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To Paul Graham
647 points by Ixiaus on June 2, 2010 | hide | past | favorite | 152 comments
I recently read a short blog article talking about the doom of Digg and the final paragraph caught my eye:

But Digg is in a deadly, unrecoverable tail spin. The fact is, people -- real people -- are beginning to tire. Submit this, upload that, vote on this, "like" that, be my "friend", check in here, suggest this, retweet that ... there's already so much to do. The only thing left to "Digg" is a grave.

It is, precisely, the simplicity and minimalism of Hacker News' feature set that keeps it usable for everyday, busy, -- real people --. Obviously, the culture on Hacker News keeps submissions and comments in check, but that culture would not exist if HN were trying to become a social network for entrepreneurs.

Your continued interaction and consistent fine-tuning makes this a place that I like to come back to. There is a certain social satisfaction with knowing that one is a part of a community in which the creator is still a participant.

I know you are cognizant of what makes this community tick; I also realize it wouldn't be what it is today if your intentions hadn't been clear (and they obviously are) - so I didn't need to say this, but I did want to say this: thank you.



Thanks very much. I don't think it's really HN's features or lack of them is the attraction for most users though, but the quality of the submissions and comments. So thank you guys.

Ironically I've been thinking of adding some variant of following as a way to deal with the increasing volume of comments. I just haven't had time to yet.

I did recently (about 3 weeks ago) tweak the algorithm for ranking comments, and that has had a noticeable effect. Previously it was the same as the one for ranking frontpage stories. Now it also considers among other things the average comment score of the submitter. With any luck this will keep HN poised in its usual position mid-way over the shark for another 6 months.


Now it also considers among other things the average comment score of the submitter.

Does this create a rich-get-richer type scenario, where users with high averages get more exposure, thus leading to higher averages?


You can check by looking at the average comment scores on http://news.ycombinator.com/leaders (the second column). They haven't changed much as far as I can tell.


They probably wouldn't change much if the commenter had a long history to be averaged in. You'd want to look at the delta of the delta (2nd order stats) to see if any noticeable effect was occurring.


IIRC averages are calculated over a set of your most recent posts - so it can go up or down quite quickly depending on your current comment quality.


I wasn't aware it was a sliding window. In that case the method Paul mentioned is probably a good enough solution.


What is your average comment score? Any exception for your account? I don't think there needs to be one, just curious.


http://top.searchyc.com/users_by_average_points_per_comment

http://searchyc.com/pg

(you will notice the numbers are different on the HN leaders page for people, I think perhaps searchyc is an all-time average?)


SearchYC seems to be off on its karma counts--some of my comments, HN and SYC disagree on the score.


10.2 as of now. No, the ranking algorithm treats every account the same.


http://i.imgur.com/UKLMx.png


Do you really believe I'm lying?

Like the frontpage ranking algorithm, the comment ranking algorithm also considers recency.


"rich-get-richer"

An alternative way to think about it is that it adds more stability to the system, for better or for worse.


It might. But that's only an issue if the rich don't deserve to get rich.


Hold on, that begs the question -- how do we know who deserves? that is the problem.

The whole thing has a circular dependency: if ranking acts as a filter, then higher rank means more readers, and that in turn means more upvotes and so a higher ranking. It is probably not so much the top being undeserving, but that deserving stuff gets missed.

This seems to be a fundamental weakness in all similar 'ranking' systems, but I am not sure of the full character and implications...

(There is certainly a substantial component of being an automated system of 'social-proof'. And the filtering can never be entirely effective: if you show everyone only the good stuff, the filtering would not get done at all.)


The advantage here is that pg is giving an advantage to high averages, not high point totals. So there's less incentive to be a reddit/digg style poweruser looking for one upvote on thousands of comments, and more incentive to say something truly insightful from time to time.


Alternative, it keeps away those who deserve to get rich but cannot overcome the artificial market barriers.


Exactly, in this, the rich only get richer if they continue posting valid comments.

Otherwise they get poor real fast.


No, they get poor based on how many previous comments are being averaged in.

So someone with a huge number of highly rated comments, could make a lot of dumb comments before it started hurting them.

