I get the feeling that at the very top of every Hacker News comment thread, there's someone who claims that the author of the article is an incompetent idiot because they found a factual error somewhere in the article. Often this leads to a pedantic discussion of some insignificant details.
With all these extremely knowledgeable people from different fields, I wish I found more big picture insights in the comments here.
Yes, this is one of the problems I spend the most time thinking about how to solve.
FWIW, my current theory is that the problem is not the comments themselves, but the upvotes. There are often moderately stupid comments far down the page in any given thread, but they're comparatively harmless, like someone walking down the street mumbling to himself. The problem is that there's a type of stupid comment that attracts upvotes from a certain type of user. If we can recognize either the comments or the upvoters, we can solve the problem. I've been collecting a corpus of them for a while; it may soon be big enough to be useful.
It's the HN equivalent of a cat picture. It's superficially interesting, easy to agree with, and takes no effort to digest. For all of the successes reddit's voting system has had, its key vulnerability is a tendency to regress to the LCD. On reddit, it's image macros and cat pictures. On HN, it's tangential criticisms in the guise of an actual counterargument.
In general, I found that the first reply to the first comment (which is more often than not a counter-dismissal) is an excellent indicator of the quality of the rest of the comments.
> there's someone who claims that the author of the article is an incompetent idiot because they found a factual error somewhere in the article. Often this leads to a pedantic discussion of some insignificant details.
I think it's important to note that comments can point out (even minor) factual inaccuracies in an article without being dismissive or insulting. I find that type of comment tremendously valuable for articles with topics outside of fields I am learned in.
I agree, and I also often find that the attached discussion that follows almost always takes up about half the page.
Usually directly skipping half the page takes you to the actual discussion. I think it could be interesting to add a pivot that moves that comment and it's discussion to the bottom (but probably above downvoted comments) when it reaches a certain length. It could still keep it's votes and so on.
I feel like people complain about this too much. Yeah, there are some bad/exaggerated comments, but overall I find mostly intelligent tech related conversation here. There will always be people who want to put down others for some selfish reason, but I don't think that defines HN. I've certainly learned a lot from the comments.
I'm curious about the degree to which decreasing quality is a consequence of dilution in which "less desirable" individuals lower the mean quality (or some other holistic measure), versus the social effects due purely to size.
I'm curious because a large community will probably change the behavior of all individuals, regardless of quality. One such effect is they way discussions happen. In a village, town halls can have discussions with every member. An idea is brought forth, multiple people make changes, it gets amended, reworked, changed. In short, topics have some amount of "persistence", and opinions have more dynamism.
In a city, discussions are more like a broadcast: any member might be able to speak, but they're not sparking discussion, they're broadcasting a point of view, and with so many points of view broadcast at any given moment, it's hard to have a discussion that lasts more than a few hours before the next topic of interest is brought forth. In short, topics seem to have little persistence, and opinions have far less dynamism.
It seems much more rewarding in a city to make comments designed to convince the audience of how intelligent I am, because I only have the city's attention for a moment. Perhaps this leads to the preponderance of middlebrow dismissals or other "how can I look smart here?" comments. In a village, by contrast, these comments are much less lucrative. If I walk around and the only comment I can give to others is that their new crop idea might not work, I'm probably not going to be very valued, because people will notice over time that those are the only comments I give.
It's difficult for me to articulate quite what I mean, perhaps someone could help.
I think of this as conversational intimacy. If too many people are involved, the intimacy is lost.
It's still possible, even on the HN of today. Focused technical articles, which are not conventionally controversial, often produce the most valuable discussions to me. They may only have on the order of 30 comments, but those commenters are either interested in learning about the topic, or knowledgable of the topic.
Another subtle feature addition: a flame-war detector. Graham has been consistently deploying and updating proprietary software that determines whether there is a flame war, where people argue heatedly. When these flame wars take place (which Graham says can often get ugly and personal), the story in which the commenting is taking place is moved further down the page.
