HN Explorer

Too much noise in HN? (Open question)

31 points by toto ↗ HN
Hi all,

I have been a RSS subscriber for a long. I love HN but I have to admit that I get a little frustrated by the increasing percentage of noise. Especially by off-topic links.

I spend now too much time sorting useless stuff (for my needs) for reading a few really good links.

Do you also think there is too much noise?

If many agree, maybe it will be a signal that it is now time to add some categories/filters. :)

Thanks.

67 comments

[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 136 ms ] thread
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rms
There is more noise by quantity because there are more links than ever, but the average quality hasn't gone down. It only seems like it sometimes, because the site has good and bad days.

Also, if you just want programming links, read http://hackerhackernews.com/. The topic here is much broader than only technical things.

tcoffeep
It hasn't been updated since July 7th. Unless nothing else that's been up lately has been about programming...
iamwil
When there are slow news days, the front page tends to fill with dribble. Sometimes that gets people to submit better stuff, so it balances itself out.
321abc
I think there's definitely a lot of noise. Having categories (or tags) would be a good aid to sorting through it all.
Rickasaurus
Oh please don't let this turn into reddit.
321abc
It's not tags which would turn HN in to Reddit. It's the community. If HN's community was identical to that of Reddit, HN would turn in to Reddit (minus the tags). But HN's community is not the same as Reddit, which is why the articles which are submitted and upvoted on HN generally differ from Reddit (with some overlap, of course).

I don't see how not having tags helps anything or anyone. It just keeps the article space flat instead of organized by topic.

Of course, the articles still have different topics. They're just not easily distinguishable from one another by automated means.

Radix
HN is more like a subreddit than reddit itself. Adding tags would allow the original Startup News users to sequester themselves into the article threads they enjoyed, while new people would join the community unnoticed and uninitiated. Eventually the front page would boil over with TechCrunch and Apple gossip.

Tags are bad because keeping the article space flat keeps out people with only marginally similar interests.

321abc
The question is, how much are the original Startup News users doing to keep the site pure? Clearly not enough, or this particular thread would have never been started.

The article space is flat right now, but that hasn't been enough to keep the site pure either.

I think the battle for purity has already been lost. Now it's just a question of whether the site is going to be rendered useless because the number of submissions is going to be too great to slog through with a flat article space, or if it's going to be made manageable with tags.

TallGuyShort
By the way, polls are officially supported - it will add options to the header of your post that people can select of - independent of any comments or replies to thread, or links to your own karma. Details are here: http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html (See March 1st, "Polls") - I do not know if the 200-karma threshold is still in effect
toto
"Sorry, you need 20 karma to create a poll." :) I have... 1.. :) I created a new "linked" account.
travisjeffery
I was going to comment last night on the post on how to sleep better in the Summer, but I didn't in hopes that sort of thing would stop itself. But all-in-all that sort of stuff doesn't belong on Hacker News, after all the site is Hacker News.
321abc
What solution do you propose? I don't think merely saying "let's keep things topical" is going to work. People are going to keep submitting articles they find interesting, and upvoting articles they find interesting, regardless of the topic.

In the interests of full disclosure, I was the one who submitted the "How to Sleep Comfortably on a Hot Night" article. Yes, it's not topical. However, I'm not ashamed! I thought it was interesting, and clearly so did the 44 other people who upvoted it.

I'm quite pleased with the community that's developed here, who are discriminating enough to pick out many articles I find interesting.

However, HN could definitely be improved, so that people who are only interested in certain topics (such as only computer/hacking related articles) or not interested in other topics (such as off-topic, or political, or venture capitalist articles) could more easily filter through what's becoming a firehydrant of links.

I think the best way to do this is by implementing tags.

travisjeffery
The way I see is that this is how things start: one article like this is submitted and then each week another one is added, like a Fibonacci sequence until you have how Proggit or Digg is today.

And you can say that Hacker News will stay pure or whatever but this is exactly how things began with other sites and then slowly but surely things became less and less relevant. I do think that it will take quite some time before Hacker News gets that way but I'd rather be strict now and nip it in the bud before regretting it later.

With the analogy of tags I would say that if you had the two most basic tags: "hacker-related" (programming, science, tech and related fields) or "non-hacker-related" (ie. sleep habits) Then I would only have hacker-related tagged material here.

Now I realize that in the case of Digg they did purposely branch out to expand their community. And I doubt pg would do the same. Thus the speed at which Hacker News would descend in quality would be much slower, but in my mind it's not a sense of speed it's a sense of direction. And right now Hacker News is descending from the direction and the kind quality we had.

321abc
So you propose we "be strict now". Could you elaborate on just what you mean by that?

If I could be so bold as to take a guess at what you mean, it seems you're suggesting that the HN community submit only topical links.

I think that suggestion will generally simply be ignored by those people who want to (for whatever reason) submit non-topical links because only a small fraction of HN submitters will even read your suggestion, and most of those that read it aren't going to care (or they wouldn't have submitted off-topic links in the first place).

In order to reach all submitters, we could have some sort of global notice reminding everyone to only submit topical links. Maybe a stern and clearly worded warning on the submission page itself.

