One thing I found interesting, and what may be very effective, is something like robot9k. The gist of it is that no comment that has previously been posted can be posted again. I've spent some time in the #XKCD-Signal IRC channel (Where Robot9000 came from), and it forces rather lengthy and interesting discussion. While it would have to have some modifications to work in a commenting situation rather than a IRC situation, I think it largely helps with the amount of trash posts.
Note that while it removes all the "First post" and "Wow. That sucks" posts, it does nothing about post attitude. It doesn't fight against trolling, but at least it has to be original trolling, and you will thus have to have some sort of moderation to beat that.
Robot9000 might lead to "intellectually stimulating" trolling, but I agree it doesn't do much about post attitude.
A deep strength of hacker news is that when someone goes to the trouble of responding to a troll in a factual rather than inflammatory way, it is supported with upvotes. Responding like this can be difficult, but it's very effective - and good for the soul.
A weakness of HN is that intelligent, articulate writing is sometimes used with harsh attitude and connotations. That is, it's just as nasty as elsewhere online, just elegantly phrased. This is accepted, because HN favours intelligence over attitude (could just be my perception).
Thanks for the link, Skolor, it's very interesting, and I hadn't read it before.
I used to be a regular reader of Kuro5hin, but I've fallen away as I've had less time to read general interest articles of late.
The article seems to focus on several suggestions all of which presupposing the idea that user accounts can't be the same as the list of members, so you see an increase in trolling. I suppose I'm not sure I agree.
I'd be interested to find out if people would be as willing to troll, or even just be vindictive, if the had more at stake than simply a disposable username. There would always be some, I suppose, but my hypothesis is that it would greatly diminish.
Comments
A while ago an article was posted on Kuro5hin about this: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2009/3/12/33338/3000. It may have been posted here.
One thing I found interesting, and what may be very effective, is something like robot9k. The gist of it is that no comment that has previously been posted can be posted again. I've spent some time in the #XKCD-Signal IRC channel (Where Robot9000 came from), and it forces rather lengthy and interesting discussion. While it would have to have some modifications to work in a commenting situation rather than a IRC situation, I think it largely helps with the amount of trash posts.
Note that while it removes all the "First post" and "Wow. That sucks" posts, it does nothing about post attitude. It doesn't fight against trolling, but at least it has to be original trolling, and you will thus have to have some sort of moderation to beat that.
Robot9000 might lead to "intellectually stimulating" trolling, but I agree it doesn't do much about post attitude.
A deep strength of hacker news is that when someone goes to the trouble of responding to a troll in a factual rather than inflammatory way, it is supported with upvotes. Responding like this can be difficult, but it's very effective - and good for the soul.
A weakness of HN is that intelligent, articulate writing is sometimes used with harsh attitude and connotations. That is, it's just as nasty as elsewhere online, just elegantly phrased. This is accepted, because HN favours intelligence over attitude (could just be my perception).
Eliezer posted an article on denotations vs. connotations recently, which gave me a new perspective on this old idea: http://lesswrong.com/lw/4h/when_truth_isnt_enough/
Thanks for the link, Skolor, it's very interesting, and I hadn't read it before.
I used to be a regular reader of Kuro5hin, but I've fallen away as I've had less time to read general interest articles of late.
The article seems to focus on several suggestions all of which presupposing the idea that user accounts can't be the same as the list of members, so you see an increase in trolling. I suppose I'm not sure I agree.
I'd be interested to find out if people would be as willing to troll, or even just be vindictive, if the had more at stake than simply a disposable username. There would always be some, I suppose, but my hypothesis is that it would greatly diminish.