Remember the above the next time someone claims that a rogue contingent must be flagging stories on a particular topic because it is further down the page than other stories submitted at a similar time and with a similar number of points.
I too have noticed pg's growing frustration with HN a little bit. I joined HN almost 6 years ago -- then I was a naive teenager with a scattered view of the world, though with a ferocious appetite for intelligent debate. I used to do light design work then and usually shied away from hardcore backend programming. I have HN to thank for getting me to take the jump. I also have HN to thank for keeping me informed on various fronts so I could make right decisions that were key in seeing my first 'startup' project surviving (thanks patio11 for your instructive thoughts on a/b testing; grellas for legal stuff; potatolicious for thoughts on design, etc. etc. :)).
One thing I want to say is: I think it's okay to be ... well, a little bit mean sometimes. My favorite commenter on this site is rayiner -- one of the reasons I like him is he's never afraid to say what he really believes (sometimes in a slightly mean diction), even if it's going against HN userbase consensus. He's not out to get karma (as some other opportunist high-karma users here are sometimes... complete with amazon affiliate links in their comments, indeed, that is singularly the only thing that annoys me about HN). There's inevitably going to be disagreement when we're discussing important things we have strong feelings on. As long as the discussion doesn't devolve into corrosive name-calling and ad hominems it's fine, and I don't think we go that low very much. I think HN will be fine going forward -- there's a strong identity that is enforced by all users. Thanks pg et al. for keeping this hangout alive and rocking.
> If you are a YC founder, your username will show up in orange to other YC founders to enable these entrepreneurs to recognize and meet each other.
Silicon Valley is supposed to be this great meritocracy where it doesn't matter where you went to school or who you know, all that matters is how well you can build and "make something people want."
However, it always amazes me how much cronyism (for lack of a better word) there still is in Silicon Valley. Even Y Combinator is not immune to it. To their credit, PG et al are great at pattern recognition and identifying what separates good/great teams from the bad, but I feel like there is still too much cronyism, personal bias, and subjective judgment in their model that excludes a lot of entrepreneurs who don't fit their "type".
Given how influential PG's essays and YC's model have been on other VCs and angel investors, I wonder if it's becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy and/or vicious cycle in the industry where because YC prefers a certain subset of successful founder, it causes many/most investors to also prefer that subset, which makes it easier and easier for this subset of founders to quickly get funding and access to critical resources and networks, while it becomes harder and harder for new subsets of entrepreneurs to break through this walled garden.
DISCLAIMER: I really like YC and I read HN every day. I just think that if e.g. Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins were VC 1.0 and YC was VC 2.0, a new VC 3.0 that addresses the shortcomings of the current model is way overdue.
But humans form groups. That's what we do. And this group is pretty easy to join. You don't need a particular skin colour or religion. Just rock up and rock on.
I am happy HN is here, even if the small village has become a big city. On a given day, there is a decent percentage of the front page that I don't understand at all, and I enjoy reading the articles and comments. I find it an interesting way to learn new things.
Thank you PG for creating Hacker News. I read it daily.
It's sad and indicative of the quality of tech journalism when this line gets written by thenextweb and then quoted by techcrunch without being questioned:
> Having a big audience isn’t really the goal. In comparison, Hacker News’ inspiration and the first big YC exit, Reddit has seen as much as 4.4 million page views in a given day.
If 4.4 million page views in a given day were special for Reddit, it would not be the hugely successful page it is and tech journalists should have a rough idea of traffic figures like these. The same thenextweb post claims further down that Reddit averaged 3 billion page views a month in 2012.
(it was the Obama AMA subreddit that hit 4.4 million page views in a single day)
What bothers me personally the most is the way in which downvotes seem to happen. Don't get me wrong, a lot of users downvote in a good way, so it's not all bad.
Still, I often find grey comments that are brought in a completely respectable way. I feel like these comments are getting downvoted because someone disagrees with them, rather than because they are bad or toxic comments.