I'm sure pg will come up with an appropriate formula.


boobie testucles boobie testucles boobie testucles One thing I like about hacker news is that some complete moron, like me, can write 'boobie testucles' in reply to the topmost comment, thus keeping the reply visible to all on top even if its voted down by the retarded masses who don't know what a good reply really is. Man, lisp sucks. Please vote my reply up, thanks!


You make a reasonable point in an, uh, illustrative way (they say "show, don't tell", right?). The vertical arrangement of comments by preorder traversal of comment trees gives some low quality comments "unfair" visibility. I don't see any solution (that maintains readability) apart from moving into a second or third dimension. The question is, is it a big enough problem to merit such a drastic response? Probably not.


Since this is a meta-thread anyway: have you considered something like a blacklist? That would give us a way to filter out those users who like to make bad puns or witty one-liners too much, and those users who too often make wildly incorrect claims.

This would still serve as a filter, but this wouldn't result in some kind of whitelist where you effectively only really notice the people you know you're going to agree with anyway. Whitelists encourage groupthink, and incorrectly penalize low-karma users. (Nobody is going to friend users who only occasionally comment even though the quality of their comments is really high.)

I prefer any solution that filters out the noise over any solution that gives emphasis to the opinions of popular users with high karma.


I wrote a small greasemonkey script for blacklisting, it definitely helps keep the site useful for me.

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/55745

I also second the suspicions about whitelisting being a desirable thing.


Though an interesting people list might be good - comments by people on the list are highlighted so you can spot them easier, this way you can choose the people whos comments you like to be highlighted. Coupled with a blacklist to hid (or make less obvious) the comments by people who you decide generally don't post interesting or useful comments could make dealing with large numbers of comments much much easier.

Thoughts?


That seems like a good idea.


There's a "Hacker Friends" chrome extension that does exactly this.

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/mkdhfabjcebcgnpg...


Sounds good, just added it. The script now offers white and black lists, where whitelisted users get an orange-highlighted username and blacklisted users get their comment text collapsed.


There's a Chrome extension for following, thanks to bkudria.

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/mkdhfabjcebcgnpg...


How about instead of average comment score, you consider average likelihood of quality, treating the score (or its log) as odds? That is, w=avg(score/(1+score)). That way a single popular comment won't dominate.


It appears he throws out the highest rated comment when computing the average. I assume that's because of what you're getting at: the distribution of comment scores tend to look like a power law, so the arithmetic mean of all the scores isn't really the right number to use.


Or just take the median.


Mr. Graham,

I think we all owe you a great deal of thanks for HN, and I certainly think that we may not share this sentiment enough. Thank you, Mr. Graham. Simplicity in design truly is elegance, and I feel that--sometimes--too much flashy Web 2.0-related cruft tends to distract from the content (as the submitter points out). Certainly the Twitters and Facebooks of today and tomorrow have their uses, but I'm not so sure it's a good thing for society at large that we're moving toward content consumption limited to 140 characters. Worse, when one is so distracted by the interface of a site like Digg--as the submitter mentioned with regards to votes and such--does the visitor cross a dangerous threshold between actually reading/enjoying the content or does it spiral downwards into some sort of meta-evaluation for pseudo-rewards instead of a truly rewarding and educational experience? Me, I think I'll stay here. I don't read news to be entertained.

For me, reading HN truly is a great joy to experience, and I know a great deal of that is in the community you have created. Whenever I click on "comments" from an article, I've grown to expect that I'm going to read through a meaningful chain of conversations and am far less likely to encounter something unpleasant. Aesthetics aside (and these certainly play a significant part of why I like HN--the simplicity is an amazing breath of fresh air), one of the the more qualitative reasons I find HN so much more appealing is the community. It has been my experience that comments generally don't devolve into flamewars, and it is delightful to see that disagreements here remain respectful and substantive. Perhaps part of this is precisely because of the simplicity: Those who come here expecting to be entertained go elsewhere; those who come here to browse meaningful submissions stay and contribute.

I was (and still am, I suppose) a long time reader of Slashdot, but I could never quite get interested in Digg and its kin; they're all effectively modern tabloids with over-sensationalized submissions (this includes Slashdot). HN is an altogether different beast, and it wasn't until about a year ago when a friend of mine directed me to something posted here. I was greatly astounded at the time that, in 2008-2009, there would exist a site that doesn't hide itself behind flashy UIs and simply delivers raw content, bottled at the source. What a breath of fresh air! Make no mistake about it: HN is deceptive. What it might lack in fanciful (and, IMO, obnoxious) features, it more than makes up for in its submissions. When I come here, I know that I'll immediately have access to meaningful content--I won't be distracted by fluff.

