
Giles Bowkett: Summon Monsters? Open The Door? Heal? Or Die? - gaika
http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2008/05/summon-monsters-open-door-heal-or-die.html
======
gojomo
Best idea inside:

 _If you do the math, it's actually quite obvious that if your popularity
contest for ideas inherently, by its structure, favors people who waste their
own time, then your contest will produce winners which are actually losers.
The most popular ideas will not be the best ideas, since the people who have
the best ideas, and the ability to recognize them, also have better things to
do and better places to be._

Regarding:

 _I want my blog banned from Hacker News. I'm not even kidding._

Suggestion: don't leave it up to News.YC to implement this. Set up a
mod_rewrite, or even just a JS insert, which checks for a news.ycombinator.com
referrer and bounces traffic to an error (or gross-out) page. Voila --
submissions will be rare, and those that are submitted won't be promoted.

------
swombat
Interesting that the very post in question is a pristine example of a flash of
genius insight ("What's broken about the social news model and causes every
social news site to turn into hogwash eventually") buried in the middle of a
tedious rant.

To Giles: If you want to make the world a better place take a look at yourself
and make a change! The value of this post could have been communicated in
about 3 paragraphs, with no dubious pictures and ranting nonsense.

That said, a very interesting point.

~~~
nonrecursive
I actually liked the rambling, ranting quality of the post. "People are asking
themselves how to save Hacker News, and they need to realize there is only one
technology which can save Hacker News, and that is the _time machine_ " <\-
priceless :)

I probably wouldn't have read the post if it were shorter and dryer, though it
looks like it had the opposite effect on many.

~~~
carterschonwald
I have to agree, all the rambly cultural references made it really fun to
read!

------
Xichekolas
Aside from the pseudo-zed-shaw rant, I think he had a very interesting and
enlightening point about the karma-as-video-game problem, and the general
less-productive-people-have-more-time-to-influence problem.

I would like to think we solve this here by being too boring for the _"Hordes
Of Moronic Imbeciles Expressing Their Opinions About You"_ (his term for it).
However, being a jerk to people here and then being smug about it makes it
hard not to consider one part of that group.

If you don't want to see your own site, block it:
<http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039>

~~~
stcredzero
We need a word for "being a jerk to people here and then being smug about it"
online. I think it's basically the same kind of problem as trolling. It
doesn't help the signal to noise ratio of a site by generating another bit of
rude noise, no matter how emotionally satisfying you think it is at the time.

~~~
ph0rque
> We need a word for "being a jerk to people here and then being smug about
> it" online.

meta-trolling?

------
Herring
He's right about delicious. After an hour browsing, I'm rather in awe of that
site. It has a very good signal/noise ratio. Almost as high as dzone & much
more readable.

~~~
menloparkbum
the guy who made delicious purposely didn't include "community" features like
ratings or comments.

<http://simon.incutio.com/notes/2006/summit/schachter.txt>

------
icey
Giles, I know you're reading this. We refuse to take you seriously until we
see pictures of Paul Graham in a sombrero.

------
ambition
A jumble of thoughts on social news site quality:

What are we measuring, exactly? It's hard to talk about without defining what
we're measuring.

A stab at defining some quasi-objective metrics, or, How I think about social
news quality:

Are all the good stories getting submitted? (Sometimes the real question is:
Are there any good stories on a given day, at all? HN usually nails the stuff
I would choose to read in my blog reader. There is good volume here.)

How many bad stories are submitted? Does it matter?

Are the good stories being voted up? (I'd say 'usually' for HN. Though some
gems are missed by the upvoters. Bowkett had his example. There was an awesome
PDF earlier today that wasn't voted up. I blame a shoddy headline there.)

Are the bad stories being voted up? (I'd say sometimes for HN. There was that
bad bout right after TechCrunch. And lots of Ask YC posts that bore me make it
to the front page.)

How good is the discussion? (HN is the best I've seen for a site of this wide
scope. People are harsh on lazy English, good at ignoring trolls, good at
pointing out logical fallacies politely.)

How easy is it to choose good stuff to read? (On the front page, points and #
of comments are great indicators. Lots of entries means there's plenty to scan
from.)

One consideration is that I come back to HN at different times for different
purposes. Sometimes I'm bored and looking for some short fluff to tide over a
compile. Sometimes I'm bored but energetic and trawling for something
interesting to learn. Sometimes I'm in the mood to check out what other people
think about some issue, sometimes I'm not. Sometimes I want to bust 3 minutes
on a quick tidbit, sometimes I want to bust 30 minutes on a paper or good
Gladwell article. I can't judge HN for my mood swings, only for how easy it
makes it for me to satisfy the varied cravings.

All in all, I like HN just fine, and I encourage Giles Bowkett and people like
jrockway below to vote with their back buttons.

