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.
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:<p>If you submit a link to old news, please warn us by appending [year] (the year of publication) to the title.<p>Justification: Revisiting "old" news can be very worth while, but we appreciate a warning that it isn't current.
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<p><pre><code> [Y]Hacker News welcome | new | comments | ...
</code></pre>
linking to this.<p>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 ).
I haven't read these in quite a while, and had hearty chuckle at:<p><i>"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.)"</i><p>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: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=978170" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=978170</a>)
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.
Can I add a suggest adding something about comment moderation to the Guidelines? Perhaps:<p>"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."
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.<p>I have had some fun myself. My latest: "Opening studiobriefing.net was like watching time lapse photography of some butt-ugly flower blooming."<p>These are the only times that I knowingly type something that I know has a good chance of getting downvoted. <i>But I will stop</i> 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.<p>Please correct me if this is at all detrimental to the community.
"Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation."<p>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).
Would some research in the field help ? I am reading <a href="http://presnick.people.si.umich.edu//#publications" rel="nofollow">http://presnick.people.si.umich.edu//#publications</a> 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!
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.
It looks like I've been breaking the "use asterisks for emphasis" rule for years without realizing it.<p>I've always used _foo_ for code-specific articles, or FOO for a more general audience, and reserved <i>foo</i> for parenthetical physical actions such as <i>shrug</i> or <i>bows</i>.<p>My bad.