My only regret with regards to HN is that I didn't seen the site sooner!

Once again, thank you Mr. Graham.

-- A short-time reader of HN who truly wishes he'd experienced it much earlier on!


Oh please, stop the ass kissing already. A simple 'Thank you' would suffice.


Ha! I chuckled because I assumed he was making good-natured meta-humor about the rising levels of PG appreciation going on...

I guess what I like about HN is the high expectations it allows us to keep.


I wish I were that clever. Unfortunately, I'm too honest to be clever. ;)


What went through my mind as I read the submission and subsequently decided to write my own post was the realization of how much easier it is to say "this sucks, I hate it" than it is to say "thank you, I appreciate it." I also think it's important to enumerate what I happen to like about something, because I think it's important to encourage it.

Still, it's unfortunate that explaining why one happens to appreciate something like HN is considered "ass kissing" these days. My post wouldn't read any different even if Mr. Graham were someone completely different. I appreciate HN for what it is.

Posts like yours, sadly, give me pause for thought that perhaps I jumped the gun too early, but then I am reminded that certain subsets of the community generally frown upon verbose thank yous.

I'll be more cautious in the future with regards to my praise. Thanks for correcting me.


I wish pg was my Dad.


isn't this a less transparent version of the orange users experiment?


I think it isn't because it does not assign 'yellow stars' to users for being good boys, the sort order always was open to interpretation, if this one is less gameable than the previous one that would seem to be an improvement to me.

The problem I perceive is that average score does not say much about a specific comment being non-productive, so someone with a high average score could toss in some complete junk and get it sorted to the top in spite of better comments by average under producers further below.

I'd say that if it remains below the detection threshold it might be a net plus, if too many of such instances appear it might be a loss.


orange users experiment

Here is a link to the detailed thread about the experiment of putting user names of high-karma/comment users in orange,

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=467181

which as you'll see was a controversial experiment. (I post this link for the newer members of HN who weren't participating when the experiment was tried.)


The problem with orange users was that it divided the community into two camps. This doesn't have the same issue.


Closer to four -- "had orange" and "wanted orange" were independent booleans.


But, because they had stars, all the Star-Belly Sneetches Would brag, “We’re the best kind of Sneetch on the beaches.”

With their snoots in the air, they would sniff and they’d snort “We’ll have nothing to do with the Plain-Belly sort!”

And, whenever they met some, when they were out walking, They’d hike right on past them without even talking.


Kudos on sticking to the fundamentals. I especially love the login screen. Plain and simple. No eye distracting BS anywhere.


I imagine hn owes a lot of success to its simplicity.

I was always confused by slashdot's filters and the threads in almost every other forum, with Post #18 replying to Post #7 and Post #27 replying to Post #3, but only 10 posts visible per page. Busy people don't have the time to wade through stuff like that, so all you're left with are the trolls.

hn's nested threads built with <table> are so simple that they're brilliant. No horizontal scrolling, no flipping between pages, just click "reply" and you're good to go.

I have no idea how much time and effort pg puts into hn, but I'm sure it's nontrivial. Something as good as hn doesn't get that way purely organically. Also, I would guess that more of his energy goes into the software, not the site's output. Why deal with an issue once when you can build something that will deal with it forever?

It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway: thank you pg!


hn's nested threads built with <table> are so simple that they're brilliant. No horizontal scrolling, no flipping between pages, just click "reply" and you're good to go.

I don't think <table>s should get undue praise. With <div>s, the code would be easier to read mechanically (for manipulation with Greasemonkey, say) and even though there'd be a little more CSS, the page weight might be reduced a little (I'd have to make a mockup to be sure ;-))


I disagree. Tables are still the most reliable way to display content under nearly all circumstances (maybe less so on mobiles, but definitely on the desktop). They've been stable for years and years. I went through the hardcore standards phase where I thought it would be the death of my soul if I ever went back to using tables for layout, but then I read a great article (wish I had the link) that struck a chord with me. It said you don't have to avoid tables for certain small situations where it can save you a ton of time and a few headaches. I would never suggest doing a whole layout in tables, but I think the comments on HN are a good example of something that would have been a pain in the ass to get right across all browsers. Just use tables for layout if it actually makes sense and even then, ever so sparingly.