But say we do that and people continue to submit and upvote off-topic links. In my opinion, this is precisely what's going to happen. So then what?

I think there is no solution to keeping HN pure short of having the site be moderated by people dedicated to keeping it pure. But clearly that's not the model HN wants to pursue.

As long as HN is self-moderating it will not stay pure, and the more popular it gets, the further away from purity it will drift (witness what happened to Slashdot and Kuro5hin).

So, given that HN is not and probably will not stay pure, how can we improve the situation? I think the solution is clear: tags. Tags will let each reader more easily focus on what they find interesting, no matter how "impure" the site gets. It's an easy solution and one that should scale pretty well.

webology
There is a lot of noise but I prefer the classic view - http://news.ycombinator.com/classic over the existing homepage. It'd be nice to have a few features like never show me techcrunch articles again but all in all I still prefer Hacker News over everything else.
smhinsey
I did a quick search and didn't see anything too relevant. What is the difference between the classic and standard views?
kirubakaran
Classic counts the votes of only the users who have been with HN for > 1 year.
iamwil
How did you know about this? I seemed to have missed the boat on this one.
webology
There was a post on Hacker News quite a while back about it. I wish there were another option for members over 2 years too so that "classic" remains "classic".
cema
Or perhaps a user-settable cutoff date for a customizable classic view.
kirubakaran
I searched searchyc.com for about 10 - 15 minutes to give a link to the post where pg mentioned that he created "classic" view and that classic and regular are not much different - which means growth hasn't harmed us much. Sorry I couldn't find it. (Usually I'll obsess over it until I do find - but I have to change this habit)
iamwil
ahh, I remember that thread. I must have just promptly forgot about classic.
codedivine
For filtering, use greasemonkey with HN Toolkit script.
timtrueman
I have one suggestion that would possibly help: separate out "saved" versus "up-voted". For me, I rarely want to save something but I would love to go to the new page and up-vote more interesting stories to get rid of the noise. But maybe that's just me--I'm also the type who never submits anything unless I want to see the discussion on it. I'm guessing there's a lot of karma-whores and hence all the TechCrunch articles (I kid, I kid). Anyone have an idea for putting the incentives in the right place for submitting with that in mind? Fractional karma for submission up-votes?
321abc
I didn't even know we had karma here. I just submit articles I find interesting in hopes that they'll be interesting to the community.

Also, I'm not quite clear on what you're having problems with. Why can't you "go the the new page and up-vote more interesting stories"?

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sorbus
Upvoting a submission also adds it to a list of saved submissions. Thus, if one uses that list to remember interesting articles, discussions, or things that one wishes to read, upvoting many articles which one does not necessarily want saved would dilute that list.
321abc
Oh. I guess I never used that feature. I just either bookmark the link in my browser, keep a tab open with that article, or just keep the original link to the story in my RSS reader.
chrischen
Yea I just found out about that feature. I was trying to figure out how to add an article to my saved list and was dumbfounded to find the one I wanted to save already in my list! I thought for briefly (for as long as my intelligence would allow) Ycombinator had read my mind and it turned out it was cause I voted it up. Yep, so intuitive!
JeremyChase
You know full well that karma is tracked on HN.
321abc
No. I had no idea it was. Even now I'm not sure I believe you.
TomOfTTB
Then I'm sure you won't mind me down voting you for being ridiculous (since "x points" is the first thing at the beginning of every comment/submission)
321abc
I thought the points was just a rating for the comment or submission. I didn't realize those points were transferred to the user that made the comment/submission.

As for your down voting me, whatever. Enjoy. I don't even know what use karma can be on this website. Though at least now I know there is some.

TomOfTTB
If it's any consolation I felt bad about down voting you just after I did it but I thought you were trying to be obnoxious. Sadly, you can't undownvote (but I'll up vote this to try to supplement your newly discovered karma score)
ghshephard
Make that a second person - and I've been on the site for over a year. I knew that _comments_ added Karma, but I wasn't aware that a story submission's Karma is added to a person's total.

I've always wondered how someone who has been on the site for less than a year can have a Karma > 1000 points. I always thought they were posting a lot - but a dozen 50 Point submissions will get you halfway there pretty quickly...

krakensden
... it's the number in parenthesis next to your username.
321abc
I never even noticed there was a number in parenthesis next to my username. Thanks for pointing it out, though.
chanux
Oh maybe you've been aware that you have a dynamic username.
blasdel
I didn't even know we had karma here.

I'm sure you also "don't see race".

californiaguy
Hacker forums are a lot like indie rock bands.
cperciva
Are you saying that indie rock bands get louder and louder the more popular they get?

(Serious question -- I don't listen to rock bands, indie or otherwise, so I don't know how the time- and popularity-dependence of their volume.)

Radix
No, he's saying that the quality is variable. Sometimes they have one great album and the rest are poor, or an album has a few great songs and the rest sounds like filler.
Agathos
I thought he was saying they stop being cool when too many people discover them.
erikwiffin
That sounds about right.

