
New users: Welcome.  Please read the site guidelines. - pg
There's been a big spike in new users the last couple days.
Unfortunately it's been visible not only in the traffic stats
but in the character of the comment threads.<p>New users: we'd appreciate it if you'd please read the site
guidelines before commenting.  Most importantly, the principle
that you shouldn't say anything in a comment that you
wouldn't say to someone's face.<p>http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html<p>Hacker News is an experiment.  We're
trying to see whether by asking people to be civil we can 
avoid the kind of nastiness that anonymity breeds by default.
The experiment has worked so far.  And while the new users
may not realize it, this is why they're here.  People like it here because one can have a civil conversation.<p>The principle that you shouldn't say things you wouldn't
say to someone's face means you can't express yourself the
way you might be used to doing on Reddit or Slashdot.
This, for example, would not stand out on either of those
sites,<p>http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=459250<p>but it's not cool here.
======
axod
I've also noticed comments modded down to <1 for no good reason. I like the
idea that here, generally downmods to <1 are reserved for abusive or off topic
comments, rather than just something you disagree with.

To the new users: If you disagree with a comment, please reply to it, stating
why. Don't just blindly downmod it.

Just my 2c

~~~
mcargian
On the flip side, I don't understand why someone should get 40 karma points
for a two word witty comment, no matter how funny it was. Why isn't karma per
comment limited to -1 to 10? Seems like it would limit karma bashing and karma
mega-boosting.

~~~
kwamenum86
If you limit the karma to 10 then a particularly good comment will eventually
sink below comments that are upmodded later because of the way the ordering
algorithm works. Similarly, a particularly bad comment will stay visible.

I don't see anything wrong with karma mega-boosting. At the end of the day it
is just a number on your profile.

~~~
icefox
And _much_ more likely any good comments that are not put in the first hour
will never get the points that they deserve. Someone says something witty and
gets 192 points. Two days later someone writes something very informative, but
there are very few viewers after that so they get only 5 points. It would be
foolish to think that an algorithm could compensate. Slashdot has this very
problem years ago and solved it in a very good way. This reddit system of many
points only works for when there is very small users, but does not scale.

~~~
kwamenum86
\- When people with long enough attention spans are invested in the
conversation they will read through many of the comments. In many cases if you
come into a conversation late you will be posting a reply because it is less
likely you are coming in with a new angle. If you are posting a reply it is
more likely others will see your comment because it will be visible on their
threads page.

-I think the example you gave is a very rare case (I hope.) Unfortunately part of commenting right now is timing, which I do not have a problem with. If you post something informative two days into the conversation it will not have the same exposure, although depending on the conversation it will not appear far below the fold.

-I do see your point and I think it would be great if good comments that come late have more visibility. None or all of the following might help:

1) Delete comments and their replies once they reach a certain negative
threshold (-5 for example.) Of course this gives downmodding a whole new
meaning but maybe that is a good thing. This would make the comments section
more readable and keep the conversation more civil and/or focused.

2) Highlight comments that were posted in the past 8 hours and have reached
some karma threshold in yellow. This is a sort of "recent hot shots" feature.
This way when an HN reader scans the page they can see what new comments are
receiving upvotes more easily.

3) Give recent votes more weight then past votes. This means that a karma
point awarded now means more than a karma point awarded an hour ago. Maybe the
algorithm HN uses already does this- I am not sure.

I don't think pushing newer comments with fewer points up is a good idea
because that changes the power up upvoting too drastically. Perhaps some
anchor tags at the top of the comments section leading to the hottest new
comments?

p.s. nice blog

~~~
icefox
So I started writing a reply that got longer and longer and I am going to turn
it into a blog entry. Would you be willing to review it before I publish it?

~~~
icefox
Enjoy:

[http://benjamin-meyer.blogspot.com/2009/02/comments-
rating-s...](http://benjamin-meyer.blogspot.com/2009/02/comments-rating-
systems-close-look-at.html)

------
kaens
I'd personally like to say "Please keep HN civil, free from trolling, and
intellectual." This site has been a great resource - and that's at least
partially because the tone of the vast majority of the community here is
pretty serious.

I have an account on reddit as well, and my tone over there is different than
my tone here. On reddit I make a decent amount of off-the-cuff remarks,
occasionally troll a bit, participate in pun threads, and also have a decent
amount of intelligent debate and discussion. Here I keep my mouth (fingers?)
shut (stoppped?) unless I have something to say, because that's the vibe here.