Yeah this could quickly devolve into a flame about divs vs tables. But divs I always saw as a step backwards in one aspect: programmer ease of use. In divs you have to spend time thinking about "float drop", doing math in your head, and getting all the columns to have the same height - things which "just work" in tables. It still surprises me sometimes how quickly they were adopted.


But divs I always saw as a step backwards in one aspect: programmer ease of use.

It's always a lot easier at first to overlook structure in your app/code/whatever. It's when you or others come to work with your code or extend it in some way (with Greasemonkey, say) that all the extra work comes along.

If you have to "spend time thinking about" writing tests, it takes longer to build the prototype of your software but.. that's not a particularly good rationale for not using tests (though it is still a rationale, of course). Same goes for semantic markup in my book.


>. It said you don't have to avoid tables for certain small situations where it can save you a ton of time and a few headaches.

I am not a front end developer, but I agree to the philosophy to an extent in terms of generic software development.

As software developers, our job is not to thrive for the perfect solution, but writing maintainable, code that we ship. I understand that many people (probably not HN users) take "real artists ship", as an excuse to put ugly unmanageable "hack", which I am not supporting either (infact I think I would be one of the last guys to compromise of code quality), but truth of the matter is, we live in an non-ideal-finite-time-full-of-deadline world, and as every thing has a cost-to-benefit ratio (short and long term). I think as software developers, its a part of out job to judge that cost-to-benefit ratio and if the cost starts to become much for the benefit offered, its time to rethink about software puritanism.


Tables are still the most reliable way to display content under nearly all circumstances (maybe less so on mobiles, but definitely on the desktop).

I don't think that's been true for several years.


Internet Explorer pretty much guarantees that my statement is true.


Your statement pretty much guarantees that I wouldn't want you writing my view layer.


Since you specialize in HTML5, why would you need me to write your view layer?


Since you would shrink from using CSS to mark up the comments on this site (child's play), I can't think of a reason.


I didn't say that I would, actually. I was defending the decision made by the author of this site. I've been defending practicality over spending a lot of one's time trying to get certain kinds of layout elements working in all browsers across the board. If you cannot appreciate that then let's just agree to disagree.


To anyone that is interested, I found that article I was talking about. http://www.zurb.com/article/206/tables-not-as-evil-as-you-th...


I actually think the best way to display these types of comments is with nested UL/LI's. It makes it really easy to call a recursive function to write out the comments then adjust the indentation with CSS. For my mobile HN site, I do just that. From there, it was trivial to add in the ability to collapse and expand comments. For example, view this page through my reader (It's meant for mobile phones):

http://toadjaw.com/hn/comments/1398250


^^ THIS. I love it when sites use DIVs because it makes much much easier to chop them up and display them the way I want to by using Stylish or GreaseMonkey. The browser is a customizable viewer...your stylesheet is just a suggestion.


If you use Selector Gadget - http://www.selectorgadget.com/ - it's possible to divine pretty horrible and complex CSS and XPath matches for things on Hacker News but.. they're far from entirely reliable. A lot of ugly TABLE TD:nth-child(5) stuff..


Don't unordered lists make more sense than divs in this case?


dl might make more sense here---meta information about the post in a dt and the post itself in a dd.


Although I don't think a post would be considered the term and the responses the definition.


<div>'s might make sense from a purist's point of view or even from a experienced web dev's point of view. But I think, hn's changes have been based on pragmatism. So tables could be one of that. I remember pg saying he left out search feature saying google does a good job of that.


Hacker News is the craigslist of Social News sites.


But I hate using craigslist. I only use it because I have to.


But I hate using craigslist. I only use it because I have to.

Now, Thats some value creation.


What do you hate about it?


I hate apartment search. It's so so painful. Their data model is all wrong.

Location is the most important thing about an apartment in my opinion. That should be the primary method by which you search. And they've tried, but you end up searching within these broad "neighborhoods" in the bigger US cities. And a lot of people mischaracterize their apartment's location in order to make it seem nicer or whatever.

Why is craigslist wasting my time? Require posters to put in the actual address or at least an intersection for their apartment. Then show me the postings on a map. Something like hotpads.com works really well for me, but they don't have the volume that craigslist does, so I'm stuck.


