
Ask HN: The Arc Effect - tel
<i>or</i> HN: the Next Iteration<p>I get the impression that with Arc being released a lot of people who never had time for HN before are suddenly dropping in more often. (PG: what are the numbers on this? I'm envisioning a spike.)<p>Not to say that isn't great, but I'm wary of Diggification. Between links comparing programming to sex and a flurry of gratuitous, ostentatious  adjectives in the headlines it's a bit concerning.<p>80% of the stuff that makes the front page is still pretty awesome, but what's in place to keep the signal/noise ratio high? Does the HN model still work as the community scales? What's in store for (++ HN)?
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pg
You can see two spikes in unique visitors due to Arc here:

<http://ycombinator.com/images/news.yc.1year.png>

There was a spike in Jan when I said Arc was imminent, and then another when
it came out. But if you squint your eyes and look at the whole curve, the
underlying growth rate seems pretty constant.

In other words, while it's true we've been getting a lot of new users lately,
this probably would have happened anyway.

What to do about that growth is another matter. I think a lot of users are
alarmed at the sight of fluff links on the front page because they remember
what that meant for other sites in the past. But the current fluff link
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=120816>) was submitted by a long-time
user, and there are no signs of statistical weirdness in the votes on it. I.e.
statistically the users who upvoted that story are no different from the ones
upvoting the other top stories. So at the moment I'm still hopeful that the
bad signs are false alarms.

I have a hunch that the way to fend off the hordes of 14 year olds is to keep
up the quality of the stories on the front page. Then if they come across this
site they'll decide it's boring and leave.

~~~
h34t
I'm not sure _how_ to fight fluff, but I think there's a strong case to be
rather zealous about it.

It seems obvious that the direction of these communities is highly reflexive,
in that users are determined by content, which is determined by users, and on
and on. Neither users nor content is an "independent variable"... they depend
on each other.

So there's no reason to assume stability in the system. A big influx of new
users + a few badly timed fluffs, and things could roll downhill in escalating
fashion (the fluffs attract a few extra fluffers from the new users, who then
produce more fluff, which attracts a few extra fluffers from yet-new-users,
...)

~~~
Kaizyn
May I suggest that fluff can be fought by NOT upvoting fluff links.

~~~
pg
That's hard. But the opposite strategy might work: upvote non-fluff links.
Only a few percent of the users of a site like this ever vote. So if the
"silent majority" who never vote made even a slight effort to vote up non-
fluff stories as a way to protect the site, that would have a real effect.

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yters
Does having 3 main hacker sites (this, proggit, /.) imply the retreat from 14
year olds will reach a stable equilibrium, and end the eternal September
problem? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September>

There are only so many 14 year olds in the world, so at some point the rate of
change in users will be 0, incoming equals outgoing.

~~~
kingnothing
I think each of the three sites listed has a slightly different focus.
Slashdot has a wide "nerd" focus, from computers to astronomy, and typically
seems to follow major industry happenings. HN is focused on the boot strapping
entrepreneur-hacker. programming.reddit seems more interested in actual
programming, techniques, languages, etc. Sure, they all overlap the same
general market, but each one caters to a different niche. I think as more
communities pop up, catering to more and more niches, we'll notice less 14
year olds because they will be spread more thinly, but they'll still be there.

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andreyf
Why not just scale the weight given to a vote based on the voter's karma? Or
would this encourage group think?

~~~
bayareaguy
This could work, but I'd recommend scaling to sqrt(karma) or log10(karma) to
offset the network effect a little.

