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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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 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.
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.)
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.