I don't like the mob thing either but it's how large group dynamics on the internet work (by default). We try to mitigate it where we can but there's not a lot of knowledge about how to do that.
- the voting behaviour is just like reddit or rather just as bad - it is herd voting, flippant voting (but I really don't think how this can be fixed; maybe it can't be - but that is how it is to be honest and maybe it's time we acknowledged it)
- there is a sense of "aura/legend" attached to certain users, I find it maybe a bit extra weird because I am not from the US (later about it), and maybe not from the "in" crowd that I can't understand the why of it (I would not have known even if I knew of those users) - useless/meaningless/contentless comments get upvoted and reach the top -- not showing showing rank/voting might be a great idea imho (again, I really don't know how this can be fixed or whether this has to be fixed)
- HN seems like a "US only" forum largely, maybe that's the intention, I am not sure. I mean some comments and even posts just make it look like everything and everywhere works as it works in the USA
- Brigading or soft-brigading either just happens or maybe allowed as well - esp. on political threads - maybe just do not allow politics at all (no exceptions!) or those might need extra attention. I mean there is no point in allowing a political post when it ends up just getting raided. Also I often feel political posts specifically about USA are more kosher than political posts about other places.
- Encourage non-technical discussions more (but with the exception of political posts :P) - personally my best experiences on hn have actually been on non-tech/sw/hw posts really
One of the things I like about hn is its simplicity but maybe wouldn't mind "sections" or "categories" for different types of posts. Again this has its own trade offs.
I mean it's not so bad and whatever is bad maybe cannot even be fixed.
Re "certain users": I don't see it that way! I'd prefer this to be a place where anyone can post about anything, and if their comment is insightful, that is what matters.
Re "US only": last I checked, US users were only 50% of the community. It may be less than that now.
Re brigading: it's definitely not allowed, and we've worked a lot on trying to stop it, but it's a hard problem.
Re non-technical discussions: I couldn't agree more, and we work hard to encourage that. Even to the point of various secret agendas.
Re sections or categories: no, I don't think that's in HN's DNA. For better or worse, this site is organized around a single front page that everyone sees the same way. Past explanations here if anyone is interested: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
If anything, HN threads reward people who comment early. I’ve noticed the users with most karma are also extremely online and comment on a lot of threads early. If the thread becomes popular, their comments get more views and karma than someone who comments later. Even here, HN tries to mitigate this effect by giving every new comment in every thread and sub-thread a few minutes at the top when it’s new. This encourages people to comment even if they’re late to the party.
More could be done like removing the list of top users or moving profile karma a couple of clicks away, but HN does more than most websites to de-emphasise power users. That’s why I comment here and not elsewhere.
Or just make the user karma a simple average over all their posts and comments. Anything but a straight number that goes up each time!
I use my own karma display as a way to check if its likely i have new replies.
If the purpose of this site is exchange of ideas (rather than personal interaction), who wrote something should never matter. Only what was written matters. Discussion threads become collectively sourced arguments rather than ego battles. Take the identity of posters out of the equation.
In the rare cases where it matters (e.g. "Show HN" threads where the author offers to answer questions), it should be no problem for people to explicitly identify themselves ("author here"; this is mostly already happening anyway).
Also when someone does say something I agree with but that does not contribute ("most grass is green") I wouldn't want to reward them with a +1 agree either, just punish with -1 doesn't contribute.
I think that would underscore that what appears to be a conversation between two people is not. That's important and I think often lost in online discussion. If UserX doesn't reply they might have been persuaded to UserY's position and one way of signaling that is to not reply. Meanwhile there's very likely someone who will read a well reasoned and backed up comment and nonetheless disagree, and they're most likely to reply given their disagreement. More so in the age of bots. The aggregate effect is for discussions to be weighted harshly negatively to the point of destructively.
Edit-I'm not very aware of the "famous user" effect. Sure there are usernames I recognize, but it's few, and the UI doesn't seem to give them much weight. I 'worry' more about the criticality of the site.
It would probably require hiding comment scores though - otherwise it'd be easy to observe how the multiplier changes and game it.
I'm tracking in my head a few hundred of users. I don't know the exact number because I never made an written list. Some users make consistently good comments in some topics, and it's an important signal for a discussion.
For example. ColinWright is a mathematician like me. I usually skim the math posts but he reads the whole post. So when he make a comment in that post it's usually accurate. If he says that in page 3, second paragraph there is a huge error, I just go to page 3, second paragraph and there is surely an error.
Nobody is perfect, but some users have earned a good reputations in some topics. I classified others as clueless enthusiastic, others as troll/morons/crackpots. Other are just unclassified. It's topic specific, so I may think a user makes good comments in one topic and regular comments in other topics. (I don't remember any case of good comments in one topic and really bad comments in other topics, but I have no formal list to check, it's just a fuzzy memory list in my head.)
We do need a way to distinguish participants so we can correlate replies to earlier comments of the same participant; otherwise it's way too disorganized as you don't know which voice is which.
Revealing usernames eventually is right, I think, because clicking through to see how that person describes themself (job, hobbies, etc) is an interesting dimension to their comment.
Also, for better or worse, I think people put more effort into making things (including written comments) that are attached to their identity in some way, so usernames increase quality.