Yeah, it's the opposite of showdead. Many of these get flagged automatically anyway. But I would like to read what trolls and throwaways want to say, so I turn on showdead. Maybe some people want more filters.
HN is HN because its endless September prevents ossification.
There are two simple tools to deal with problematic behavior: downvotes and flags. There’s also the almost simple tool of emailing the moderation team…oh and there’s also hiding stories and collapsing comments.
It might not feel worth doing any of those things, but that’s how proof of work works. Good luck.
What about asking to translate a sentence in more than 12 different language with half of them being Asian?
The very few humans on the planet able to solve this will be blocked and will have to use another manual process that would slow them but every LLM would successfully fail.
I think this sort of gatekeeping while understandable, really limits new users that have just learnt about this forum and wanted to accomplish the thing they were here for a reason - case and point - myself - just got here - want to post something on showHN.. and was blocked. Forced engagement through strict gatekeeping
Further, the guidelines have long stated not to use HN primarily for self promotion. First, try being part of the community and understanding how things work here. Coming here to "accomplish" showing off your project is faux pas.
I actually really like the NextDoor solution. Want an account? Cool, it'll cost you the price of a postcard to your location. When you receive it, you can open your account. More than 10 accounts at your residence? Hrmm... looks like you're up to no good.
I'd be happy to pay the 61¢ per account it currently costs to mail a postcard if it means a massive improvement in anti-bot bs.
The argument against it is that it's futile. Banning new accounts will lead to stagnation and stop bot accounts but people will simply filter their own comments through an LLM, either to avoid steganography or to maximize their compliance with the guidelines and potential karma. Eventually they'll just have an agent comment for them because that's the best way to maximize their utility of the forum. All of the posted articles will either be written by AI or will be about AI. All Show HNs will be vibe coded. This will happen because it's what an increasing number of people on HN want to normalize.
The fact is the ethos of this forum has become antithetical to what hacker culture and tech have become, which is incurious, misanthropic and aggressively pro AI. That isn't a problem that can be solved with engineering, it's existential. Either the culture changes or HN does, and as HN's whole thing is "avoiding the Eternal September at all costs," which reduces to "avoiding cultural change at all cost," HN can't change and survive. Immovable object versus irresistable force.
I guess the only advice I have is to stop using HN whenever it becomes useless to you and find greener pastures. The Fediverse is still good.
you know how we have the showdead? how about adding a couple of new ones:
hidekarma: hide accounts below certain karma threshold
hideage: hide accounts newer than 1 week/1 month/6 months
these should be opt-in. people that care can turn them on.
Yeah, it's the opposite of showdead. Many of these get flagged automatically anyway. But I would like to read what trolls and throwaways want to say, so I turn on showdead. Maybe some people want more filters.
No.
HN is HN because its endless September prevents ossification.
There are two simple tools to deal with problematic behavior: downvotes and flags. There’s also the almost simple tool of emailing the moderation team…oh and there’s also hiding stories and collapsing comments.
It might not feel worth doing any of those things, but that’s how proof of work works. Good luck.
Hey, I just signed up. Give me some time and the thought of chatting to an LLM will become more appealing.
What was that new benchmark recently that no LLM could pass? Pull it up, wrap into a captcha service, apply for a YC funding round.
What about asking to translate a sentence in more than 12 different language with half of them being Asian?
The very few humans on the planet able to solve this will be blocked and will have to use another manual process that would slow them but every LLM would successfully fail.
I think this sort of gatekeeping while understandable, really limits new users that have just learnt about this forum and wanted to accomplish the thing they were here for a reason - case and point - myself - just got here - want to post something on showHN.. and was blocked. Forced engagement through strict gatekeeping
> wanted to accomplish the thing they were here for a reason - case and point - myself - just got here - want to post something on showHN
Which is against the rules, that you chose to not read?
To understand why, HN introduced a new rule to deal with the slop fest.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47340079
Further, the guidelines have long stated not to use HN primarily for self promotion. First, try being part of the community and understanding how things work here. Coming here to "accomplish" showing off your project is faux pas.
I actually really like the NextDoor solution. Want an account? Cool, it'll cost you the price of a postcard to your location. When you receive it, you can open your account. More than 10 accounts at your residence? Hrmm... looks like you're up to no good.
I'd be happy to pay the 61¢ per account it currently costs to mail a postcard if it means a massive improvement in anti-bot bs.
HN and NextDoor have rather different community standards regarding acceptable behavior.
That’s entirely irrelevant to my point.
The argument against it is that it's futile. Banning new accounts will lead to stagnation and stop bot accounts but people will simply filter their own comments through an LLM, either to avoid steganography or to maximize their compliance with the guidelines and potential karma. Eventually they'll just have an agent comment for them because that's the best way to maximize their utility of the forum. All of the posted articles will either be written by AI or will be about AI. All Show HNs will be vibe coded. This will happen because it's what an increasing number of people on HN want to normalize.
The fact is the ethos of this forum has become antithetical to what hacker culture and tech have become, which is incurious, misanthropic and aggressively pro AI. That isn't a problem that can be solved with engineering, it's existential. Either the culture changes or HN does, and as HN's whole thing is "avoiding the Eternal September at all costs," which reduces to "avoiding cultural change at all cost," HN can't change and survive. Immovable object versus irresistable force.
I guess the only advice I have is to stop using HN whenever it becomes useless to you and find greener pastures. The Fediverse is still good.
Not a terrible idea, but what's the exit plan? "Eventually someone will code something to stop them"?