I'm not sure why you believe your comment would get voted down.
http://news.ycombinator.com/lists
And, yes, as a member of the less-than-one-year-old group, I'm encouraged to see that classic tastes from when I first started lurking here are still reflected in current voting up to the main page.
[0] but restricted to a certain set of allowable symbols
In all honesty, there really isn't much going on in the way of external-to-hacking events in the world right now.
EDIT: It would be interesting to see this comparison in an alternate reality where we could downvote articles. I would bet that you would see more variation between newer and older accounts.
Maybe since I'm not a newbie on HN anymore I'm remembering through rose-tinted glasses and yelling at the kids to get off my lawn.
The things I care about are programming tips, new software, javascript/python/ruby/etc specific articles, new startup companies. There seems to be a lot less of this kind of content and more general tech news, which I can read at any number of other sites.
I don't care about business stories(other than those related to startups) and rumors Techcrunch has started about something.
On the plus side, the discussions that happen in Comments are definitely still good. I would be great if there was a way to get easier access to the comments than the ity-bity link we have now.
http://hackernewsrss.appspot.com/downloadrss
it has around 60% less articles. add to ur feed readers if you find it useful.
Payperpost, astroturfing and mob-voting are the worse diseases of news aggregators.
It's not that different a list today, but over time it might be nice to have the option.
or
Sri Lanka's government shelling a refugee camp containing rebel fighters despite a no artillery pledge?
I don't know why some people here rag on new users so hard: everytime I've encountered a particularly low quality submission or comment it was from a 100+ day account.
As a quick & dirty test, can I see "HN Frontpage ranked using only votes from accounts over 2 years old"?
Can you turn this into a feature, with a user-specified time period? -- would be an awesome filter to view HN by and to see, if, over a period of time there is any difference in quality?
Thanks very much!
I'm not sure if this measure means much... with no downvotes, if quality goes down, "classic users" will simply vote less often. That would be a decently interesting statistic: (page views)/(story votes) over the lifetime of older accounts. Not sure if that data is still available, though.
On a semi-related note, it would be neat to keep a history of the front page at regularly sampled intervals (say every year, starting at year 1) and see how the two measurements diverge over time.
Votes from high karma users could boost stories more than low karma users. Is there any way to downvote a story?
EDIT: By the way, the lack of downvoting means that posting any article that isn't so off-topic as to get flagged and removed is free karma. I've been working hard to get to the 100 karma so I can downvote and I'm still only at 78, and I'm thinking maybe it's because I don't submit articles.
Also, do accounts with higher karma boost up a story more?
Im wondering if the reason why the two lists are very similar is that the old users inherently have a high weight (in terms of number of accounts and karma power) on the normal page already.
Come with an open mind and have fun if there's interesting stuff that day. Get back to work if there's not. Either way, you win.
Could the front page 'merit' be more or less ~accurately~ described via continuous function?
for (User user : item.up_voters) merit += user.life_span_in_months/12;
for (User user : item.down_voters) merit -= user.life_span_in_months/12;
I don't come to HN to read the news nor should HN be reporting the news to me, I come here because it's a community that is grounded in doing new things and showing me what these new things can do.
This would limit "new" items to your hacker news "start class", which may make the content more relevant.
PS: Even just limiting sorting to the top 1000 overall stories and top 1000 new stories could be a major speed bump.
I see your point about speed, but I think that there are a bunch of shortcuts you can take (like your top 1k idea) that mitigate the issue, and if it is a feature you can switch off if you'd prefer to just go fast with the hard-coded, then ...
And FWIW, I've managed to get 550+ karma without submitting any stories and only posting (what I hope turns are) interesting comments. So don't think you have to submit stories to get karma.
Although it might be fun to create HN/postmodern where only votes from accounts less than a year old are counted, and compare that to classic?
To test this possibility, randomly reserve some of the places on the front page for new stories (perhaps in the bottom half). Then more people would be looking at and potentially upvoting the good stories from the new page.
you shall learn the efficiency of HN soon enough ;)
The most significant difference I see between 'classic' and 'normal' is the article entitled "First Steps Towards Post scarcity" is 28 on classic, but 13 on normal. Could be there had to be some difference and its random, but I generally find articles on this topic pretty light on quality thinking.
But here's my standing.I have been "loitering" here since the early days. I must have registered with atleast four userids..AND used always mess up my password.
Most recent one - even the openid auth - didn't work for a while(it works now!). I created the one I am using now couple of months back only to be treated as an outcast.
Is there a way to synch my accounts? (even a forget password feature would be helpful)
Maybe its me, but I've found a lot more comments within the past fortnight or so grating on me than previously. Remarkably, every time I checked the submitter, they'd been on Hacker News for about a year and a half at least. And by grating I basically mean rude and unhelpful.
