
Effects of TechCrunch article (with News.YC traffic graph) - pg
http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html?24mar08
======
Alex3917
The worrying thing is that when things start to go bad they go bad fast
because the system is self-reinforcing in two different ways:

1) When people see lame stories make the front page, they see that they can
submit lame stories and have them make the front page.

2) When you submit a good story and it doesn't make the front page then it's
kind of depressing. And what kind of people still bother to submit content
when that happens? Sucky people.

~~~
pg
There have always been lots of bad submissions. The real problem is voting,
not submission. People aren't so much submitting worse stuff as upvoting worse
stuff.

And the danger of that is worse than just encouraging bad submitters or
discouraging good ones. It makes the site seem to be about dumber stuff. Seem
because it _is_ now about dumber stuff.

~~~
dcurtis
So now you're finally admitting there's an effect-- any plans for fixing it?

~~~
andreyf
_Though we've never had an influx like this before, we're optimistic the same
thing will happen this time._

That's a no.

------
huhtenberg
I am one of the new users and I'd like to comment on _the average tone in
comment threads is slightly less polite_ remark.

I am not entirely sure if _polite_ meant _not rude_ or if it meant a _pat-in-
the-back encouraging_. However even a casual glance shows a lot of modded up
comments that are of a latter kind. Especially in the Ask YC/HN articles.
While reasonable encouraging is good, there's also a plenty of _great job_ and
_looking good_ comments for pre-launch projects that are a plain junk .. with
an emphasis on _pre-launch_. In my humble opinion these are extremely damaging
comments regardless of how polite they are.

Perhaps this is a part of the site social culture. Or perhaps I'm misreading
the meaning of "less polite". I just hope I'm wrong on both counts.

Now, mod me down if you agree :-p

~~~
rms
I think he meant not rude. The idea that you should only say something here
that you would be willing to say to someone face to face.

------
ntoshev
I have noticed there are much less programming/hacking stories recently and
tried to upvote the few remaining even if they are not particularly
interesting to me. If this site becomes exclusively about startups, I don't
think it would be interesting to me.

Also much more stories where what is said is supposed to be important mostly
because of who said it. I believe popularity contests are inherently against
core hacker values.

------
ROFISH
You guys seem to forget the fact that YC applications are due soon. Perhaps
some of the new influx is users trying to cash some quick karma?

~~~
bfioca
I had exactly 1 karma point when we got accepted into YC. :)

------
NewWorldOrder
it's good to know that some of the somewhat/to outright discourteous comment
threads aren't the norm...

------
amichail
"There has been some dilution as a result. The stories that get voted up are
not quite as good, and the average tone in comment threads is slightly less
polite."

The problem is voting. As you might guess, I think a more meritocratic
approach to social news (e.g., intelligence testing through puzzles) would
give you better results when you have more users.

~~~
petercooper
I'm not so sure. That's not so much meritocratic as a test of someone's
determination or the amount of time they have to waste.

True meritocracy in online voting situations would be something like giving
more importance to votes from people with higher karma. So, the people who get
voted up more, then get more power in voting situations themselves. That way,
the site becomes whatever the "top users" want, a true meritocracy.

I'm also a fan of giving precedence depending on the "age" of the user. That
is, how long they've been a member of the site. This means the site may not
evolve as quickly, but it appears that's something people want to avoid
anyway. It tends to be the new "influx" of users that comes after popularity
that drags a site down, so letting older users have more say could make sense.

~~~
amichail
"I'm not so sure. That's not so much meritocratic as a test of someone's
determination or the amount of time they have to waste."

That depends on the nature of the puzzle. Not many people can solve Rubik's
Cube no matter how determined they may be.

"True meritocracy in online voting situations would be something like giving
more importance to votes from people with higher karma. So, the people who get
voted up more, then get more power in voting situations themselves. That way,
the site becomes whatever the "top users" want, a true meritocracy."

That may not lead to a meritocracy. I think intelligence testing is more
reliable.

~~~
petercooper
A good argument, but do you think a user's raw intelligence could correlate to
the quality of their links and link preferences?

I don't. The people who post all the political links to Reddit seem quite
intelligent, as do many of the people starting pointless arguments. The
ability to troll and incite flame wars might even go UP with intelligence.

Perhaps if the puzzles you proposed measured "emotional intelligence" or
domain specific knowledge we'd stand a chance, but raw intelligence doesn't
prove much. Many of the nicest, most "savvy" people I know are not of high
intelligence in an IQ sense, but are still very successful in their fields,
and vice versa.

~~~
amichail
Yes, you can have different sorts of puzzles to measure different sorts of
intelligence. It would make a fascinating experiment to see the impact of the
puzzle type on link and discussion quality.

In fact, my next puzzle-based social news site will involve a word-based
puzzle, which may reward users more who have high "verbal intelligence".

~~~
petercooper
Just a guess, but I think domain specific knowledge testing would work best. I
know enough grouchy "intelligent" people to go for the raw intelligence
option, but if people were tested on their general knowledge of the sector
that the site is based on, that's going to result in, hopefully, more informed
discussion and links.

Indeed, perhaps this is why sites like Reddit and Hacker News were / are such
high quality sites at the start of their lives, because only the most informed
people knew about them. Once the less informed get involved, it all goes to
pot. So testing how "informed" someone is might, effectively, resolve it all..
but I can't help but feel a lot of people would be turned off by such
"testing"!

~~~
amichail
_So testing how "informed" someone is might, effectively, resolve it all.. but
I can't help but feel a lot of people would be turned off by such "testing"!_

So why do people visit this site?

<http://mightyquiz.com/>

Imagine turning MightyQuiz into a social news site.

~~~
rms
Puzzle based social news only appeals to people that like solving puzzles.
That's fine and I'm glad your site exists, just don't expect your model to
supplant vote based story ranking.

