
How do you use HN? - pvsukale3
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfjXJ8stnCoCd1TRZIWIIadZA62sw9E5628PEtrQCPxdBMhCA/viewform
======
orf
I think HN is great and has some of the best discussion on the web, at least
for tech related stuff.

One thing I do think is broken is the ranking system. Here is my comment:

'It's too... exponential. A post seems to get either 0-5 votes, or 100 from
hitting the frontpage. Implement a feature that puts 'highly' rated new
stories (3-5 votes) in a slot on the frontpage for a sample of users, giving
them a chance to explode.'

Posts either die or reach the frontpage, where they have a run with lots of
upvotes and comments. Unless a post hits the threshold of the frontpage then
it doesn't get noticed at all.

Edit:

Didn't expect to be the top comment, clearly some people agree. I've had a few
frontpage submissions on HN and there is a nack to it. You find the right
title and you submit at the right time, and if you don't get more than 3-4
votes you delete and re-submit again a bit later. Once it gets 5 votes unless
your post isn't that good it will hit the frontpage and stay for a while.
Passing that threshold is the hard bit and I think a lot of quality articles
don't hit that threshold and don't get seen. Which is a shame.

I know they already do something like what I'm suggesting but there are 30
rows on the frontpage, couldn't 4-5 'new' articles be randomly interspersed
rather than 1?

~~~
andrewstuart2
It's also very hard for quality comments to get visibility after a certain
point. The points seem to be weighted a little too heavily in the comment
sorting algorithm which makes it hard for newer posts to stay at the top.

This could also just be that most people who may have voted have already
checked the comments and don't come back.

Perhaps I should have suggested a "new highly-rated comments!" indicator as a
useful feature. It doesn't seem like I can go back and edit my response,
though, without taking the whole quiz again, and I don't want to skew results.

~~~
bachmeier
I agree, but I'd go further and say commenting here is largely a waste of
time. If you make a comment on r/programming, others will respond and you can
have a reasoned discussion, with trolls getting downvoted. If you disagree
with someone, you can state your position and others will jump in and state
theirs. Responses on HN are generally few in number, and if you challenge a
high karma user, he and a few of his friends will downvote you with no
intelligent discussion.

I'd say the comment system here has resulted in a pissing contest where the
goal is to say something really cute so that you get upvotes. There are good
discussions, but they happen in spite of the comment system, not because of
it.

~~~
nkurz
When I look at the dead and grayed out comments (you can turn on "showdead" in
your profile to see the dead ones), I usually consider them to be lower
quality than the comments that have not been downvoted and flagged. Do you
feel otherwise? If so, could you link to some examples?

------
BenoitP
Posting my suggestion here:

Since the HN community is data oriented at its heart, it would be very
interesting to have everything out in the open, in real time, for users to
have their own model of ranking.

All the data: comments, stories and most importantly each upvote linked to its
user. People would build their own model for tagging, filtering.

I'd personnally try ALS-WR [1], or maybe try to tinker with distance metric
learning [2].

It would help everyone get exposed to the exact content they might upvote.

[1] [http://www.grappa.univ-
lille3.fr/~mary/cours/stats/centrale/...](http://www.grappa.univ-
lille3.fr/~mary/cours/stats/centrale/reco/paper/MatrixFactorizationALS.pdf)

[2] [http://papers.nips.cc/paper/2164-distance-metric-learning-
wi...](http://papers.nips.cc/paper/2164-distance-metric-learning-with-
application-toclustering-with-side-information.pdf)

~~~
throwawayReply
If it were I'm the open it would be too obvious how much "management" and
curation happens. From artificially boosting some articles to artificially
nixing others, there isn't just 'an algorithm' there is a bunch of human
intervention that also happens.

HN claims that it is the algorithm 'detecting' and flagging controversial
threads but they've never posted their methodology there and it doesn't
explain how some posts artificially leap up the rankings.

It is common knowledge that hn ask people to resubmit some stories, why is it
those stories always hit the front-page the second time around?

Hn is a curated news source. It's better for being that way but it is
presented as being driven by algorithm.

Sometimes it is better not to see the man behind the curtain.

------
Red_Tarsius
HN works because it is simple to use. Please keep it that way. Tagging
introduces a whole new set of issues and off topic discussions. People are
going to debate semantics, taxonomy and the proper labels for each and every
thread. Every time someone dies, there are a few users asking the mods to put
up the black bar. Tags are going to be much worse.

~~~
bArray
Agreed. The only way I can think around it is if the tagging is automated
somehow. Shouldn't be too difficult to have some intelligent system. That way
people don't argue with people.