The opposite is also true, I often find comments with a positive amount of votes that are in the "internet jokester" style and don't really contribute anything meaningful to the topic at hand.
Often if you go back later, you'll see that the downvote has been "corrected" by another reader. I'll sometimes upvote a reasonable comment only because it has negative karma. And I've... uh... in the name of science, made some relatively useless disagreeable comments that had downvotes, then upvotes, then downvotes,... before reaching equilibrium at +1, so other people do too.
Jokester comments (I leave quite a few because I enjoy being a smart-arse) are hit and miss on HN. You can't overplay the joke and you can't use memes. That rules out a lot of easy jokes, so in practice the effective humour is a bit better than the stuff you find on Reddit.
this was precisely the comment i was going to post and you beat me to it :)
you run the very real risk of having a bunch of comments that mutually agree to the same point being up voted, while the contrarian post or a different opinion is 'shouted down'. Taking the time to distinguish a comment that you disagree with (may be even dislike ) and a comment you think is unproductive to the discussion is our responsibility. I wish we did a better job at it.
A lot of people are hellbanned. The algo seems to take into account the lifespan of the account, and most such banned people have only existed a few weeks.
The article (perhaps ironically) neglected to mention an enormous volume of submissions exist just to harvest pageviews from this community.
There is a constant flow advertisements posing as articles where startups write random fluff to get their otherwise unrelated and uninteresting startups on the front page.
There is a constant flow of mainstream blogs and people meticulously tailoring content for this site.
There have been numerous large companies that have blatantly spammed the site for years undetected, and probably plenty more that still haven't been detected judging by all the 'submissions-only' accounts churning out generic links to mainstream sites.
I don't think routine exploitation fosters a healthy, happy community.
your points illustrate some reasons why I do not consider this a community,in a positive sense. there is a lot of interesting discussion, which is good, but it exists to serve and is largely constrained by the need to create a social engine for private investment in tech companies, and the ecosystem that entails.
HN is a testament to what happens when you make a thing for a very specific group of people and only them.
It sort of reminds me those companies you hear about every once in a while that say "No" to being sold in Wal-Mart. It seems crazy but there is value in passing on certain kinds of growth.
The only hiccup to this plan in HN's case is that the very specific community it is targeted to is itself growing and growing. So staying "small" might be impossible.
"Around six months ago, Graham brought on someone else, who he chose not to name, to moderate the site. He says the individual is affiliated with Y Combinator and is a 'prudent and thoughtful guy,' and has been doing a great job ever since."
I didn't know this. I think the prudent and thoughtful guy is doing a generally good job. I don't think anyone can read every thread here exhaustively, but there is some good signal:noise ratio here even after all the years of growth.
"I wish I could get people to stop posting comments that are stupid or mean" is pg's summary of what still needs to be fixed. I'm on board with that too.
I think what I love most about HN is that PG (and others?) take an active role in trying to steer the tone of the comments in specific directions, and don't try to make it a super democratic site like Reddit where everything about the community is allowed to just grow organically in a hands-off manner.
I see lots of complaints about supposed censorship or excessive moderation or hellbans, and I understand why those things might frustrate people. Really, I do. But it's not like this is the only place on the Internet where people can go to post comments about tech news. The fact that HN isn't trying to be all things to all people, and isn't trying to be as fair as possible to everyone at all times, is actually what I love about it.
I'm glad that there's places like Reddit where everything is community-driven and the maintainers are totally hands-off as to the content of the site, and I frequently enjoy Reddit as well. But I'm also glad that there are places like HN which are actively molded into being a specific kind of site with specific standards of discourse, even if I don't always agree with it. I wish more news sites had such specific visions for content and comments. Not necessarily the same vision, just some vision other than avoiding even the perception of censorship at all costs.
HN is becoming my main tech related hub recently. Almost any article worth reading from the big tech sites will find its place here and comments are noting short of amazing sometimes. The depth on some technical topics surpasses even stackexchange.
Also if there is downwards slope in the quality it is very mild - for the two years I have been here it is quite consistent.