~~~
sc
> People are harsh on lazy English, good at ignoring trolls

Wouldn't it be preferable to be good at ignoring lazy English? If the lazy
English comes with trolling, it's ignored completely; if the lazy English
comes with sincerity, everything's handled politely.

------
demallien
I think he has an interesting point about why these types of sites don't work
very well. But I think he's wrong to say that there isn't any technological
solution - you just have to do away with the idea that everyone is equal.

How about this as a solution: * Everyone can write comments. * Only moderators
can vote on comments * Only moderators can submit articles * The number of
moderators is fixed (at say... 1000?) * If a moderator hasn't moderated in the
last 3 months, they are removed from the moderator list, opening up a vacancy.
* The person that replaces the removed moderator is the commenter with the
highest average point score for their comments (ie total points/number of
posts), provided they have posted in the last month. It may be necessary to
add a minimum total points score as well (say 100 points, and then it's the
person with at least 100 points, and the highest average that becomes
moderator).

This type of system should ensure that only things that interest people that
themselves have been found to have interesting things to say will get voted
up. There will still be trolls, but they won't be voted up.

~~~
sc
Moderators? Points? This is a proposal completely ignoring what Giles is
talking about. How would moderators be much different than what we have now?
The people that spend the most time here would become the moderators, and we
would lose a lot of the votes that "count".

~~~
demallien
Well, geeez, I don't know, maybe because you only become a moderator after
having demonstrated your ability to generate original and interesting
thoughts!

Apparently you struggle with basic maths, so let me help you out: my whole
point was that you should reward interesting commenters, not prolific
commenters. Indeed, considering it's actually quite difficult to be both
prolific and consistently interesting, being less prolific should assist in
increasing your average.

But hey, I understand why your nose has been put out of joint. Based on your
post here, you wouldn't make the cut for moderator...

~~~
sc
> Apparently you struggle with basic maths

OK...

> my whole point was that you should reward interesting commenters, not
> prolific commenters.

In theory, great, but Giles' whole point was that in practice, this just
wouldn't work. In the end, you're not rewarding interesting commenters, you're
rewarding the prolific ones, because the prolific ones are the only ones who
have enough time to spend on a site and be moderators. If anything, moderators
should moderate content, NOT create it.

> But hey, I understand why your nose has been put out of joint. Based on your
> post here, you wouldn't make the cut for moderator...

And comments like this (and the first quotation) would make you eligible?

Really, though, it seems that a lot of people that could provide great
content, but sparingly, wouldn't make the cut, either.

~~~
demallien
You seem to be under the impression that I agree with Giles. Let me refresh
your memory of how I opened this little discussion:

"I think he has an interesting point about why these types of sites don't work
very well. But I think he's wrong to say that there isn't any technological
solution - you just have to do away with the idea that everyone is equal."

You see? I think he's wrong! But he is correct to point out that current
systems favour prolific posters, not quality posters. I used that idea as a
jumping off point to perhaps find a solution, rather than doing a Giles,
throwing my hands up and saying it's all too hard, and can't be done.

You also seem to feel that by definition anyone that spends time on these
sorts of discussion is exactly the kind of person that you don't want to see
comments from. Bizarre. I mean, take PG for example. He has effectively
adopted the strategy that I am putting forward - he takes a lot of time
crafting his essays, but he doesn't make a lot of them. We all find these
posts interesting enough that we hang out on his site, and in particular on
HN.

My strategy was to try and capture that idea of quality over quantity. As far
as I am aware, no one has attempted to moderate a site this way yet (although
maybe I have just not visited the right site yet).