Check out padmapper.com does a nice maps mashup of craigslist plus other sources. May still not work if the data in your city is too poor, but works great for me.


Heh thanks for the plug. And to grandparent, PadMapper basically strips away all the listings which don't have an address, which incidentally gets rid of a lot of the spam.


hn owes a lot of it's success to it's small audience. simply put, this site would go down in flames fast if it attracted a larger crowd. all of the complex facilities of a site like digg or slashdot come from trying bubble up relevant content to a wide audience


That nails it exactly, when slashdot and digg were small they felt just like HN does today (well, maybe digg not, but reddit certainly did). Digg always was more mainstream oriented.

The biggest turn-off for me on digg is not so much the complexity of the site but the level of the discussion.


To be fair, it's possible to build a fairly good community in a smaller subreddit. The larger ones have those problems, but it seems like most small sized subreddits actually work out pretty well.

Still, I find myself gradually spending more and more time here and less and less time and reddit. I think if I didn't mod a few subreddits there, I'd pretty much have solely switched to HN.


That's probably true, and in fact underscores the point even further, smaller == better.


I'd say, small is good. Because smaller might lead to too small.


I don't know I still find it a bit confusing. Read a thread and come back to it a few hours latter. The vote rearranging makes it feel like an entirely new thread with some deja vu thrown in especially when people reply at the wrong level either to defeat reply aging or just by mistake.


I like the simple layout, but sometimes I wish I could minimize threads (kinda like how Reddit does it)


If HN ever got as large as digg it would suffer from much of the problems that digg has, and you will not be able to remedy those by 'staying simple'.

Digg is complex because it is that large, and I think that if HN ever got that large it would start to suffer in much the same ways. HN is not so much a reflection of the person that built it (though that definitely does help) as it is a reflection of the people that participate here.

If and when HN gets to the size of digg and it retains its character it will have broken the pattern that any social news site has so far exhibited, until then the jury is out.


As long as this document retains the respect of the majority of the users: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html HN will thrive. It's the single best set of "social news" community guidelines I've read.

The triumph of HN has been in attracting an initial audience that agrees with the spirit of that document, and in their subtly but firmly encouraging its adherence in newcomers.

The character of a community is a tricky thing to build and maintain. A community can easily veer into the superficial and glib territory of Digg, the self-referential and jaded territory of Slashdot, or even the sycophantic territory of Wikipedia. HN has been quite fortunate.


> the self-referential and jaded territory of Slashdot, or even the sycophantic territory of Wikipedia

In this thread that's richly ironic.

It's about as self-referential and sycophantic as I've ever seen here.


Your criticism is fair, but I don't think it really compares.

Nowhere in this thread is anyone riffing on in-joke memes a la Slashdot, nor is anyone attempting to achieve advancement in rank like at Wikipedia.

There is plenty of self-reference here but it's purely practical, and certainly there's a bit of sycophantic behavior, but what does anyone stand to gain by it at HN? Honestly telling PG you like his site just makes both of you feel good, unlike pretending to like a high-ranking Wikipedia admin in hopes of getting a promotion next round.

Either way, I'd be inclined to agree that love-fests like this aren't particularly useful to the HN community. But they happen, and occasional ones are a good sign (and maybe over-frequent ones are a bad sign).


As someone who recently discovered HN as an alternative to digg/reddit I am thankful as well.

Things I love: 1) People downvote trolling and negative/witty comments 2) The interface gets out of your way 3) It updates constantly 4) The content is exactly what I'm looking for... and exactly what I couldn't find anywhere else 5) People are genuinely here to help. I am eagerly anticipating launching my startup so I can post an "Ask HN: Review my launch" here!

Ok I wanted it to be 'three things I like' but it turned into 5 :) Thanks to Paul and the community!


Yeah, but they need to make votes non permanent. It's a crapshoot if you'll hit the up or down arrow on a mobile device or iPad when you try to rate stuff.


I like the permanence, because sometimes I upvote an insightful comment, then read an insightful reply and upvote it too. I think if votes were impermanent, I might be more tempted to null or downvote the original point if the second one is better - not because of evil, just because of the natural human desire to be very consistent. So I like the permanence thing...

...but I understand the misclicks. Maybe an "undo" button for a short time, like 10 seconds or until your next click that just nulls your vote?