~~~
tsjackson
People would just argue about the rules and logic embedded in the tagging
algorithm.

~~~
bArray
Yeah, but as long as it isn't humans fighting humans I would consider that a
better place for now.

------
quacker
Looking at some of the suggested features in the survey results, keep in mind
that:

\- You can collapse comments (click the `[-]` next to the comment)

\- You can unvote (click "unvote", which shows up after voting)

\- You get the downvote button after 500 karma

~~~
EdSharkey
Argh, I'm at 499! I wondered what the secret was to downvoting...

~~~
EdSharkey
Hmm, I'm at 500 now, and I don't see a downvote arrow. I tried logging out and
in again. Is there a trick to the ux?

~~~
EdSharkey
OH! I'm at 501 now and the arrow appeared! Off by 1 error in the code! :)

~~~
davnicwil
If I remember correctly you start with a karma of 1 on a fresh account, so I
guess it makes sense if the goal is to allow downvoting after gaining 500 -
have another one, by the way :-)

~~~
EdSharkey
Hehe, everyone's so nice today! Cheers.

------
sundarurfriend
(Pasting my textual answers publicly:)

> What features do you want in HN?

'Always show original article title on hover' (in front page and other
listings).

> Feedback on HN (if you got some time)

The 'Avoid gratuitous negativity' guideline is still not being followed and
often gives the whole community a negative-nancy vibe. Perhaps a simple rule
such as "if the entire content of a comment is about how the OP idea is
bad/won't work/etc. (and is marked as being so by a mod[/high-karma-user -
implementation detail]), it wouldn't be allowed to rise to be the top comment"
will go a long way.

------
chriswarbo
As I wrote in my reponse, I use
[http://feeds.feedburner.com/fullhackernews](http://feeds.feedburner.com/fullhackernews)
to read a representative sample of what appears on the front page. It (tries
to) include the content of the link, so I don't have to visit HN itself unless
I want to see/participate in the comments.

I also use hnnotify.com to get notification emails when my comments are
replied to.

FYI I use Gnus as my email and RSS reader.

------
soared
Interested to see how this compares with engagement in Reddit. I bet even more
people are lurkers here. Survey design suggestions:

-allow me to choose two options for question one

-allow multiple answers for how do you use hn and make each answer a single action, not multiple.

-add a "zero" answer for how often I submit links

~~~
AstroJetson
I'd like to suggest

\- adding to the timeframes I've been here 4 years and know there are people
here much longer

\- breakdown of how much people read show, comments, new, etc. I do front page
2 to 3 times a day but only do show, comments about once a week. New is only
when I have some extra time to burn off, so about two times a week (and mostly
on the weekends).

\- Breakdown on commenting. I try not to comment unless I'm going to add value
to the comments. But if I have a comment when I ask a question I make more of
an effort to get back to get the answer.

\- Add a question about how often do you go back to old threads you were
interested in.

\- Add a question about how much you use search. A few times a month I search
on things that interest me (Lua, Robots, Rockets, Raspberry Pi, etc) to see if
there was something I missed.

Interested to see what the results are

~~~
pvsukale3
ok . there are already 2000+ submissions.I think changing the form now will
pollute the data.

------
disneycember
I use it mainly through
[http://hackernewsroom.com/](http://hackernewsroom.com/) which is awesome,
because it lets you see a preview of an article without leaving the site or
even read it right there. I only go to the original site when I want to add a
comment or favorite an article.

------
pault
I just want to say that I've been reading HN for about 7 years now, and it has
been invaluable to my personal and career development. Being able to read well
informed commentary about a variety of subjects makes it so much easier to
reach for the right information when I need to learn something new. I'm sure I
wouldn't have been exposed to many of the esoteric technologies that make my
life interesting without it. I consider it one of the most valuable resources
on the internet and I would be devastated if it went away.

------
pvsukale3
2 things : 1) I am making this developer discussion platform. Results of this
survey will be helpful for the product design. 2) I will publish the results
on HN itself after 48 hrs.

~~~
brudgers
Curious as to why you think Hacker News is successful.

~~~
pvsukale3
A lot of people check hacker news daily. Good content gets upvoted and spam is
removed. Also HN is a place for rational discussions not trolls

~~~
brudgers
I was wondering how you think Hacker News achieves those things. Why do people
keep coming back? Why is there rational discussion [at least sometimes]? Why
is there good content?

What prompted my question was the survey asking about tags. It seemed premised
on the idea that tags are a useful feature. But Hacker News does not have
them.

