[pajju]

Good that someone raised this topic.

1. Many good articles & posts don't get upvoted.

2. There are pre-formed HN groups who game the system often.

My Feedback

1. Some special users can be given special Front-Page-Post Button permission.

Say, 3 Top Users have voted this Post for FP(Front Page)

2. Frontpage should not be the highlighting part of HN. At least it looks like that as of now.

The other good parts of HN: new|Ask|Show be shown side by side or given equal weightage.

3. Giving Better experience is the challenge.

The Front page feed can be a variable of Votes, Interest based.

There is lot of scope for improvements.

4. Users Gaming the system, be strictly banned for X Days and shown in different colors.

[petercooper]

Many good articles & posts don't get upvoted.

As someone involved in news delivery, I find this to be an opportunity. I frequently dig up stuff with only 1 or 2 votes here that I can share on and look like I found it - ha! :)

As a long timer HNer, I think the main problem is there's little reason or motivation to monitor /newest so it's mostly visited by people being asked to vote up other people's posts. It'd be very cool if on the bottom of the homepage, you got a few items from /newest you were invited to vote on without actually going there.

[grey-area]

It'd be very cool if on the bottom of the homepage, you got a few items from /newest you were invited to vote on without actually going there.

Nice idea. This is HN's biggest problem I think - there is no real incentive to visit /newest and the vast majority of good stories slide off it without getting more than a few votes. Adding some new stories to the bottom of home would be an excellent way to get votes.

The other problem of course is that what is popular is not always what is good.

[smoyer]

A minor point but I'd rather see the newest stories at the top ... and I'd even say you could reserve the top 5 (or so) positions for new stories. That way, every story starts on the front page but has to work to stay there. Once you throw out the stories marked dead, I suspect each of the new stories would get a few minutes even during the busiest periods (gut feeling ... no data analysis).

[onion2k]

As someone involved in news delivery, I find this to be an opportunity. I frequently dig up stuff with only 1 or 2 votes here that I can share on and look like I found it - ha! :)

I really thought you'd have automated 99% of the information gathering for your newsletters based on something like that. :)

[kyrra]

Another good part of HN is active[0] which is not linked on the top bar. It shows the most active topics by comment count. Useful for finding topics with lots of discussion.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/active

[krapp]

I've felt for a while that HN would be much improved if vote count and karma were invisible. If you give users a stat, you're encouraging them to gamify and optimize for it. Personally, I would rather there was no karma at all, but that's not going to happen. It serves its purpose by affecting the sort order of the thread - it doesn't need to be visible to do its job.

The value of gaming the frontpage could be reduced by having random items from below the fold bubble up from time to time, and perhaps by also having popular items bubble down. Not only would this encourage worthy but not necessarily popular stories to be read, it would (more importantly to me) encourage users to notice that there is more than one page and those thirty slots to read. I believe lobste.rs does this.

It also occurs to me that some people find stories through /comments, and this page can also have an overcrowding problem when multiple comments for the same story take up most of the page. More stories would be discoverable there if comments were grouped by story instead of individually.

I think /active should replace or sit alongside /new. It would provide a nice contrast between the stories getting upvotes and stories getting comments.

[Loughla]

I believe that the incentive to optimize votes/Karma has very little to do with the actual Karma count. I believe it is mostly about driving a narrative or page-views for income.

Focusing on Karma as the outcome is vastly underselling the power of sites like HN (and especially reddit). Those who want to warp the system don't just want numbers on this site. They want power over crowds or money for their business.

[marrs]

I think you're absolutely on the money and I think your suggestions would really help.

I'd like to add something: replace the down-vote button with a "report spam" link.

The one thing that makes me rage on HN is seeing people getting down-voted for having a disagreeable opinion. It's supposed to be to suppress trolling or spam, but people just can't help but use it to oppress others' opinion. Just on principle, it makes me angry, but for practical reasons it's irritating as well because it becomes harder to read often more interesting comments.

[aout]

Well, if you hide Karma but still use it in the ordering of the thread then Karma could be derivated. In a day you could extract the data from the posts and build a kind of karma-book with top users etc etc...

[S4M]

> 4. Users Gaming the system, be strictly banned for X Days and shown in different colors.

I don't think users gaming the system can be spotted so easily. Let's take an example: let's say both of us like Astronomy and post sometimes articles about spatial exploration. It is only natural that we would end up upvoting each others' submission, especially if we both like to check the new submissions and tend to read HN approximately at the same time. Users like I described could easily be mistaken by a voting ring detector.

By giving harsh penalties like you suggest to users who are gaming the system, you take a big risk to alienate people who simply have shared interests. I think the ranking algorithm of HN takes voting ring into account, so if you and I are part of a voting ring, our upvotes will impact less the standing of a page - I think I read about that somewhere but can't find the exact source.

[velox_io]

I think the ratio of page views vs likes would quite a telling indicator. This should mean less click bait (a great title with mediocre content), which seems to be plaguing the web these days, even HN!

Having articles appear on the front page briefly, to seed views and see if they stick could be helpful to give then a chance. A report button would quickly stem any spam.

[pajju]

Additional feedback:

5. Use of better colors: For following keywords or topics & colors for users by active | top | influencers etc.

6. Verified accounts.

7. Use of on Demand Badges like: Trustworthy User Badge, Looking for(Badge), Looking for co-founder, Hiring, Remote jobs etc.

All these can be grouped under a Paid plan? I would definitely pay for value & additionals, even a good mobile app experience is missing.

8. There is lack of networking and peer discovery in HN.

They should add community managers & make this evolve. Take it to the next level.

9. Follow options: Follow this discussion, Alert-me's, Follow Posts by keywords.

10. Finally, there is lot of scope to Improve.

HN team & YC should Rise up to the expectations and deliver richer experiences. What are they doing?

11. Add a separate Top Link: Voice-UP your concern.

This is for: Alerting, finding loopholes in the system(gaming the system etc), User Site feedback, new interface ideas.

Creating a vibrant HN ecosystem is the way looking forward. Lets do it.

[Gustomaximus]

With 5. I'd be inclined not to colour influencers or other user accounts. I'd be concerned it would exacerbate hivemind as 'these are the opinions I should upvote and follow'. I like in HN that I typically read a comment before I note someones username on this vs reddit type interface where the username is highlighted.

[galfarragem]

I don't agree with you but I upvoted your comment (that was already being downvoted) - it adds value to the discussion.

The simplicity of HN is something innegociable IMHO. As I understand you are proposing to evolve HN into a mix of Reddit-social network for hackers/entrepreneurs.

[lettergram]

They could interlace new, Ask, and Show articles with the top page at random. This would definitely increase overall votes on new stuff, while at the same time reducing the power of voting circles.