Welcome to HN. Please, read 'Hacker News Guidelines.' We take them seriously.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html?=

by iamelgringo • 17 years ago

301 113 17 years ago

bugs2• 17 years ago

I don't know if this is still the case but when I created this account there was a welcome link up where you find

   [Y]Hacker News  welcome | new | comments | ...

linking to this.

Edit: To be more clear I think the welcome link disappeared after a certain amount of karma was acquired like other little features on HN ( flag,downvote,topcolor ).

pg3• 17 years ago

Actually it doesn't link to the guidelines. It links to

http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

I added this feature within the last year, so none of the established users know it exists, but I think it has helped stave off decline as HN has grown.

jacobolus• 17 years ago

You should add a bit of space between the edge of the beige and the text.

pvg• 17 years ago

The 'welcome' link is hard to find. It does little to explain things like flagging, the karma limit to down or up voting and in general, anything at all. In fact, it doesn't even tell you the format rules the HN comment box accepts. There is conceivably some deluded notion that 'real' hackers will sort all of this out. Or they'll just call terrible UI as they see it.

Xichekolas3• 17 years ago

If you look at the FAQ at the bottom, one of the question/answers has a link to the formatting rules.

http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc

cmelbye• 17 years ago

What are the thresholds for voting down a comment? I looked in News News and it says karma of 100, but there must be something else because I have over 100 now and I don't see any down arrows.

pwmanagerdied• 17 years ago

I think it's around 200 now, it increases over time to deal with karma inflation.

malte2• 17 years ago

It's a good idea to point to the HN guidelines from time to time. I just wonder if there was a specific incident that made you submit them. Just curious.

iamwil• 17 years ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=978141

Edit: oh, just answering to which incident. In the comments, iamelgringo talked about submission guidelines, so I'm guessing that's why he resubmitted them here, so yeah, I meant the discussion.

bugs2• 17 years ago

If you look at his submissions there are quite a few and most of them of the Ask HN variety of something that really shouldn't be here

physcab• 17 years ago

Kinda confused. The user who submitted that Ask HN is an older member, so they technically should know the rules. Or perhaps you meant the discussion taking place?

nkurz3• 17 years ago

Can I add a suggest adding something about comment moderation to the Guidelines? Perhaps:

"Don't downmod comments just because you disagree with them. Similarly, don't upmod a comment just because it takes your side. Instead, vote up for comments that further the discussion, and down for comments that do not."

dpcan• 17 years ago

Usually it's the comments I agree with that I want to see discussed more.

nkurz3• 17 years ago

OK, feel free to reword it to "upvote the comments you want to see discussed more". My main thrust is that an explicit guideline should be given for comment moderation, not what the exact content should be.

billswift3• 17 years ago

Usually it's comments I disagree with that I want to see discussed more. It's where someone else disagrees with you that you are most likely to identify mistakes in your own reasoning. Reading things you agree with can make you feel all warm and fuzzy, but you won't learn much from them.

tokenadult7• 17 years ago

Don't downmod comments just because you disagree with them.

This is a legitimate and rather frequently made suggestion, but a contrary suggestion was made in a comment by pg

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

where he wrote, "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness."

On some threads, I can find occasion (as I do here) to post a reply indicating substantive, polite disagreement with a previous comment, to which I reply with my disagreement. On some other threads, I see comments to which it would not be good use of time to post a disagreeing reply, and sometimes in those cases (not all the time), I find it most appropriate to downvote to indicate disagreement. I can tell that I am not alone in that practice.

What I especially like to do is to upvote any comment that is good, where "good" is defined as helps me learn something I didn't know or makes me think from a new point of view. People can disagree with positions I hold and still get upvotes from me, especially if they post verifiable information indicating why they hold the positions they hold.

nkurz3• 17 years ago

I've seen Paul's comment before, and have now voted it up. Still, I don't think encouraging voting based on agreement is a good thing. Yes, given limited channels of communication, sometimes voting up a comment you like is the best way to show solidarity. If in the long run this produces a better forum for discussion, then great!

I'm fairly happy with where the quality of discussion is now, and I'd like to see it continue at the same or better level. I think a guideline that encourages conscious and non-reflexive voting based on quality rather than agreement would help, even if the other only difference is that people think more about why they are voting as they currently do.

travisjeffery2• 17 years ago

They used to be taken seriously.

NathanKP2• 17 years ago

Which one do you feel is not being taken seriously? Just wondering.

travisjeffery2• 17 years ago

Where shall I start?

First I'll start with submissions: all to often Hacker News looks like any run of the mill news site. No longer is it the spot I rely on to go and see what the hackers are up to. Because too often now it's the same junk on Digg.