Taking the interest forumula "Pe^(tr)", and substituting might yield something like:
P = 1, -1, it is the single up/down vote
t = user life span in years
r = karma/submissions (karma_density)
for (user:item.voters) item.merit += (sign_of_vote)e^((user.life_span/12)(user.karma/user.submissions))
A number however is far more opaque, because it masks two different factors: the number of people voting, and the assigned weight of those people. For a given number, it is impossible (or at least difficult) to tell the relative importance of each factor.
Edit: This got me thinking: couldn't 'karma'-based voting help prevent the erosion that affects many other sites? If those dedicated members have high rank, there is a switching cost to joining another site, because they lose that elevated weight. That keeps them "in the game", whereas many other similar sites have lost the original members as average quality declined, which began a feedback loop of poorer quality.
Then, if elevated weight gives those users greater influence, the original character of the site is preserved because (1) the original users don't leave and (2) those users exert great influence on the site.
The only weakness is preventing low quality posters gaining karma weight through the voting of other low quality posters, thereby undermining the quality of high-karma users.
(p - 1) / (t + 2)^1.5
[EDIT] Ok, so while I'm here, in this meta-HN of a thread, I'm going to ask a question that might seem like absolute bat-shit:
What is the running-total (summation) of all our Karma as users of HN?
I've also twice noticed the same usernames on reddit and HN - and their comments on reddit are more helpful and intelligent than here... Though not a conclusive sample size, it does make me think that reddit's concentration of communities (with subreddits), and the ability to easily skip bad comments (with collapsing [-]) seems to be working.
But I find the stories submitted here are better than on reddit.
Recent comments tend not to collaborate with the article - they aren't filling in gaps, adding further instances, extending the concept; discussing where the article is clear or unclear; correct or incorrect. And they are neither respectful nor kindly. They don't build on, or with, the article to create something better.
Instead, comments compete with the article - they find spelling errors, logic errors, or denounce the article in a shallow, general, global and vague way, often labeling it with connotational language. They aren't trying to build value, but destroy it.
The only criticism I enjoy reading is what you'd get from a kind and wise mentor. If someone hates an article, I'd prefer it if they just ignored it.
But I can't make them do that - so, recently I've taken to ignoring the comments here, and going direct to the article to make up my own mind.
More seriously: I'd like to specify only a comparision function.
Does this mean the problem at core could be with submissions and the moment it floats up to page 1 - which it would with just > 4 points in 3-4 hrs it gets reassuring votes even from old-timers.
PG, You should dig out the data on how lazy old-timers are getting in digging out material for HN front page :)
Of course, that would change the entire way votes are recorded (most likely), but it would allow us to see how far past the front page people actually look.
In my two decades online, I've found that those who attack others to try and "clean up" a news group actually end up trashing it with noise and junk. (In fact, I have been guilty of this as well.) Much better for everyone to act respectfully.
I read it as you adding something to the discussion.
But I have noticed that certain subjects tend to rile people up - I think it's to do with categorizing people, almost like an -ism (as in racism or sexism). PC/mac is one of these; but there's also vi/emacs, Windows/Linux, programming languages, and even Holden/Ford (apparently). The so-called religious wars, that tend to bring out emotions. Probably because people identify with the product, and so any perceived slight is taken as a personal attack, therefore there's a wish to defend against it or to counter-attack, grabbing whatever means are available.
I've noticed that I've strayed into the area myself: without realizing it, I've used Mac/PC to make a point (about integrated hardware/software vs. modular components - the former is needed in the earlier years. It's an idea from Clayton Christianson, of the innovator's dilemma fame.) I wasn't attacked, but I got some odd responses... eventually I realized that it's just a touchy subject. Like sex, religion and politics.
I think you might have caused offense with the earlier part of your comment, where you seem to be implying that Mac purchasers lack "the wherewithal to tell the difference." I can see that causing offense, even though you are a Mac user yourself, and you intended it in a neutral way. And that's coming from me, who's not a Mac user.
I agree that the denotation of the statement is neutral - the same statement is true of evaluating professional work in general: dentists, surgeons, barristers, plumbers, car repairers, etc... and of course coding (for the non-coder.) How do you know if you are being ripped off? You don't.
But your point is well taken. Most people react first with their stomachs, genitals, and fists before their brains. I'm starting to hate them. I suspect they are subject to the same foibles as the ones who treat Asians like cartoons and doormats.
There's also: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=589200
I only mention these two links because I've started trying to apply them to myself, and they seem to be helping. When people react badly, I first think "it's not me", "this is a one-off" and "it's only in this specific circumstance". That helps me to be "liberal in how I listen" by defusing my anger/judgmentalism. Then I try to be "strict in how I speak" by being factual (this is hard, but I can do it) and warmly/kindly (I'm not so good at this part - but that's how I'd like them and me to be.)
BTW: I think you make your point about consumers very clear in the above - it wasn't as clear before. hmmmm... maybe explicitly mentioning "in general" (as you do here) is a shortcut to avoiding people taking things personally, if one senses they might. I recall in Ben Franklin's autobiography, he reinvented his whole style of expression to be less confrontation, to "it may be so", "it appears to be" and such like, as he was getting in too many duels (a.k.a. flame wars?)