Anyway, do you have anything more constructive to say other than 'but, but,
you disagree with Giles!!!!!'? Because, as I've already said, I started this
converstaion by stating that I thought Giles is wrong - that I disagree with
him is a given.

~~~
sc
> You seem to be under the impression that I agree with Giles.

No, I merely stated that your "solution" took every "problem" that Giles
observed, and magnified it: making all of those problems bigger.

> But he is correct to point out that current systems favour prolific posters,
> not quality posters. I used that idea as a jumping off point to perhaps find
> a solution...

Right, that was one of the problems he mentioned, and it's one of the problems
I pointed out getting worse in your "solution." Your moderators would be those
prolific posters: people who had time to be on the site regularly. The casual
votes or submissions would be lost, and the system would continue to favor
prolific posters. (OK, now I've brought this point up several times to you,
you haven't addressed it, and you continue to act in a hostile manner.)

> You also seem to feel that...

I don't, but would like to note this fallacy of yours.

> I mean, take PG for example...

I read what he writes, and I'd recommend his recent essay, "How to disagree."

> As far as I am aware, no one has attempted to moderate a site this way yet
> (although maybe I have just not visited the right site yet).

Wikipedia is an example of this kind of moderated site with contributed
content.

> Anyway, do you have anything more constructive to say other than 'but, but,
> you disagree with Giles!!!!!'?

Yes, I've mentioned it in every post, and you haven't addressed it, so I'll
mention it twice in this one:

> But he is correct to point out that current systems favour prolific posters,
> not quality posters.

OK, so you _DO_ agree with him here.

> I used that idea as a jumping off point to perhaps find a solution...

And your "solution" goes completely against this. Moderators would not be, by
definition, "quality" posters, but rather "prolific" posters. And if only
moderators could submit content, we'd lose any casual "quality" submissions.

~~~
demallien
"Right, that was one of the problems he mentioned, and it's one of the
problems I pointed out getting worse in your "solution." Your moderators would
be those prolific posters: people who had time to be on the site regularly.
The casual votes or submissions would be lost, and the system would continue
to favor prolific posters."

You see, right there. You seem to think I was being nasty by suggesting your
maths was subpar. And yet... Here, let me give you a nice simple, concrete
example: Poster A only posts once a month. A casual poster by most
definitions. But his posts are always interesting and relevant. He averages 30
points for each of these posts, but in a three month period only gains 90
points. However, as he has only made 3 posts, he finishes with an average of
30. Poster B is a prolific poster (by the way, maybe it's your understanding
of the word 'prolific' which is the problem here - it means 'producing in
large quantities'). She is on the site every day, posts messages at least 5
times a day, and gets about 2 points for each message. Over the three month
period, she makes about 900 points. BUT, her average, due to the fact that she
has made about 450 posts, is only 2. So, under the system I propose, is it the
prolific poster, or the quality poster that gets moderater status? Well,
seeing as my system works on averages, it's obviously the quality poster.
Which of course shows that when you baldly asserted :'Moderators would not be,
by definition, "quality" posters, but rather "prolific" posters', you were
just plain wrong.

I dont know, maybe your maths doesn't suck, but if that's the case, you have a
serious problem with reading comprehension. Either way, you're just plain
wrong in what you assert. Sorry if you don't like hearing that.

'And if only moderators could submit content, we'd lose any casual "quality"
submissions.' Ah hah! There! I knew you could do it! A valid point! This is
indeed a downside to the system I proposed. The idea was to stop the forum
being constantly flooded with techcrunch articles etc. But I'm willing to
concede that this isn't perhaps critical. You probably could trash it, because
in theory, the high quality moderators would vote down boring crap, and vote
up interesting crap, providing an effective filter against rubbish
submissions.

~~~
sc
> You seem to think I was being nasty by suggesting your maths was subpar.

> maybe it's your understanding of the word 'prolific'

> maybe your maths doesn't suck, but if that's the case, you have a serious
> problem with reading comprehension

> you're just plain wrong

> Sorry if you don't like hearing that

> Ah hah! There! I knew you could do it! A valid point!

What's with the rampant condescension?

As far as that last "valid point", it's one that I stated awhile ago, and
you've only addressed it now.

Look, I'm always willing to have an intelligent argument, but I'll defer a
long discussion to when you're willing to make points without blatant
fallacies. I'll offer this criticism:

Your latest example no longer talks about moderators. Ignoring this, if a
poster averages 30 points per "post", this still falls back to points, and the
idea of "popularity contests" and "vote when you agree" mentalities, which are
_points_ Giles brought up in his post.