Here, I'm more likely to vote people up who have a differing opinion on an
issue, or even if they have an opinion that _offends_ me, if they are able of
stating and defending their position logically. On reddit, I'd probably just
skim over their post.

Etc.

The tone of this site has gotten a little lighter since the first time I was
here, and it seems to have gotten a lot more of a focus on the business side
of things, which is fine - but if people aren't careful, the site will devolve
into yet another pick-your-favorite-site-here.

So yeah. Please keep HN grown-up. It's nice to see mostly responsible
discussion happening on a site like this, and I hope it continues to happen.

~~~
TooMuchNick
And by "grown-up," we mean "like grown-ups who aren't from TechCrunch."

~~~
icey
You really should re-read the top level of this post. It's directed squarely
at you.

~~~
TooMuchNick
I just learned the very hard way to never _ever_ comment on HN after drinking.

~~~
ashu
Seems like HN should ask a GMail Goggles-like "Are you drunk?" question before
you are allowed to post comments!

------
ojbyrne
That principle doesn't work online. In general you can say stuff to people in
person that's insulting and abusive, and then just give a wry smile and
everybody laughs. You can't do that online. The guideline has it exactly
wrong.

The problem is that what you say online about someone is frozen forever, and
takes on more significance than either the sender or the receiver actually
meant. In person, I call you an asshole, you're impressed that I said it to
your face, we both laugh and move on. On the web I call you an asshole, you
call me an asshole, it escalates, shows up in google searches for both our
names, people who aren't quite up to speed on things (recruiters) take it more
seriously than it should be... bad stuff happens.

~~~
pg
Some percentage of the nasty things people say on web forums are said half-
jokingly and offend because half-jokingness is hard to convey in text, but I
think the majority are genuinely nasty.

~~~
nailer
Have you considered asking new users to enter their first and second names,
and creating an available username from that?

This is often credited for Facebook having more 'real' content than MySpace
and Friendster.

~~~
tsetse-fly
Enforcing specific types of usernames is rather lame. People would just enter
fake names. Facebook depends on your real identity so people who have met you
can locate you.

~~~
nailer
Some people may enter fake names, but asking for their first and last names at
least sets expectations.

As you've touched on, allowing people to find you on hacker news would also be
a benefit.

~~~
pg
Usernames consisting of people's first and last names feels corporate. It
would be a bummer not to have any mechanical_fishes.

~~~
robotrout
Thanks mate!

~~~
Xichekolas
I didn't realize until this moment that there was a mechanical_fish and a
robotrout... am I missing out on a joke or something?

Next I'll see a reply from cyberguppy.

------
zain
I'd also prefer to see less "linkbait" on the front page; i.e. stories with
titles that are, at best, only tangentially related and are instead
overdramatized just to get clicks.

~~~
TooMuchNick
It would be healthy for submitters to look at headlines before they copy them
directly, realizing that what makes sense for a blogger (aware of Digg)
seeking some well-deserved attention for a post might not make sense in an
extremely specialized forum like Hacker News.

What I mean is, a blogger is completely justified in naming a post "Why James
Bond would never drink a Coke" (like I did for an environmentalist blog) if
that blogger believed their purpose would be best served by alerting Digg
users to the perfidies of the Coca-Cola company. But if a Hacker News reader
appreciated the post's message -- that Coca-Cola is exploiting water rights
laws in third-world countries to produce its products cheaply at the expense
of the residents and their clean water supplies -- they would do well to use a
different headline that what the desperate blogger, often paid by the
pageview, had written with a view to Digg.

That said, bloggers will more and more overhype their posts in the way that
media have since their beginning, and those of us on small thinky web sites
will have to get used to downvoting and moving on.

~~~
michaelneale
Except we can't downvote can we? at least not stories? (or is there a karma
level for that?) (I am sure I am missing something obvious).

~~~
zain
Nobody can downvote stories, but if they're violating the rules, high-karma
users can flag them for deletion.

~~~
mikeyur
I would be cool with allowing high karma users the ability to down vote
stories (people on the top 100 list for example).

~~~
icey
I used to really want downvoting. Flagging really works much better. The
stories that I would have ended up downvoting either don't belong here and get
[dead]-ed, or they spawn a lot of fascinating conversation.

