zlacker

>>djtrip+(OP)
They're already banned—HN has never allowed bots or generated comments. If we have to, we'll add that explicitly to https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, but I'd say it already follows from the rules that are in there. We don't want canned responses from humans either!

Edit: It's a bit hard to point to past explanations since the word "bots" appears in many contexts, but I did find these:

>>33911426 (Dec 2022)

>>32571890 (Aug 2022)

>>27558392 (June 2021)

>>26693590 (April 2021)

>>24189762 (Aug 2020)

>>22744611 (April 2020)

>>22427782 (Feb 2020)

>>21774797 (Dec 2019)

>>19325914 (March 2019)

We've already banned a few accounts that appear to be spamming the threads with generated comments, and I'm happy to keep doing that, even though there's a margin of error.

The best solution, though, is to raise the community bar for what counts as a good comment. Whatever ChatGPT (or similar) can generate, humans need to do better. If we reach the point where the humans simply can't do better, well, then it won't matter*. But that's a ways off.

Therefore, let's all stop writing lazy and over-conventional comments, and make our posts so thoughtful that the question "is this ChatGPT?" never comes up.

* Edit: er, I put that too hastily! I just mean it will be a different problem at that point.

>>dang+zk1
It’ll be interesting if we soon come to a day when a comment can be suspected to be from a bot because it’s too coherent and smart!

>>ramraj+Nl1
I agree, but in that case we can learn from the bots instead of wincing at regurgitated material.

Basically, if it improves thread quality, I'm for it, and if it degrades thread quality, we should throw the book at it. The nice thing about this position is that comment quality is a function of the comments themselves, and little else.

>>dang+9m1
I suggest thinking about the purpose of discussion on HN.

There’s a tension between thread quality on the one hand and the process of humans debating and learning from each other on the other hand.

>>andsoi+wu1
I like thinking about the purpose, because I doubt there is a defined purpose right now. I have absolutely no idea why whoever hosts this site (ycombinator?) wants comments - if they're like reddit or twitter, though, it's to build a community and post history, because you can put that down as an asset and, idk, do money stuff with it. Count it in valuations and whatnot. And maybe do marketing and data mining. Or sell APIs. Stuff like that. So in this case, for the host, the "purpose" is "generate content that attracts more users to register and post, that is in a format that we can pitch as having Value to the people who decide valuations, or is in a format that we can pitch as having Value to the people who may want to pay for an API to access it, or is valuable for data mining, or, gives us enough information about the users that, combined with their contact info, functions as something we can sell for targeted ads."

For me the "purpose" of discussion on HN is to fill a dopamine addiction niche that I've closed off by blocking reddit, twitter, and youtube, and, to hone ideas I have against a more-educated-than-normal and partially misaligned-against-my-values audience (I love when the pot gets stirred with stuff we aren't supposed to talk about that much such as politics and political philosophy, though I try not to be the first one to stir), and occasionally to ask a question that I'd like answered or just see what other people think about something.

Do you think there's much "learning from eachother" on HN? I'm skeptical that really happens much on the chat-internet outside of huge knowledge-swaps happening on stackoverflow. I typically see confident value statements: "that's why xyz sucks," "that's not how that works," "it wasn't xyz, it was zyx," etc. Are we all doing the "say something wrong on the internet to get more answers" thing to eachother? What's the purpose of discussion on HN to you? Why are you here?

The purpose of my comment is I wanna see what other people think about my reasons for posting, whether others share it, maybe some thoughts on that weird dopamine hit some of us get from posting at eachother, and see why others are here.

>>komali+zA1
As someone who did a lot of debates in philosophy, most casual commenters are hilariously bad at discussing something. It’s like a wheel that wobbles from its axis and the wheel quickly comes of the axis. It’s not always a bad thing, some threads are just that, casual.

If the purpose for you is to get a dopamine hit and not true interest (exaggerating here) it might tune you out from the matter at hand.

For me it is the aspect of a more eclectic crowd, with a host of opinions, yet often still respectful that I like. Most threads give insights that are lacking in more general, less well moderated places. You get more interesting in depth opinions and knowledge sharing what makes HN great to me.

>>prox+QE1
You know out of curiosity I just now logged into reddit for the first time in a while and made some posts on /r/changemymind just to see if I could get some good debate, and I don't know if it was always like that over there and I just didn't realize it (bringing that type of rhetoric here might be why i'm rate limited on HN lol), or if it just got worse over the last year of my "reddit break," but holy shit is it WAY better over here. I was very skeptical when people describe HN as "insightful" or "well moderated" or "in depth" but compared to other places on the internet it's certainly true.

Dare I venture back to 4chan and see how my detoxxed brain sees it now...

>>komali+I52
My gauge is how predictable it is - I can predict how a Reddit thread will go 90% of the time it seems, maybe even a 4chan thread 80% of the time.

The value of a community is in the unpredictability and HN has a good percentage of that, and I can choose to ignore the threads that will be predictable (though it can be fun to read them sometimes).

>>bombca+Qg2
That’s mostly the default subs tho, like worldnews, funny and so on. The first three comments are whatever the previous three comments where in the previous thread on the same topic. Subs like r/askhistorians has a brutal moderation where the only parent comments are well sourced informed ones.

But in general I agree on its predictability.