" I might be more tempted to null or downvote the original point if the second one is better"

Can't both comments be good?


Agreed. I upvote contradictory comments all the time. I don't see it as lacking consistency; I'm voting for quality and thought, not necessarily "right" opinions.


I'm voting for quality and thought, not necessarily "right" opinions

Then you are doing it right.


I almost wanted to upvote this, but I might have regretted it, so I didn't.


Stack Overflow has an expiring undo and it seems to be a good compromise.


I can see why they are permanent; it makes your votes feel like they mean something. But please, can we at least get an allotted number of "vote revokes" per week or something? I agree, it's too easy to misclick on an arrow on a touchscreen, and there's nothing that can be done.


Better & simpler solution: Bigger buttons on touchscreen devices, preventing mis-clicks in the first place


I've often thought the same.

This should be easy as a greasemonkey script to save other people having to make changes to support it.

---------------

EDIT: Out of curiosity I made up a javascript bookmarklet that seems to do the trick... upsize all the page's upvotes to 30x30

  javascript:{im=document.images;iml=im.length;for(i=0;i<iml;i++) {if(im[i].src=="http://ycombinator.com/images/grayarrow.gif"){im[i].width="30";im[i].height="30" } } alert("Done"); void(null);}
Cut and paste that into your browser URL bar, or bookmark etc. It's easy to validate by eye, for the worried


The issue is that it doesn't work on MOBILE devices, i.e. things without greasemonkey.


Even better solution: separate the up and down arrows:

[up] 7 points [down] by alanh 35 minutes ago | link | parent | flag


Or just use links instead of arrows:

4 points by alanh 18 minutes ago | link | parent | flag | upvote | downvote


On the iPad or iPhone, just zoom in.


This is definitely the answer :)


Agreed. I'd be ok with, after voting, a new link appended to the status line (1 point by so-and-so...) that just undoes your vote. Even if that is permanent (eg, can't vote again).


Call it "abstain."


Here's what it looks like in the iPhone app I built: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4595/hn-vote.png

You can see a demo video of the app here: http://michaelgrinich.com/hackernews/


Have you made an iPad version yet?


I've been working on it for the past few weeks. The challenge is in updating the Three20 framework to support iPad.


off-topic: please, please add Instapaper support to your already very good app.


Or could simply modifying the UI solve this problem? Putting the downvote arrow to the right of a news item (maybe just on mobile devices) would prevent fat-fingering, and then votes can remain permanent.


Or could simply not feeling guilty solve this problem? The up/downvotes are to give an aggregate view of the community response to a comment, not to give a precision karma score.


One thing that is different here is that this site does not need to generate (ad/any) revenue, so many of the irritating things that will be common in other forums will be absent here.


What's interesting, is that Hacker News does generate revenue in a very indirect way. By cultivating a hacker community around his early stage investment company he is ensuring there will always be top-notch thinkers and doers participating in the niche he has created. Whether this was intentional or not, I don't know, but it works well for both parties: he has a thriving community of leading edge people, and the people have a leading edge outlet. It's a well balanced form of co-creation.


That's an extremely good point you are making, effectively YC can afford to subsidize HN because of the fact that they make their money in a way that does not require pestering the users of the site.

I'm pretty sure that eventually many more really successful websites will find a way to adopt a model like that, it really is one of the best ways to marry a happy users to commerce, find some side-channel that you can exploit.

Most websites think that the 'data' they have on their users is the marketable good, google has often been said to see you, their user as the end-product. YC does it different, they see a subset of the users as the raw material to drive their bottom line, the rest are along for the ride.

It's a much more direct version of what FB, google and so on do, and it is much better imo because it is more honest and transparent.


Will find? The crazyness about "social media" is exactly that, luring users around your product/brand.


Not really, in those cases the 'product' is the data about the users, not the actual engagement of the users to create value outside of the forum where the interaction normally takes place.

It's hard to put the difference any clearer than that, but YC engages a small subset of their users in activities that they are peripherally engaged in on the forum. Other 'social' sites sell their users data wholesale, that's a completely different kettle of fish.

Most of the users on HN are not engaged in the revenue stream of YC, directly or indirectly whereas almost all the users of other social sites are directly involved in the revenue stream.


