
out there. A few years ago it might have helped to throttle the influx of new
users to a level that would have been more easily absorbed.