Comments: the quality of comments on here is pitiful. They're used to be good discussions and relatively long, well thought and written comments. Again, like Digg it's getting where people are just doing a 1 line/sentence post where seems like they're just trying to hit on something that other people will vote up for more karma points.

Xichekolas3• 17 years ago

I haven't read these in quite a while, and had hearty chuckle at:

"If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)"

Was that in the original guidelines, or a recent addition? It seems almost too perfect in response to the comment that iamelgringo was responding to. (As malte pointed out elsewhere in this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=978170)

NikkiA• 17 years ago

It was there when I signed up a month or so ago. Beyond that, I cannot (obviously) say.

adbachman• 17 years ago

It's been in at least since Erlang Day. I'd bet it's been a year or two.

It's always felt on the verge, but has never dropped off the edge. I suppose it's more exciting that way.

araneae6• 17 years ago

I'm assuming this is a different Erlang Day than the one I was here for, as I'm still a noob. (And on that note, how many have there been? And can we pick another language for subsequent days plz?)

by• 17 years ago

The Wayback Machine tells us it wasn't there in July 2008

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://ycombinator.com/newsguid...

gvb• 17 years ago

Suggestion: after "If you submit a link to a video or pdf, please warn us by appending [video] or [pdf] to the title." add another paragraph:

If you submit a link to old news, please warn us by appending [year] (the year of publication) to the title.

Justification: Revisiting "old" news can be very worth while, but we appreciate a warning that it isn't current.

dasil003• 17 years ago

I actually don't have a problem with this. I've long since trained myself to check the date in all circumstances when I'm looking at something online. My main complaint is when something on the web doesn't have a date (or it just has month and day but no year), how do we push guidelines out to all web publishers?

access_denied2• 17 years ago

> how do we push guidelines out to all web publishers?

By setting an example wherever we go. Be the change, that you want to see on the web.

billswift3• 17 years ago

If it's old, but of current interest, who cares much about the date? If it's old and not of current interest, don't link it here.

antipaganda• 17 years ago

The date is information. More info = good in this case.

pronoiac• 17 years ago

It's not "old is bad," but "avoiding unnecessary confusion is good."

wvenable2• 17 years ago

My biggest complaint about Hacker News is that the upmodding and downmodding of comments is used to express agreement/disagreement rather than as a method of distinguishing the quality of the post itself. I regularly upmod intelligent, yet unpopular, comments if they've fallen below 1.

mgrouchy• 17 years ago

If you would upmod them anyway, why do you distinguish by " I regularly upmod intelligent, yet unpopular, comments if they've fallen below 1." ? Wouldn't you just upmod these anyway?

I think HN does an above average Job with its comment moderation. I think this is a testament to the quality of the HN community.

joe_the_user• 17 years ago

I do that also but I upmod and downmod higher modded posts according to my opinions. It seems like a popular approach. I think that's why my favorite comments usually stay at 2.

The way to get a high modded post seems to be state a completely obvious refutation of a parent post. Saddly, I don't actually find such posts terribly interesting.

Fortunately, I don't think everyone posts for points here.

tokenadult7• 17 years ago

See

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

from the keyboard of pg, expressing a differing point of view.

After edit: the low-rated comments that most disappoint me are the comments asking follow-up questions, to verify information asserted in the parent comment. I'd like to see a lot more upvotes for comments along the lines of "Could you cite some references on that?" or "What is an example of that?" or "What are some of the best online sources on that issue?" Most of us like to learn here, and the guidelines say that "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" is on topic, so anyone who asks a question to pursue curiosity ought to see that comment upvoted, it seems to me.

mapleoin• 17 years ago

What is an example of that?

chrischen5• 17 years ago

In response to pg's argument: assuming there is a flaw in the system, that is, assuming agreement does not correlate with quality, then downvotng would simply amplify the effect of opinion based voting, and thus marginalize quality based voting (because peopl's opinions are a stronger force).

So ideally a lot haters would vote down, and a lot of agree-ers would vote up. And it would balance it out. But this only works if we assume the right amount of people are backing a good idea.

What happens if it's an unpopular but good comment? Then allowing people to downvote would quickly suppress it without enough counteracting "I Agree" upvotes.

So upvotes can be used for more than quality indicator, but a downvote simply makes the system more volatile. If there were just an upvote and no downvote, then the novote will simply be the new downvote. Except the novote will be less volatile.

brianto2010• 17 years ago

I have a proposal.

The idea of up/down voting expressing agreement/disagreement seems standard. At least, that is what I have seen. If we try to impose a new standard (downvote -> moderation), then users will (probably) ignore that standard or not follow it.