There are a few details here. I don't know jack about servers and stuff but this was the only place I knew it was mentioned. From what I gather in the thread it is impressive.
I think it's also notable that HN is written in Arc, a Lisp dialect of pg's own devising. [1] All those "?fnid"s in the URL are pointers to functions.. Some sample code (HN might have morphed quite a bit from it - no idea) linked to in one of the comments referred to by hfsktr is on github. [2]
If you are a YC founder, your username will show up in orange to other YC founders to enable these entrepreneurs to recognize and meet each other.
I've been aware of this for a while (a few YC founders I got to meet confided this to me), but it is the first time I've seen it being publicly admitted.
Along with the DMCA[1] link below, I'm happy to see this ever increasing level of transparency on Hacker News. I believe it is a great way to foster trust among the community.
To those who have been here from the early days, thanks for letting us newer folks crash the party.
I don't have a lot of +50 comments, but I try to self-censor if I'm not getting more +2s than not.
No idea if or when eternal September kicks in here, but... I guess the upside is what pg has proved: anyone dissatisfied with online communities can just build a new one, use a singular purpose and a stripped-down ad-free interface, and people will come (for better or worse).
[+] [-] jakobe|13 years ago|reply
With all these extremely knowledgeable people from different fields, I wish I found more big picture insights in the comments here.
[+] [-] pg|13 years ago|reply
FWIW, my current theory is that the problem is not the comments themselves, but the upvotes. There are often moderately stupid comments far down the page in any given thread, but they're comparatively harmless, like someone walking down the street mumbling to himself. The problem is that there's a type of stupid comment that attracts upvotes from a certain type of user. If we can recognize either the comments or the upvoters, we can solve the problem. I've been collecting a corpus of them for a while; it may soon be big enough to be useful.
[+] [-] redthrowaway|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scott_s|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rubinelli|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhitov|13 years ago|reply
I think it's important to note that comments can point out (even minor) factual inaccuracies in an article without being dismissive or insulting. I find that type of comment tremendously valuable for articles with topics outside of fields I am learned in.
[+] [-] adsr|13 years ago|reply
Usually directly skipping half the page takes you to the actual discussion. I think it could be interesting to add a pivot that moves that comment and it's discussion to the bottom (but probably above downvoted comments) when it reaches a certain length. It could still keep it's votes and so on.
[+] [-] DanBC|13 years ago|reply
> With all these extremely knowledgeable people from different fields, I wish I found more big picture insights in the comments here.
The signal to noise ratio is still pretty good, and sometimes there are great posts.
Better flagging (and less upvoting) of the stupid politics / news dross would help.
[+] [-] ryderm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] willbill|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevinalexbrown|13 years ago|reply
I'm curious because a large community will probably change the behavior of all individuals, regardless of quality. One such effect is they way discussions happen. In a village, town halls can have discussions with every member. An idea is brought forth, multiple people make changes, it gets amended, reworked, changed. In short, topics have some amount of "persistence", and opinions have more dynamism.
In a city, discussions are more like a broadcast: any member might be able to speak, but they're not sparking discussion, they're broadcasting a point of view, and with so many points of view broadcast at any given moment, it's hard to have a discussion that lasts more than a few hours before the next topic of interest is brought forth. In short, topics seem to have little persistence, and opinions have far less dynamism.
It seems much more rewarding in a city to make comments designed to convince the audience of how intelligent I am, because I only have the city's attention for a moment. Perhaps this leads to the preponderance of middlebrow dismissals or other "how can I look smart here?" comments. In a village, by contrast, these comments are much less lucrative. If I walk around and the only comment I can give to others is that their new crop idea might not work, I'm probably not going to be very valued, because people will notice over time that those are the only comments I give.
It's difficult for me to articulate quite what I mean, perhaps someone could help.
[+] [-] scott_s|13 years ago|reply
It's still possible, even on the HN of today. Focused technical articles, which are not conventionally controversial, often produce the most valuable discussions to me. They may only have on the order of 30 comments, but those commenters are either interested in learning about the topic, or knowledgable of the topic.