There are several websites calling for user engagement where the money source is not user data. It's about "creating a community" around your product.

I can assure you, in publicity and marketing circles, when social media is mentioned it is precisely to attract consumers for your product.

The type of interaction between HN and YC is not new. It's just hard to replicate. Companies are trying this since the dawn of the internet. Think about what is the forum on the World of Warcraft website. The social media craze is an attempt to apply this community feeling to other markets.


I wonder what it says about the human psychology that people feel that they "have to" digg, submit, friend, comment, etc. You can use Digg just like you use HN - just browse for articles, read them, perhaps comment or not. I always found this interesting when points or achievements were in a game - there is a subset of people who feel that they "have to" do those things, even if they are not fun and don't really want to. They get mad at the designers for making things less fun when the entire thing is optional even to the general gameplay of the core game.

Actually the more I think of it, the friend system is the only thing that HN doesn't have that Digg has. Or maybe I just haven't looked that closely when I visit Digg lately.


I believe this is the blog post which the original poster refers to:

Digg is deadd

http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2...


Thanks, I should have referenced the original post I derived that quote from (it slipped my mind).


This level of ass kissing makes me want to puke.


I have to agree, actually. More to the point, this submission violates both the written and unspoken rules of submissions here: "Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something", and the unspoken rule that content-less submissions are generally frowned upon.

This is something that could have been equally effective as a brief email to pg. As the current top-ranked post here, it's kind of ... masturbatory.


I up voted you because you're correct. It would have easily sufficed as an email to PG.

However, the impact of appreciating something and having communal pooling of appreciation affirms the intent. I want HN to remain what it is and I did not want to be "just another email" in PG's inbox; I suppose by submitting this in the first place I contributed to "what HN is not" but I do still feel that my submission was appropriate in the sense that my intent was an intelligent choice and not a "masturbatory" choice.


> However, the impact of appreciating something and having communal pooling of appreciation affirms the intent. I want HN to remain what it is and I did not want to be "just another email" in PG's inbox

This is an incredibly convoluted explanation of what can simply be called grandstanding. I appreciate your intent, but please - we all want HN to remain what it is. If your intent was to thank pg, email him. If your intent was to communicate your want for HN to stay the same - do so when there is some threat to what we hold valuable. Otherwise: post intelligent replies, downvote trolls and submit the occasional illuminating article. Threads like this (and others like it) do no good for any of your stated aims.


It's not the single odd submission that comes up that is really what offends, it's more of the slippery slope it invites that historically can overwhelm the quality of popular websites. Take the frequency of outlier commentary and multiply it by the internet and you get trouble.

It can be curbed with a culture of self moderation, it can be curbed with enforced rules and other barriers, a good early example of this is Something Awful's combination of introducing a registration fee along with a reputation for banning users who posted crap. It's survived through the years and I'd venture this was a factor.

But the point is if your site becomes highly popular there will always be the risk of drowning under a low signal:noise ratio. Hence the sensitivity to posts like this here because <asskissing>the HN crowd as a whole has a lot of experience with this phenomenom</asskissing>.


However, the impact of appreciating something and having communal pooling of appreciation affirms the intent ...

While I also like the same HN features you like, I didn't upvote your post because it just felt too obsequious.


I think there is a defined line between obsequiousness and appreciation. I feel the tone of my post actually leaned on the side of appreciation than it did "obedient or servile". I suppose that any sort of "Thank you" statement could be taken for fawning, particularly in a community that values a karmic rating system; as I said in my reply above, I still think my post was submitted with a clear and intelligent choice.


And I guess a lot of folks agreed with you, as your post is at 251 points and counting.


Agreed as well; HN has a "fourth wall" in a sense - meta posts are discouraged where possible.

This is the very definition of a meta post (and from a personal perspective I dislike the fawning tone too)


> This is something that could have been equally effective as a brief email to pg. As the current top-ranked post here, it's kind of ... masturbatory.

Disagree - I think this thread will be far more well-read than the site guidelines by new members and will show them why we love this place and why we want to preserve it.

Nobody wants a post like on the frong page every week, but once per six months or a year is probably good for the community.


They think the community is great but HNers aren't just saying it's great, they are saying why. I see this as inductive form of learning, we are trying to ascertain what goes into making an excellent community.