Fortunately, people haven't been doing a lot of gaming of the system yet. The
biggest problem with upvoting only is that controversial posts garner the most
votes (a thousand people love a subject and ten thousand people HATE it, so it
gets a thousand upvotes and a TON of comments, even if most people disagree
with the premise).

~~~
electromagnetic
I agree, downvotes are dangerous. I know Reddit had (has? I don't know I left
when I found HN) a problem where all new articles were getting downmodded by
people who wanted their own links on the front page.

I repeatedly think that I would like downvotes, but I quite quickly remember
that I absolutely _hate_ downvotes. I don't completely agree with being able
to downmod comments, however I think the side effects are dampened that you
have to have _good_ karma before you can downvote, which prevents trolls from
abusing the system.

------
sh1mmer
Curiously PG posting this gets 50 karma and counting, someone else posted a
similar thing earlier in the week and got flagged dead.

I don't want to see this topic regularly but maybe the guidelines could be
made more prominent for new users?

~~~
pg
Good idea. I should add some kind of welcome page.

~~~
almost
How about "Don't say anything you wouldn't say to someone's face" next to the
submit button for the comment box? It could be a link to the full guidelines
page maybe.

Even for older users it could be good to have a little reminder to not be an
arsehole (I could certainly use that sort of reminder on occasion).

~~~
ConradHex
Didn't someone write some kind of code to detect when a given text might be a
flame? Not sure what it was based on. It'd be cool if the site said "your
message looks kind of flame-y. Are you _sure_ you want to post it?"

------
Raphael
Duplicate submission. See:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=219081>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=133453>

~~~
iamelgringo
Um... Did you look at who made this submission? :)

~~~
Raphael
"pg"? Am I missing something?

~~~
ionfish
pg == Paul Graham

<http://ycombinator.com/people.html>

------
rw
What has caused the spike in new users?

~~~
pg
I don't know (the web server doesn't keep track of referring urls), but it
started on thursday.

~~~
siong1987
Because Michael Arrington mentioned YC News in Techcrunch???

[http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/04/2009-products-i-cant-
li...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/04/2009-products-i-cant-live-
without/)

~~~
paulgb
_Hacker News is another Digg-like news site that focuses on tech that I visit
daily as well._

Not only mentioned, but likened to Digg. People may have been expecting that
what passes on Digg would pass here.

~~~
SapphireSun
The post was on January 4th though. I wonder whether it's a chaotic system
effect.

------
Flemlord
As a reddit convert myself, I'm terrified to post here. I hear that Paul
Graham himself sometimes singles out dumb commenters and publicly ridicules
them. ;-) Best to keep a low profile.

~~~
TooMuchNick
Unless you have a not-so-secret smirking attitude toward Paul Graham, having
publicly ridiculed him in an earlier stage of your career and now being lucky
enough to have no need for his money.

~~~
dreish
I can remember when -23 points would be reserved for something like a string
of racial epithets, not merely a lame but inoffensive attempt at humor.

~~~
TooMuchNick
It's okay, a little smack on the hand is just what I needed. I have no idea
what's brought so many new users (I just came to find talent and advice for my
startup), but as long as it's a temporary influx, the new users will settle
down as they usually do. A short period of bad behavior from inexperienced
users is just a growing pain for any healthy organization, and since the
community (and Paul) have dealt with it so well, I have little fear that
growth will turn Hacker News into Digg. For instance, I know now not to
cheekily mock Paul in his own thread, and probably not to write a single thing
after several black-and-tans.

That said, members who wish to preserve a community's original quality should
be proactive. They may have to replace the functions of some other original
members who have left. We call this "culture."

~~~
Xichekolas
Well just to chime in as someone that has been here for quite a long time, a
'slap on the hands' (as far as I have witnessed) tends to be dropping a
comment to -1 or so.

Piling on someone like that should be genuinely rare, and only because they
are spamming links to goatse or streaming curse words at someone.

Hopefully this little portion of our 'culture' doesn't change, as it seems
like a civil way to deal with this sort of thing.

------
ktharavaad
I honestly hope that HN news does not degenerate into another reddit or digg-
like news sites where comments and content are full of dramatized and useless
material.

So far, I've found the users of this site intellectual, technical and
insightful in their comments and as a result, its been a joy to participate in
this community and I hope the crowd which this site attract remain the same -
smart and technical people.

~~~
icefox
Just like when reddit started out. So what does HN do differently that will
stop it?