Therefore, why don't we try to do something different. Instead of having upvote/downvote arrows which implies the standard, we can use a plus sign (or an arrow up) for agreement, and a null sign or an 'X' for disagreement. That way, down voting might not imply disagreement, because an 'X' does not mean disagreement; it means 'not allowed'.

tokenadult7• 17 years ago

I like the idea of orthogonal marking of comments, and wonder how many previous comments advocating that have been posted to the feature requests thread

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363

(linked to from the bottom of the main page)

or posted in other threads.

techiferous8• 17 years ago

Having two ways to vote (one for agreement, the other for value) would solve this problem, but add a little more complexity.

chrischen5• 17 years ago

If they truly think they're right they might just downmod using both methods. I assume a lot of people who think a comment is wrong, might also think it is stupid.

zitterbewegung• 17 years ago

That is a frequent request for sites that have votes. It would be an interesting experiment to try it out on hn or some similar system to see how it handles.

jwecker• 17 years ago

I can only assume that the 12 points you currently have are from people who agree with you. If so, that's very ironic.

petercooper2• 17 years ago

FWIW, last time I complained about this, I got downmodded to oblivion, and pg followed up saying that getting downmodded because people disagree with you is just dandy :-)

So now I downmod all the time, just if I disagree with a comment as it seems to be semi-official policy.

wvenable2• 17 years ago

I think having 3 options would help with this problem: agree, disagree, and downmod. Top agreed posts would float to the top as they do now. Even posts with a healthy bit of disagreement (evenly matched agrees/disagrees) could be very high. Disagreed posts aren't penalized. Downmod would only be used for irrelevant or low quality content. You wouldn't need an upmod -- simply agreeing or disagreeing would count as an upmod.

endtime• 17 years ago

I disagree (though I am not expressing that with a downvote). Comments should be upvoted for insight, thoughtfulness, or interestingness - not simply for expressing a popular opinion.

po• 17 years ago

If "downmod" has a more potent effect than "disagree" people will use that instead. The reason people downmod things they disagree with is because they want to censor an opinion that goes against their world view. Unfortunately, few will click disagree if the result is to make the disagreeable opinion even more visible.

crux• 17 years ago

Well, there's several ways to disagree with someone. I would certainly say that I am more likely to disagree with something if it's biased, facile, rude, superficial, lazy, or uninformed. All of these qualities—generally speaking, a lack of rigor or engagement—I think are quite worthy of downvoting. To be honest it's very few comments that I see buried at -4 that I really think deserve to be in the black. Periodic concerns aside, I think the system is in good shape.

known• 17 years ago

Are you saying downmodding comments is not required?

Slashed• 17 years ago

What bothers me even more, is that very often voting is based on personal preference. For example, being down-voted by Google fans, when one criticized Google.

modelic3• 17 years ago

Why is this posted? There is a link for the guidelines at the bottom so what's the point of making a post of it.

araneae6• 17 years ago

"Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation."

I certainly don't say things on HN that I wouldn't say in a face to face conversation, but that's because I'm honest offline as well as on (read: not civil). It can get me into trouble, but I sure as hell am not going to stop saying what I think because of downvotes (on HN) or in the name of good manners (IRL).

techiferous8• 17 years ago

Honesty and politeness are generally orthogonal.

dagw3• 17 years ago

Popular belief among those lacking social grace. It is quite easy to disagree with people without being impolite about it. All it requires is a bit social intelligence and basic good manners. Being an asshole and trying to excuse it with "I'm just being honest" just makes you a far bigger asshole.

tokenadult7• 17 years ago

I sure as hell am not going to stop saying what I think because of downvotes (on HN) or in the name of good manners (IRL)

Are you or are you not agreeable to following the HN guideline "Be civil"? Could you clear that up, please?

araneae6• 17 years ago

I am not agreeable to following the "be civil" guideline.

The times when I have been uncivil, I've generally been downvoted, which I think is perfectly fair. However, there are some times when I've been rather rude, and the comments ended up positive; but they were negative initially by quite a few points.

I really do think that "being civil" has its place, but to be civil all the time requires a certain dishonesty; perhaps not in literal meaning, but certainly in emotional meaning.

techiferous8• 17 years ago

By the way, the fact that there is a continued and unresolved discussion about voting based on agreement suggests that the voting feature is broken. There is a design defect in this web software, pg; please consider redesigning it! I would consider it fixed when a significant majority of users find voting intuitive and useful.

tsally• 17 years ago

It's not broken, it just could be better. The same could be said for any voting system that exists today on the web. The reason why no one has quite solved it yet is because the solution is not obvious. It may very well be that the current system is an adequate approximation of a perfect voting system because a perfect voting system is too complex to implement well.

techiferous8• 17 years ago

> "It's not broken, it just could be better."