~~~
demallien
Sigh. Here's some helpful advice: when you're in a hole, stop digging!

> As far as that last "valid point", it's one that I stated awhile ago, and
> you've only addressed it now.

You did? I've just been back over your posts in this thread, and nowhere else
do you mention moderators making (or not) submissions. But hey, I'll just add
'lacking honesty' to 'sucks at maths' and/or 'poor reading comprehension'.

> Your latest example no longer talks about moderators. Oh? how about this:
> "So, under the system I propose, is it the prolific poster, or the quality
> poster that gets moderater status? Well, seeing as my system works on
> averages, it's obviously the quality poster." This is the sort of thing that
> just makes you look silly. As I have previously said, either you have poor
> reading comprehension, or you're a liar - the evidence is there for all to
> see...

> Ignoring this, if a poster averages 30 points per "post", this still falls
> back to points, and the idea of "popularity contests" and "vote when you
> agree" mentalities, which are _points_ Giles brought up in his post.

Oh, here we go again; "but, but, you're disagreeing with Giles!". Yes, and
what's your point exactly? I've already said that I disagree with Giles (twice
before this post, but, hey, I'm happy to repeat myself if that'll help you).
Apparently you're not terribly good at picking up on things that aren't
explicitly stated (an even then!), so I'll explain.

Giles suggests that popularity contests (points systems) suck, because they
are won by people that waste their time on blogs/news sites. I propose a
system that keep points, but hopefully rewards quality rather than quantity of
posting. Do you see what I have done there? I have attacked one of the
assumptions of Giles' "Popularity contests suck" position - namely that
popularity contests are always won by time-wasters, who generally speaking are
not interesting people.

If you want to argue against my position, you need to demonstrate why my
system won't correctly give voting rights to interesting people, or show why
people that write interesting posts are not necessarily the best people to be
deciding which other posts are interesting. Or maybe suggest a superior system
that doesn't use points in any way.

What you can't do is simply repeat back to me Giles' position. I know what
Giles' position is, he's been kind enough to write a big long entry on his
blog to inform us all. Your repeated restating of his position, without adding
anything new to the discussion, and completely failing to address any of the
concerns I have raised is nothing other than good ol' fashioned trolling.

Look, what can I say. I suggest that you go back and read PG's essay on
disagreeing again. Please note that he places a high value on actually
addressing ideas presented in a post. Maybe you should try doing that rather
than whinging about others being what you perceive to be condescending... When
you start doing that, you'll be amazed by how quickly the condescending
reponses disappear.

~~~
sc
> Sigh. Here's some helpful advice: when you're in a hole, stop digging!

> But hey, I'll just add 'lacking honesty' to 'sucks at maths' and/or 'poor
> reading comprehension'.

> This is the sort of thing that just makes you look silly.

> either you have poor reading comprehension, or you're a liar - the evidence
> is there for all to see...

> Apparently you're not terribly good at picking up on things that aren't
> explicitly stated (an even then!)

> good ol' fashioned trolling

~~~
demallien
<shrug>

Well, at least there's a lot more sense there than in most of your posts :-)

------
pg
Can someone give us (or at least me) the gist of what he's saying?

~~~
ambition
Systematic factors inherent to social news sites degrade their quality over
time. Voting is broken because of the nature of the people who vote the most
and thus have the most influence on the front page: They are people with too
much time on their hands. That is, anyone with a worthwhile opinion is off
doing other things more important than commenting or voting on a news site.

This isn't to say I agree, I'm just trying to summarize the relevant bits as
best as I can.

~~~
Spyckie
Yes, this is the gist of it.