------
jumper
I find that the site has definitely spread apart in it's values. And the real
problem is as "undesireables" flood in, the people who are truer to the
original culture get disgusted and back away.

As a personal (though perhaps not universal) example, see here,
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=458256> , a +23 comment decrying the
multi-page split of the article. See here,
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=398185> , my own comment railing against
them wasting my time\effort like that.... modded down to -6.

I don't want to be a whiny nuisance about it, but when that happened it really
alienated me from the community and quite frankly I don't think I've
contributed much anything of value since. I felt betrayed when I chose to
stand against that kind of crap and I was stabbed in the back. Add in the fact
that the "rules" are not being applied equally as the culture splits, and it
just feels random and unfair.

To conclude my soapbox, I could be doing approx. 50 trillion things on the
internet right now, so stop trying to waste my time\effort with 11 three
sentence pages, snarky\"witty" comments; and God save the YCNews

~~~
jhickner
I think it just comes down to wording. The post that ends with "FAIL" got
downvoted.

That seems pretty harsh to me, but I think people are just hypervigilant
against any hint of encroaching diggishness.

------
niels_olson
Edward Tufte has a good thread of collected moderation advice and policies
from over the years here:

[http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-
msg?msg_id=0...](http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-
msg?msg_id=0000fT)

Here is the short _essay_ he provides to anyone who cares to comment, at the
top of the comment form:

\-----------------------

This board is only about evidence presentations and analytical design. For all
business matters (book orders, courses, shipping, prices, delivery dates),
please go to the Graphics Press contact information on our home page

On the Ask ET forum, we seek to publish questions and contributions that
advance the analytical content of the thread, provide a good example, or raise
an interesting question. Contributions should be relevant to the chosen
thread. Please no marketing pitches, gratuitous links, or incivilities. There
are about 6,000 contributions in the 500 threads now published on this board;
they provide good examples of what has been accepted for publication.

Some new contributions go to a non-public queue, which is frequently reviewed
by a member of the editorial board in order to decide whether the material
should be posted. About 30% of submitted contributions are posted; after
publication, about half survive the occasional reviews of published items. The
editors are unable to reconsider their decisions or to answer any queries
about editorial decisions (some of which may well be mistaken). Publication
policies are described in detail at Moderating internet forums [Ed. the link I
mention above]

If your contribution is published, your email address will be masked on the
board, and your identifying IP number will not be published.

\-----------------------

------
keizo
Feature request/experiment: Put a small second column on the right side with
the 'new page' on the main page.

I suggested this to reddit a long time ago when they first started to really
get lame, but it never caught on.

------
electromagnetic
While this is up on the front page, I'd like to say that I love HN and the
people on it.

There's lots of things I like about HN, like that links can't be down voted
and that downvoting comments is an exclusive right to people with good karma.

However, the main thing I like about HN is that I see _lots_ of civil
discussion and people giving useful comments and suggestions. When I have seen
disagreements (I believe I've been in a few myself) I notice that people tend
to do what they do in real life and simply 'walk away'. When I read something
that really irks me I usually just close HN and will come back later or
whenever when I've forgotten about it.

------
vaksel
maybe make this post a sticky, so that everyone will see it right away. Can be
temporary one...i.e. first 90 days you see this thread at the top of the list,
then it goes away?

------
michaelneale
A suggestion:

Any chance that news stories could be throttled or more heavily
edited/moderated just after a spike in new users? Just a thought, it could
help to filter out those who are interested versus those just looking for
another forum to do their usual thing on.

~~~
pg
The problem is more in the comments. The character of the submissions hasn't
changed much.

The best way to deal with nasty comments by new users may be just to ask them
to stop. Several times lately I've noticed established users doing that, e.g.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=457319>

~~~
michaelneale
Well things seem to be going well. Dodged a bullet this time !

I am _very_ interested to see how things maintained - increasing popularity is
inevitable...

------
lionhearted
Is it possible to change your username somehow? I'd switch over to using first
name/last initial or first initial/last name if it is. I like being held
personally accountable for what I write here, and the real life conversation
standard.

~~~
allenbrunson
i'd say putting your real name and contact information in your profile
suffices.

------
jachee
I showed up here because a real-life acquaintance wrote a nice post about HN
on his blog, here: <http://www.robsayers.com/programming/HackerNews.html> I
had visited in the past when it was purely Startup news, but I hadn't created
an account.