Unfortunately I tend to find both right as they stop being cool. (I joined on erlang day)

321abc
Wow. That's so unique to indie music. I couldn't even imagine any other genre of music who's quality varies.
Radix
Well, yeah I guess you're right. But you kinda straw manned me there by changing the subject from an indie band and their work to a general genre. I expect more mainstream bands to consistently be good or bad, but not have the ups and downs I've heard from a couple indie bands. That and it fit my own explanation of how things vary from day to day.

But yeah, you're right, my experience blinded me. And cheer up, your comment seems out of place.

gaerfield
Yes, I agree. HN has many interesting stuff, but I have problems to follow all news, because it's just too much.
pj
I'm not sure all of us here are hackers and we don't always come here for programming articles. I read hacker news as an alternative to google news or watching tv. For me, it's mostly entertainment that alleviates my boredom with a weighting toward improving my skillset and keeping up to date in my industry.

If there were only code articles or technology articles, it'd get boring and I'd probably come back less often. I probably spend way too much time here really, but I probably click on 75% or more of the articles on the front page. I click on them because they are interesting, not necessarily because they are about programming or technology -- they expand my mind.

I think mind expansion is good for hackers.

profquail
I'm trying to learn Lisp/Scheme/Arc right now so that I can play around with news.arc. I've a good amount of work with numerical algorithms (statistics, matrices, graphs, machine learning...you name it), and I think there is a great deal of improvement to be had in the scoring algorithms that are used by social news sites (not just HN, but Digg, reddit, and so on).

Maybe YC could sponsor a little "Netflix Challenge" for Hacker News, where the 1st-place prize is an automatic bid to the upcoming YC round.

tokenadult
One thing that can help the whole community is to look at the list of stories submitted by noobs

http://news.ycombinator.com/noobstories

once in a while and flag those that are plainly spam or very badly off-topic. Sufficiently many flags kill a submission.

vaksel
cool I can save a ton of money on a used shipping container. Do these guys not realize that HN is no-follow?
fallentimes
They spam with such mass they probably don't even care.
pvg
It's a stopgap at best and more likely a no-op. The fundamental problem is that the 'community' is unbounded and prone to instability by growth. This is not the case with just HN but almost any online forum, be it USENET, slashdot, reddit, etc. The initial and early populations tend to have a lot in common, are significantly self-selecting, etc, etc. This produces 'interesting' content, which in turn fuels growth which fuels further growth and the eventual dilution of the 'community' and the quality of the content. Such forums experience only growth pressure but nothing in the opposite direction, at least not until they become so boring or insipid that people go somewhere else. Naive voting schemes like in slashdot, reddit or HN don't really help.
lionhearted
One thing I'm seeing more of lately are internet-isms in comments like "Fail" and "2. ??? 3. Profit!" It seems to dilute the quality of the comments for two reasons - first, they themselves aren't that insightful. But more scary is that like five other people typically jump in and reply with more internetisms afterwards. The comments here have historically been the best I've seen, but seem to be slipping just a touch lately.

I don't know how that would be tackled exactly. I suppose just introducing new people politely to the culture here, and for current members to refrain from upvoting comments that are ok but have the pseudo-clever semi-snarky internet vibe to them.

whatusername
Technically "2. ??? 3. Profit!" was a South Park-ism (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnomes_(South_Park) ) And I realise that this comment was perhaps what you were complaining about - but it was worth pointing it out none-the-less.

(And for the record: "1. Collect Underpants, 2. ????, 3. Profit" seems to be a more mature business model than some that are featured here on hn.)

jrockway
Technically "2. ??? 3. Profit!" was a South Park-ism

I for one welcome our new television meme overlords.

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jamesbritt
hnsort.com, and the greasemonkey script for sorting, really help. I sort by comments or points to find where the interest is.

But I agree that the RSS feed can get cluttered. Maybe a yahoo pipes thing could create a delayed feed that only passed items with certain characteristics.

csomar
I think we can reduce bad submissions by prohibting new users and users with a karma less than 500 for example.

We can calculate a score based on user oldness and his score, so he can submit or not and the time between his submissions.

8-bit_Blaster
I completely agree that there seems to be far too much noise on HN.

That's actually the reason why I haven't bothered checking this website for months, but got curious and decided to come back today to see if things have changed.

The thing that I find most noisy are the "ASK HN" posts. I wish there was a way to filter these out, so I only get news.

C'est la vie

ttam
imo, yes, the quality/type-of/whatever of submissions has become very different from what it was 2 years ago. but then again, that's a subjective analysis.

but imho tags/categories are awful. there has to be a better solution to this.

i don't think filtering domains will do much good either.

editors like slashdot aren't exactly great (and require an editor staff).

voting schemes reflect the taste of the community (more specifically the percentage of people that vote - not taking into account bots/cheaters). there's always slashdot's semi-random karma system, but it's not really that great either.

so really, what's the solution? no effing clue..

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on the other hand, i'd really like to know the stats on the number of people who click on an article and the number of people who voted on the same article.. also, average points stories get and so on..

edit: oh yeah, nevermind that, forgot that only after some X karma you can downvote/flag

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oh well, information overload.. it's a joy