[+] [-] GhotiFish|13 years ago|reply
There's nothing wrong with subdividing a group that gets too large, the problem is there is no obvious impetus to do that.
[+] [-] jacquesm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Spearchucker|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] scott_s|13 years ago|reply
Remember the above the next time someone claims that a rogue contingent must be flagging stories on a particular topic because it is further down the page than other stories submitted at a similar time and with a similar number of points.
[+] [-] clicks|13 years ago|reply
One thing I want to say is: I think it's okay to be ... well, a little bit mean sometimes. My favorite commenter on this site is rayiner -- one of the reasons I like him is he's never afraid to say what he really believes (sometimes in a slightly mean diction), even if it's going against HN userbase consensus. He's not out to get karma (as some other opportunist high-karma users here are sometimes... complete with amazon affiliate links in their comments, indeed, that is singularly the only thing that annoys me about HN). There's inevitably going to be disagreement when we're discussing important things we have strong feelings on. As long as the discussion doesn't devolve into corrosive name-calling and ad hominems it's fine, and I don't think we go that low very much. I think HN will be fine going forward -- there's a strong identity that is enforced by all users. Thanks pg et al. for keeping this hangout alive and rocking.
[+] [-] pshin45|13 years ago|reply
Silicon Valley is supposed to be this great meritocracy where it doesn't matter where you went to school or who you know, all that matters is how well you can build and "make something people want."
However, it always amazes me how much cronyism (for lack of a better word) there still is in Silicon Valley. Even Y Combinator is not immune to it. To their credit, PG et al are great at pattern recognition and identifying what separates good/great teams from the bad, but I feel like there is still too much cronyism, personal bias, and subjective judgment in their model that excludes a lot of entrepreneurs who don't fit their "type".
Given how influential PG's essays and YC's model have been on other VCs and angel investors, I wonder if it's becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy and/or vicious cycle in the industry where because YC prefers a certain subset of successful founder, it causes many/most investors to also prefer that subset, which makes it easier and easier for this subset of founders to quickly get funding and access to critical resources and networks, while it becomes harder and harder for new subsets of entrepreneurs to break through this walled garden.
DISCLAIMER: I really like YC and I read HN every day. I just think that if e.g. Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins were VC 1.0 and YC was VC 2.0, a new VC 3.0 that addresses the shortcomings of the current model is way overdue.
[+] [-] jacques_chester|13 years ago|reply
But humans form groups. That's what we do. And this group is pretty easy to join. You don't need a particular skin colour or religion. Just rock up and rock on.
[+] [-] gregpilling|13 years ago|reply
Thank you PG for creating Hacker News. I read it daily.
[+] [-] lazyjones|13 years ago|reply
> Having a big audience isn’t really the goal. In comparison, Hacker News’ inspiration and the first big YC exit, Reddit has seen as much as 4.4 million page views in a given day.
If 4.4 million page views in a given day were special for Reddit, it would not be the hugely successful page it is and tech journalists should have a rough idea of traffic figures like these. The same thenextweb post claims further down that Reddit averaged 3 billion page views a month in 2012.
(it was the Obama AMA subreddit that hit 4.4 million page views in a single day)
[+] [-] throwaway125|13 years ago|reply
Still, I often find grey comments that are brought in a completely respectable way. I feel like these comments are getting downvoted because someone disagrees with them, rather than because they are bad or toxic comments.
The opposite is also true, I often find comments with a positive amount of votes that are in the "internet jokester" style and don't really contribute anything meaningful to the topic at hand.
[+] [-] pseut|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacques_chester|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pullo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mynameishere|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benologist|13 years ago|reply
There is a constant flow advertisements posing as articles where startups write random fluff to get their otherwise unrelated and uninteresting startups on the front page.
There is a constant flow of mainstream blogs and people meticulously tailoring content for this site.