I don't know what's worse--meta-posts about how HN is dying, or self-congratulatory meta-posts like this. But if you have one, it helps to balance it out with the other.


I think the fact that my comment didnt get downmodded out of existence shows how cool HN is. Nonetheless, the forum shouldnt (routinely?) engage in self-congradulatory homages to PG.


Perhaps audience curation is a big factor in HN's success? HN attracts a very select band of people. I wouldn't say the same thing about Digg or Reddit (perhaps they were the same when smaller, I never used them). Hacker News, by virtue of its name, reputation, and association with YC is not open (not in the literal sense) to anyone and everyone willing to participate.

This, IMO, keeps the quality of posts and comments high and in a way, prevents it from going "mainstream".


Hmm.. it might not be "mainstream" yet (and I hope it remains selective).. however, I'm reminded of Groucho Marx's quote: "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member" ...

I used to participate on Slashdot actively, I'm a programmer, yet I've never seen a line of Lisp so far, nor started a Startup - and I saw comments from "old-timers" that said they weren't as interested in some of the kind of articles that interest me and would rather HN had stayed focused entirely on startups and hacking.

Does that mean HN has gone "mainstream"? I don't know. But it's not as select as it used to be :) (and I hope it's a good thing)


It's worth noting that hn doesn't aspire to profitability via advertising - pg doesn't have to worry about things like "stickiness" and "reach".

So yes - hn is a great service to the community.


This seems like as good a place as any to ask this: Can only some people down vote? B/c I have seen posts with negative scores and as I am only allowed to up vote, I have wondered how someone gets a negative score next to a comment?


i'll answer this, although this probably isn't a good place to have asked.

HN is filled with karma-based features. one of those is down-voting. you're not given access to down-voting comments until you reach a certain level of karma yourself.

if you've contributed enough to the community to reach a certain karma score, then you are trusted with more features.

see: http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html


According to the FAQ (http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html):

> Why don't I see down arrows?

> There are no down arrows on submissions. They only appear on comments after users reach a certain karma threshold.


Users with points 200+ can downvote.


You are correct. When you reach a certain karma level, you gain the ability to downvote comments to a threshold.


When you participate enough with quality articles and comments (measured with upvotes) you get a higher karma and at some point this will grant you the ability to downvote.

I am mostly passively participating here (although I see myself commenting and submitting a bit more now) so I didn't reach such a karma yet...


I'm another one of the mostly passive readers of the site, mostly because I'm teaching myself to program, rather than actually being a programmer.

HN has raised my awareness, made me more thoughtful about how and what I actually think about things (part of the passivity comes from the idea that any sloppy thought will be immediately shot down (rightfully so)), and overall contributed to an ongoing desire to be a larger part of the overall tech community online.

Thanks to PG (whose essays I often reread -"Keep Your Identity Small" is one I constantly refer to other people - for HN and providing this nonname wannabe programmer a place to learn. And to learn to think. Thank you, PG.


> (part of the passivity comes from the idea that any sloppy thought will be immediately shot down (rightfully so))

You can still make a meaningful contribution by asking questions, if you want to.


Only once one gets over a certain karma threshold can they downvote.


Thanks Everybody!


Sorry if this wasn't the right place to ask. I am really proud to be part of such a unique community.


It's not only the simplicity but also the purpose. HN gathers people with similar objectives and interest. Designers and developers who want to experiment with the new technologies and create and share there own business.


It's not the interface or features - Hacker News stays interesting by being mostly hacker news. It serves its niche well.


this is gold: "the simplicity and minimalism of Hacker News' feature set that keeps it usable for everyday, busy, -- real people --"

Agreed.


HN has a secret weapon. If it ever gets too Digg-like, we can always unleash Operation Erlang II: Electric Boogaloo.


Or the doom or Reddit. Sugary one-note posts that are just visual jokes or one persons attempt to get another's attention. cough

Anyhow, I just hope posts about "do you hate this" start rising to the top of HN.


I guess the success of "hacker news" is largely due to:

1. the name "hacker news" is a cool name 2. simple hacker-friendly web interface w/o ads.


downvote please


Hear hear.


I almost love HN.

(will remove `almost` if they remove table layout)


How does the layout have any bearing on whether or not you enjoy the website, especially when dealing with a website like HN that is basically in tabular form?

I don't know, so if there is actually a good reason, I would love to hear it!




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