As I'm more of a tinkerer and explorer than entrepreneur, the bent is more
toward my liking, since the revision. I really like the attitude--or rather
lack thereof--and look forward to becoming a part of the community.

------
dhughes
> People like it here because one can have a civil conversation.

It's true, I don't know how I stumbled across this site but one thing I
noticed is the 'high quality' comments compared to other social news websites.

I'd say to the regulars be patient with us, the new folks in town, since we
may be a bit jaded by some of the other places we visit and, yes, the
anonymous nature of the Internet does bring out the worst in people, including
me.

One thing I've learned when commenting is "less is more" (although you'd never
know by this three paragraph 'comment').

------
bitdiddle
Well I post here once in a blue moon when I see something of interest, and I
also comment. My long term goal is to break 100 points on my next submission.

It's a sad thing that it's been years now and we still have to have guidelines
that essentially say what everyone was told by their mother when they were a
child. I think this will improve some day when either 1. we ban dogs from the
net or 2. we start shooting the bad ones :)

As an aside, PG, congrats! I saw recently that you were promoted up a level.
It's a wonderful thing, non?

~~~
alain94040
Just a thought, but if you got modded down badly, being banned from HN for a
few days, with a big banner that tells you why "sorry: your last comment was
modded -5, we'll let you back in tomorrow", that might take care of the
teaching once and for all.

------
eande
For some time I read hacker news nearly daily (one of the rare places) and
mostly because of the comments. Some members here have good points, ideas and
are right at the mark. Even with this valuable board discussion if many of
these non sense comments increase it will turn away good members. With the
anonymity of the internet there will be always some characters that need
moderation and so far ycombinator did a good job. Keep it up.

------
critic
From all the downmodding of the linked comment, I gather a lot of people are
going to disagree, but I actually think the comment may have been the most
helpful one in the thread.

Its message was:

    
    
        Prioritize, focus on things that are relevant to 
        your success, not on things that only matter after
        you've succeeded, i.e. see the bigger picture.
    

Perhaps the delivery could have been better.

~~~
Radix
The method a person uses to convey that idea is important. The way it was
said, there was likely too much work to be done extracting that simple idea
compared to the ideas worth to the parent poster. I think everyone's opinion
is that the way we communicate our ideas on this board is also important.

------
zandorg
From my experience posting, I'm learning more about what's acceptable, and
sometimes I even delete a post that's dragging down my karma.

But more interesting - With the experience of posting here, I should be able
to write a press release for my startup that appeals to hackers.

------
xenophanes
> We're trying to see whether by asking people to be civil we can avoid the
> kind of nastiness that anonymity breeds by default.

Plus liberal use of disabling people's accounts without notifying them let
alone asking them to change something.

~~~
mst
I think it basically boils down to:

Hacker News logins are a privilege, not a right.

Coming from a background of things like talkers where you needed to be
explicitly invited by another user before you could get in, I don't really
have a problem with that.

------
TrevorJ
I agree wholeheartedly. It takes effort on the part of all of us to maintain a
useful and constructive environment here at HN, and I have GREATLY appreciated
the thoughtful, insightful and provocative discourse here.

------
karthikk
The group is indeed its own worst enemy

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=460624>

------
Jasber
What about putting a cap on the number of users that can register per day?
This keeps the community growing but in a controlled fashion.

------
mattmaroon
Where did the new spike come from?

------
freakball
is there an IRC channel for HN?

~~~
rtra
try #startups at freenode

------
ABrandt
hacker news is not digg. end of sentence.

------
loe2007
hossam

------
giles_bowkett
design flaw.

[http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2008/05/summon-monsters-
ope...](http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2008/05/summon-monsters-open-door-
heal-or-die.html)

hate to carp on it, nobody likes hearing I told you so, but a design flaw is a
design flaw.

------
giveyouup
Slashdot used to be (reasonably) well-informed discussion. Digg at the
beginning too. And reddit as well. rec.sports.baseball.bos-redsox, too.

All successful forums grow big and become worthless. The Y C kids need to
learn this.

Never gonna' give you up Never gonna' let you down. Never gonna run around and
desert you.

~~~
almost
That's not a reason to give up. Maybe this time it will work. As pg says, this
is an experiment.

The problem of retaining the character of a site while not just letting it
stagnate (as happens when you start doing things like cutting of new
memberships or restricting new user posting) is a very hard, and as yet
unsolved I believe, problem. But solving hard problems is what it's all about,
right? :p