There have been numerous large companies that have blatantly spammed the site for years undetected, and probably plenty more that still haven't been detected judging by all the 'submissions-only' accounts churning out generic links to mainstream sites.
I don't think routine exploitation fosters a healthy, happy community.
[+] [-] MrMan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryanholiday|13 years ago|reply
It sort of reminds me those companies you hear about every once in a while that say "No" to being sold in Wal-Mart. It seems crazy but there is value in passing on certain kinds of growth.
The only hiccup to this plan in HN's case is that the very specific community it is targeted to is itself growing and growing. So staying "small" might be impossible.
[+] [-] davidw|13 years ago|reply
Speaking of which, I wonder what became of this one?
http://www.fastcompany.com/54763/man-who-said-no-wal-mart
Apologies for deviating from the thread's topic, but I re-read that the other day and got to wondering.
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tokenadult|13 years ago|reply
I didn't know this. I think the prudent and thoughtful guy is doing a generally good job. I don't think anyone can read every thread here exhaustively, but there is some good signal:noise ratio here even after all the years of growth.
"I wish I could get people to stop posting comments that are stupid or mean" is pg's summary of what still needs to be fixed. I'm on board with that too.
[+] [-] krapp|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mwfunk|13 years ago|reply
I see lots of complaints about supposed censorship or excessive moderation or hellbans, and I understand why those things might frustrate people. Really, I do. But it's not like this is the only place on the Internet where people can go to post comments about tech news. The fact that HN isn't trying to be all things to all people, and isn't trying to be as fair as possible to everyone at all times, is actually what I love about it.
I'm glad that there's places like Reddit where everything is community-driven and the maintainers are totally hands-off as to the content of the site, and I frequently enjoy Reddit as well. But I'm also glad that there are places like HN which are actively molded into being a specific kind of site with specific standards of discourse, even if I don't always agree with it. I wish more news sites had such specific visions for content and comments. Not necessarily the same vision, just some vision other than avoiding even the perception of censorship at all costs.
[+] [-] suppressingfire|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkoble11|13 years ago|reply
I hope not. This is one of the best & brightest online communities I've ever seen.
I learn so much every single day from the content & insights posted on this site, I'm not sure where I'd be without it :)
[+] [-] 1wheel|13 years ago|reply
> Reddit has seen as much as 4.4 million page views in a given day
These numbers didn't seem right to me; reddit gets way more than 3 times hn's traffic.
Last December, reddit had 2 billion page views [http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/2-billion-beyond.html] which works out to over 60 million a page views a day and over 30 times hn's count.
[+] [-] Vivtek|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quackerhacker|13 years ago|reply
Being accepted by you guys really does help me get back into tech and do what I know best. THANK YOU!
[+] [-] venomsnake|13 years ago|reply
Also if there is downwards slope in the quality it is very mild - for the two years I have been here it is quite consistent.
[+] [-] Chirono|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hfsktr|13 years ago|reply
There are a few details here. I don't know jack about servers and stuff but this was the only place I knew it was mentioned. From what I gather in the thread it is impressive.
More specifically: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5229548 (pasbesoin's comment)
[+] [-] wfn|13 years ago|reply
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_%28programming_language%29
[2]: https://github.com/nex3/arc/blob/master/lib/news.arc
[+] [-] mcfunley|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanielRibeiro|13 years ago|reply
I've been aware of this for a while (a few YC founders I got to meet confided this to me), but it is the first time I've seen it being publicly admitted.
Along with the DMCA[1] link below, I'm happy to see this ever increasing level of transparency on Hacker News. I believe it is a great way to foster trust among the community.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/dmca.html
[+] [-] brownbat|13 years ago|reply
I don't have a lot of +50 comments, but I try to self-censor if I'm not getting more +2s than not.
No idea if or when eternal September kicks in here, but... I guess the upside is what pg has proved: anyone dissatisfied with online communities can just build a new one, use a singular purpose and a stripped-down ad-free interface, and people will come (for better or worse).