

Attitude does not scale - emmanuelory
http://jacquesmattheij.com/attitude+does+not+scale

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jefffoster
Over time the readership and topics covered of HN has grown and maybe the
quality has gone down. Perhaps one way of solving this problem is to find a
way to present a smaller subset of data to different groups so that they can
focus on the areas they like?

My favourite kind of posts are big data, web app architecture and functional
programming. If my view of HN was skewed by my interests, then my perception
of the quality of HN would improve. Chances are that other people would fit
into my interest groups and hopefully that would promote tighter, smaller
groups and perhaps the quality would increase.

Stackoverflow's tag system seems to work well, but assigning tags would
introduce extra burden on people (and another area for disagreement). I like
the idea of a machine learning approach where I see articles based on the
content on previous articles I enjoyed (via voting). The same could work for
comments. Going further, perhaps this could even suggest people with similar
interests to yours.

~~~
ColinWright
That would deprive you of what I see as one of the greatest benefits of HN -
exposure to ideas outside, but related to, your specific area of interest.
I've found many interesting items that I would never have sought or subscribed
to.

~~~
jefffoster
That's true and I guess that's the biggest challenge of implementing such an
idea. Given that I like X,Y,Z would I also be interested A,B and C?

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alextp
A possible counterpoint to this is that in some big cities you do have forms
of anonymous camaraderie. I live in the largest city in south america (são
paulo), and once I moved here my biggest surprise was how intimate this place
could be in comparison with the much smaller places I had lived in before.
While in the subway other people are complete strangers and won't receive a
cursory greeting, if you do ask someone for help or information it's highly
likely that you will get a very polite answer in return, no matter how weird,
agressive, poor, or shabby looking you are (I've seen from bums to well-
dressed business-people being treated the same way when asking for information
in the subway). Also any reasonably self-contained place in this city creates
familiarity--I know my butcher by name, the people from the fruit and
vegetable market (there are a few in every neighborhood) know me and my wife,
I talk to the owners of the nightclubs and restaurants I go to, it is
perfectly acceptable to talk to strangers when lining up for the movies (but
not necessarily inside the movies, although I've seen people making
friendships in this way), etc. The secret seems to be that to create intimacy
and trust you need to build some form of a smaller spaces where people can be
identified and recognized inside the "big city". Continuing with the city
analogy, as long as there are spaces where you will face consequences for
misbehaving, social trust is built.

This suggests that a way to improve HN is to add more explicit punishments for
bad behavior, preferably moderated.

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ern
I think that visible comment scores are quite useful in allowing users to
understand community norms.

A visible score would indicate what sort of comments are valued by the
community, and the _extent_ to which they are valued.

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ChrisArchitect
I find the comment scores useful at a glance to note contributions the
community likes. I haven't been here that long, but what is the HN obsession
with discussion/comments anyways? Good links are good links. That is the first
draw to HN isn't it? Current/fresh relevant links/news items

