Re:Ask YC: (< (/ signal noise) too-low)
by pg on Sunday March 30, 2008 @01:22PM
(#150254)
That is one real change. There are more Ask YC type posts on the frontpage than there used to be. I've been thinking of measures to fix that. One possibility is to have a karma threshold for posting them, but I don't want to silence new users. So I think what I may do is make gravity stronger for Ask YC posts: make them have to get e.g. 2x as many points to stay at a given position on the frontpage.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Good Ask YC posts are among my favorite on HN. Many news stories offer little meat for discussion--they're straightforward. My feed reader catches most interesting news, already, so for me, the discussion provides the greatest value.
To keep the baby not the bathwater, what about putting up the submission-level down arrow, but only for Ask YC submissions?
Re:Ask YC: (< (/ signal noise) too-low)
by greendestiny on Sunday March 30, 2008 @08:11PM
(#150528)
I don't think down arrows would be enough. Unfortunately a lot of new Ask YC posts are opinionated and people vote as means of identifying with the post rather than as a measure of interest or quality. Its interesting how well the poll system reverted the up arrow to a quality measure rather than an agreement measure in polls.
Most of the objectionable AskYC posts could probably be shoe-horned into polls by editors - just with 'agree' or 'disagree' options.
Maybe every post could have additional [agree] [disagree] buttons, because a lot of poor quality submissions are equally opinionated.
The missing thread-level down arrow does prevent reddit-style polling. Pg might not like this suggestion because a worse nightmare might be "vote up if you like candy" threads.
If the down-arrows were karma-restricted to ensure adequate assimilation, though...
What about having a separated board for ask yc? Wouldn't that work even better? That way, if you are looking for site references you look one place, if you're looking for questions and their answers you look other place.
Not all Ask YC posts are bad: Ex. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=150077