The other aspect is that he thinks there is only 1 type of source that's ok
for information consumption, which is the type that spews out brilliance. All
the other sources are worthless, including the people that never say anything
meaningful and the people that say something brilliant once in a lifetime.

~~~
sah
I don't think that's what he was saying. He was just complaining that he needs
better filtering mechanisms, so he can find the 1 in 100 posts by e.g. Cory
Doctorow that he would enjoy, without having to read the other 99.

~~~
jcl
And he wants other people to find them for him, but not the people who have
the time to do so. :)

------
allenbrunson
allow me to summarize: giles bowkett is impolite on social sites such as this
one, therefore they're all doomed. also, there are people on the internet that
cause him trouble, like tim bray and cory doctorow.

whew, such a heady brew of straight-up TRVTH that guy is dishing out. i'm
still reeling from the force of it.

~~~
gaika
Have you read the post? You missed the most important 3 paragraphs in the
middle about repeating the mistakes of slashdot, digg, reddit.

Tell me, what is news.YC doing to not repeat the same mistakes?

~~~
pg
1\. The kind of stories that are most popular on reddit and digg (pictures and
politics) are banned here.

2\. Because that kind of stuff is banned, the average digg/reddit reader, if
he comes across News.YC, finds the content boring and leaves.

3\. The custom of the site is to be civil in comments.

4\. Votes on comments affect karma.

5\. Trolls are fairly rapidly banned. The only reason Giles hasn't already
been banned is that I thought perhaps he was joking.

~~~
gaika
These are really nice measures, but I think they still do not address the most
important problem - people who have more time on their hands have
disproportionate effect on the site.

I guess #6. vote weighting will be required soon.

~~~
pg
I have some internal metrics to warn me if the top stories get bad, and there
has been no degradation I can detect. Nor do I personally notice a difference.

There were a bunch of crappy submissions after we got that big influx of users
from TechCrunch (both I and my software agreed about that), but the quality is
now back up to where it was before.

~~~
johnyzee
The HN system works better than any other I have seen (it's kept me in line
whenever I was tempted into adding noise rather than value).

I don't think degradation of HN over time is unavoidable, clearly a lot of
smart people here put energy into resisting this force of nature.

One challenge is how to preserve the HN code of conduct. I've noticed some
misunderstand the voting system as an agree/disagree button. I think the
software should notice patterns that don't look right, such as both up- and
downvotes on the same comment (popularity contest alert).

Good people + good tools = good HN.

------
iamwil
I replied, and ended up writing more than I had anticipated, and put it in a
blog post:

[http://webjazz.blogspot.com/2008/05/segmentation-of-
social-n...](http://webjazz.blogspot.com/2008/05/segmentation-of-social-news-
sites.html)

------
porfirion
Well, then, how about making it that the more you vote the less your votes
matter?

------
paulhart
I presume you posted this in an attempt to piss him off? :)

~~~
gaika
My startup is not making this mistake, but does anyone care? People seem to
prefer trolls and fun social noise to high signal streams that demand your
attention.

~~~
paulhart
The majority of society demands to be entertained, not to entertain. Those
that entertain are put on pedestals to be worshipped (either with praise or
scorn).

------
engtech
FYI, I'm working on a Greasemonkey script that will let you keep a personal
banned site list on reddit/hacker news.

ETA this evening.

~~~
engtech
I've posted the script here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=198216>

------
sah
This post is the best analysis of the problems of content filtering and social
news that I've ever read. Fun, too!

------
rms
>Reddit was created as a better Digg

No.

------
sethg
Am I a bad person for upvoting this?

------
deathbyzen
This story gets all my upvotes ever.

------
shiranaihito
So because Giles doesn't want to see his posts mentioned on HN, no one else
should see them either, despite the chance that some of them might be worth
reading?

Ingenious!

Oh, and he's a jerk on HN, but it's alright because it's _intentional_.

I'm not sure that deciding to behave like a jerk is any more noble than
happening to..

------
sabat
Really funny! Sure, he makes some good points. But funny! And I'm glad I'm not
the only one who thinks Doctorow is Mostly Worthless.

------
jrockway
There's 15 minutes of my life I'm never going to get back. He has a good
point, though, Hacker News is barely worth reading these days.

Good job screwing it up, everyone.

