Dang's comment on HN's self-regulation [1] got me thinking: It's amazing to me that HN actually works. That, the the most part, the best submissions and the best comments <i>do</i> tend to float to the top. I wouldn't expect individuals acting in their own self-interest to bother to spend the time to upvote and downvote and flag things, especially when the feedback from such actions is so minimal. But they do, clearly!<p>Are there any papers that have studied this phenomenon?<p>[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12205581
It works because of the people in here that write exceptional comments and act as a regulator.<p>I've noticed a certain reddification of comments: memes, funny answers, and uninformative drivel. These answers are usually downvoten, rightfully so in my oppinion.<p>If a huge influx of new users comes too fast and they don't get used of the culture here they could upvote those kinds of comments, and change the culture to a different one, one where memes go to the top instead of interesting comments.<p>I'm not against when it happens in the right places, I do browse reddit, but I come here for the expertise of the participants in the discussions. Surely some of them may express better what I've said, or even disagree with some or all of it, but I'll grow wiser thanks to that.
I suspect it helps that people can't downvote until they have 501 karma. That means they must've participated for at least a decent amount of time in the community before getting any real power (upvoting is useful, but downvoting is regulation). By the time someone gets to that level, they know what's encouraged and discouraged by both the moderators and the community.<p>Another thought: Unlike Reddit or most standard forums, we don't have subfora. We have one forum, one set of front page news, one set of comments per article (with good efforts to minimize duplication of posts, even topics). I think this helps to force people to play nice with each other. I can't go into hn/politics and troll, then go back to hn/programming and be civil. The whole community sees (or can see) my posts. Uncivil behavior in one thread will color the way people view me elsewhere. Forcing me to more seriously consider my behavior (I've deleted many posts, the two-minute delay I have on mine has saved me a few times from posting-in-anger).
I don't think that the best submissions and comments float to the top. Some real dogs get voted to the front page because (for example) the byline is Sam Altman, or it's some trending political topic, or it confirms some widely-held opinion.<p>And comments that violate the prevailing opinion here often get voted into negative numbers, even if informative and well-written. Just try to argue that piracy is having a negative effect on music, movies, etc. and see what happens.<p>I would recommend that everyone browse /newest here on a regular basis. I often find great stuff there that never makes it to the front page.
The specific set of rules and mechanics that currently regulate HN are not the key to its success. The main reason HN works, in my view, is because Y Combinator TRULY CARES about having the most relevant and interesting submissions and comments float to the top.<p>HN's rules and mechanics (e.g., requiring a minimum karma to downvote) are a CONSEQUENCE of these priorities. These rules and mechanics have evolved in lots of ways from day one, and will likely continue to evolve, forever, as HN moderators do their best to prevent them from being gamed.<p>Unlike many other discussion-oriented websites with user-generated content, HN's main priority has NEVER been to reach a greater audience or to grow web traffic at the expense of quality. The main priority has always been high-quality content. As far as I can tell, HN moderators would eagerly accept a narrower audience in exchange for better content any day.
It's the quality of the users that makes this work. If people care and downvote things that aren't germane to the discussion at hand that helps a lot with pruning. Otherwise low-quality content hangs around.<p>Also I see some very high quality and insightful comments on this site that I don't see elsewhere. I think twice about posting things that don't add to the discussion.<p>The only other place I saw high quality discussion like this was Slashdot with their excellent moderation system. Unfortunately the people who hung around there in the mid 2000's turned me off. Generally open source zealots hung out there and you didn't see many dissenting opinions.<p>Dissenting opinions are my favorite thing that help me deal with my personal biases and HN encourages it.<p>I think the minute average users like me stop caring about the site then the quality will go down.
HN is unabashedly homogeneous. It's a community by and for science-educated upper-income white male software engineers who (claim to) value thinking like scientists and being articulate, and share a strikingly uniform set of opinions about the industry and politics.<p>The set of opinions that will not get you downvoted into oblivion / pushed out of the community is so narrow that, assuming you like a decent proportion of highly upvoted submissions and comments, you'll almost assuredly like all of them.<p>There are plenty of people who don't. They are just not on HN (anymore).
See the 1% rule: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture)</a><p>Very, very few people on HN vote relative to the population as a whole.
> the best submissions and the best comments do tend to float to the top<p>I guess this is a "filter-bubble" problem. The HN crowd is (probably?) rather homogenous, so the stuff that gets to the top is stuff the people here like and think is good. This doesn't mean that anything getting to the top here is good in a general sense.<p>There are enough people out there who despise HN for being a bunch of privileged white guys, who only talk about stuff that privileged white guys like.<p>I'm one of these privileged white guys and I like what's going on here, so I'm probably not in the position to judge HN objectively, haha.
Joel Spolsky wrote an article about this over a decade ago and no doubt influenced the design of Stackoverflow:<p><a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BuildingCommunitieswithSo.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BuildingCommunitieswi...</a><p>It articulates that the existence or lack of features can adjust how an online community functions.
The quality of the discourse here is why I lurk.<p>Thankfully, HN isn't well known and polluted. It is a refreshing place for civil discourse on the Internet, and I have not found very many other places like it.<p>If there's a donate button here, I'm missing it.
I think it's partly because there's still a rather strong ideal of what good HN content should be like, backed by active participation by reasonable moderators who enforce the guidelines when they're blatantly violated.<p>There's also a text by pg where he explains some of the design (or "anti-design") choices that shape the community in a desired way.
It depends on your definition of success but yes, respect for YC's reputation and a genuine interest in learning the SV way of doing business gently regulate the behaviour of this world wide community.
Whether people like it (or would like to believe it), it works because it doesn't allow the tyranny of the masses. It doesn't give everyone a voice, which means better comments and content for all.