Yes, that's a much better way of putting it. It does work well enough to be useful, it just has some unresolved rough edges.

pg3• 17 years ago

An ongoing dispute isn't always (or perhaps even often) a sign that something is broken. E.g. evolution. If I could think of a better approach I'd implement it, of course, but I doubt there is one.

djcapelis• 17 years ago

Actually I would like the ranking algorithm to distinguish between a comment with no votes and a comment with 5 upvotes and 5 downvotes. I think the latter usually shows the comment is controversial and probably deserves to be displayed as it's likely to be interesting. This makes it so that people can still use votes as agree/disagree without negatively impacting the quality of the debate.

I suppose it depends on whether or not you want to promote controversial discussion, which you may not. It would be harder to enforce etiquette through downvotes and might bring on eternal september sooner.

That said, if you wanted to experiment, one simple way to do this is simply to make the number of points an upvote grants different than the number of points a downvote produces. Not for purposes of karma, I think HN probably does that right now, but simply for purposes of comment ranking.

The downside is jokes that aren't that funny would likely be ranked higher than they should be under this algorithm. (The only instance I can think of where downvotes that came along with upvotes served as suitable chastisement under the current algorithm but might not under the approach I just outlined.)

Then again, I'm new here, so grain of salt.

chrischen5• 17 years ago

Could you try one of our suggested solutions, and as long as it doesn't mess the whole site up, keep it? And if it doesn't solve our original issue, try another one of the suggested solutions, and as long as it doesn't screw things up keep it?

I mean iterate, so that HN can evolve right?

I agree that public sentiment should not always be factored in, as we will naturally oppose change. So if you test a radically new system you'll get opposition. But as long as the actual results aren't negative, I think it's at least progress.

pge• 17 years ago

I suggest adding one more guideline - before submitting a post, check to see if it has already been submitted.

makecheck• 17 years ago

Last I checked, identical URLs are automatically prevented. But the duplication becomes a problem when people decide to submit blog posts, etc. instead of original articles. There is (usually) only one "best" URL for a story.

philwelch• 17 years ago

Also an issue when people submit the "printer-friendly version" and also the ordinary version.

Proposed guideline: submit the "printer-friendly" version?

est• 17 years ago

How does HN handle URL with parameters?

e.g.

http://example.com/2009/23137321.html?from=rss

http://example.com/2009/23137321.html

They are basically both the same article.

RevRal3• 17 years ago

What is the opinion on silly comments in submissions that will soon be killed? I've seen people get in one word comments in some of these submissions and not get downvoted.

I have had some fun myself. My latest: "Opening studiobriefing.net was like watching time lapse photography of some butt-ugly flower blooming."

These are the only times that I knowingly type something that I know has a good chance of getting downvoted. But I will stop if you guys tell me it is a bigger deal than I think it is. I just don't see the harm in commenting something silly into a submission that will likely get killed.

Please correct me if this is at all detrimental to the community.

scott_s2• 17 years ago

Consider that it adds to the noise, even if in a small way. People learn etiquette through observation; if someone sees both a bad submission and a bad comment, they're more likely to think that's okay around here.

RevRal3• 17 years ago

Thank you for your reply.

As for my downvote. I had an idea of how my question would be received.

But, it was an honest question since -- and you have to agree -- the values of humor and sarcasm here are usually left at the front door. For some of us, it is hard to let go of since it is held in high regard in the real world and other internet communities.

So, I thought it was a valid question that deserved a response for those of us who are so new, that we're on the border of whether or not to completely abandon humor and snark. The appropriateness of this aspect of the HN community has been really hard to gauge, and is frankly a culture shock.

scott_s's comment was the final verification that I needed that, yes, when submitting silliness, to please be more careful.

bonsaitree• 17 years ago

It looks like I've been breaking the "use asterisks for emphasis" rule for years without realizing it.

I've always used _foo_ for code-specific articles, or FOO for a more general audience, and reserved foo for parenthetical physical actions such as shrug or bows.

My bad.

mrlebowski• 17 years ago

Would some research in the field help ? I am reading http://presnick.people.si.umich.edu//#publications for a term paper, seems very relevant. If anyone has read his work before, can you tell us what is applicable to HN case? I'll post back something when done reading!

d0m• 17 years ago

like/dislike to show opinion. +1/-1 to assure that the post is valid.

Welcome to HN. Please, read 'Hacker News Guidelines.' We take them seriously.

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