~~~
bemmu
The community was seeded from people who found out about it through either
Paul Graham's essays or Y Combinator. After that deterioration was prevented
by strongly discouraging low quality discussion.

~~~
cookiecaper
Yes, the high caliber of HN participants is what really sets it apart, and the
great moderation by dang et al that stops it from descending below a pretty
high bar has prevented the normal attrition-for-attention that drives the best
users away. I think the spartan design has also helped keep out people who
aren't committed to a high level of online discourse.

Most platforms are going to have a chicken and egg problem. HN didn't because
this guy who had millions of dollars told the people he gives it to to use HN.
Pretty effective way of seeding a community.

IMO the absolute best thing about HN is that when we're discussing a news
event, often the newsmakers will materialize in the thread. Spontaneous stuff
like the Alan Kay AMA just happens. That is what really makes HN invaluable,
and it only happens because we're able to maintain the type of community that
those people want to hang around in.

------
thisismyhnuser
I would really like alerts (like reddit does...an orange envelope or something
similar)...when someone replies to my comment I don't want to have continually
check to see if there are replies. I know there are a lot of people that don't
want this for some reason or another. For this reason there should be an
option to turn them on/off.

------
kaplun
I came to HN after leaving Slashdot. The main reason is the community.
Slashdot got worse and worse in the last 5 years, with just trolls and
polemics and bullies.

HN community is instead great, and discussions are always very respectful and
insightful.

------
cJ0th
re: suggestions: After submitting the form it crossed my mind that I'd like to
be able to identify (sub)comments in a thread that have been made after my
last visit. It's a bit time consuming to scan the comment section every time I
come back to it anew.

Other than that I am with the "keep it simple"-folks :)

------
hasteur
I use it through second level abstracting site hnapp.com

I don't care about the Y Combinator self promotion of their startup
incubators, nor do I care about Y Combinator's own blog content. I also don't
have time to read the entire firehose of content that comes through daily from
the "new" feed. I self limit to posts that have at least a score of 50. I also
use a RSS feed so I can dip in/out as needed.

------
whack
That's actually a great idea. I had built a discussion forum prototype a few
months ago, that incorporates similar ideas. Unfortunately, social media has
severe network effects, making it hard for new products to displace entrenched
platforms.

[http://www.thecaucus.net/#/content/caucus/community_blog/103](http://www.thecaucus.net/#/content/caucus/community_blog/103)

It's widely known that on Reddit, if you arrive several hours late to a
discussion, your comment has very little chance to make it to the top.
Exceptions do exist, if your comment is exceptionally good. But if it's just
"significantly better" than the existing content, forgetaboutit.

The reason for this is simple: Reddit's system takes only 2 factors into
account - the number of upvotes and the number of downvotes. So if post A has
been viewed by 1000 people, and accumulates a net score of +10, it will still
be shown over post B which has been viewed just 50 times and accumulated a net
score of +8.

Even more insidious: a single downvote is all it takes to doom a post on
Reddit. If you went to great trouble to write a moving and eloquent post, and
someone who disagreed with you downvoted it as soon as it was posted, it will
immediately get moved to the bottom of the pile, and no one else will get the
chance to see it and reverse the trend.

Is it really fair to prioritize content that just happened to be posted at a
better time, and thus, picked up more views? Is it really good to bury a
content at the bottom of the heap just because one person downvoted it right
after it was posted?

At Caucus, we don't think so. In addition to the sophisticated reputation
systems mentioned above, we also take into consideration the number of times a
content was seen, and guarentee each content sufficient opportunity to been
seen and prove itself. This ensures that all newly posted content is given a
fighting chance to reach the top, regardless of when they happened to get
posted.

------
tlo
Shameless self plug: I read HN mostly on mobile via my twitter bot
@hn_bot_top1
[https://twitter.com/hn_bot_top1](https://twitter.com/hn_bot_top1)

------
fabrigm
There is too much info. Sincero i hace installed getpocket I just save
articles and never read nothing :(

------
lwhalen
RSS reader, for days.

~~~
throwaway2016a
Same. This survey doesn't really account for RSS reader users. I never check
the front-page.

------
curiousgal
>How long you have been using HN?

><6 months

>6 months -1 year

>more than 1 year

> _Other_

Why?

~~~
pvsukale3
changed it! removed other

------
justinlardinois
> How much time do you spend on HN? (average)

Per visit or per day?

> Should HN implement tagging?

Kinda hard to answer without knowing what tagging on HN would look like.

------
pjc50
Through a computer. But that's not important right now.

