skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The problem isn't that I think my comments won't be endorsed. It's more I'll self censor my comments that I think would be less popular because I'd be afraid if I'm censored I wouldn't have a chance to join in future conversations until someone would agree with me.

If I release more popular opinions by the majority I'll be instantly accepted and have a chance to further join in conversations. From a gaming perspective the correct choice to better adapt to the system would be for me to always speak to the majority to increase my odds of being accepted until I am part of the elite caste of folks who can vote.
I think for what HN aims to be, keeping everything public is a good thing. I seem to find quite a few "one-on-one" threads that get the occasional input from a third,fourth,fifth participant -- and also a few I find interesting even if I'm not participating.

When everyone knows that what's being discussed is public, it tends to keep the tone more conversational and clear -- I think. The "feel free to contact me, email in profile"-response seems to work well enough for those that do want a private (albeit not anonymous) conversation?
The fact that that consequence was literally what I immediately thought of when I read this makes me believe that you have not thought this issue through deeply enough. You say

>the thing I'd overlooked

but this is a drastic overhaul you are proposing, and I believe you have overlooked many other things too.

Let me give you some examples of other consequences: The amount of activity on HN varies with time of day. This is a problem, because on low activity hours, there will be fewer approvers (presumably, every approver has a particular taste, so the more people around, the higher the likelihood someone with compatible taste will find and approve your comment) around. This will mean that the few people that are there during the off-hours will have reduced posting speed. Since the site is more American than European, this will favor american posts over european.
Furthermore it will be risky to respond to people down low on the page. Longer post delay! This will (further) encourage threadjacking people up high on the page.
One potential consequence is that you will have to be attention grabbing. Probability of approval=eyeballs*individual probability.
Turkish PM, fighting scandal, tries to ban Twitter
Don't all these "odds" assume each game has same odds as a coin flip?
Can someone vote me up so I can get my karma above 1000 :)
Assuming you could pick game winners with 80% probability, your odds of selecting a perfect 63 game bracket are less than 1 in a million. I.e.

>>> .8 ** 63
7.846377169233378e-07

Even at 90%, your odds are little better than 1 in a thousand:

>>> .9 ** 63
0.0013100205086376223

Needless to say, I didn't even bother entering.
Someone like me will never bother. It might as well be 1,000,000.
Buffet said he calculated what he thought the odds were of a perfect bracket and took a premium on top of that. I wonder what return he got on his $1B bet.
Is it possible to restrict a poll to users with >1000 karma, since they are clearly the ones who will be inheriting both the power and the burden?

edit: additionally, it sounds like they will continue to see all posts to Hacker News (since they will have to endorse the one they approve of) so I'm not sure what they stand to benefit from this change.
I love the experiment of it! My concern is that the scale of the discussion changes the discussion itself. Hear me out:

1) If a post is unpopular less people will be there to endorse.

2) With less people endorsing, replies will appear slower to people with low karma (lots of us), so we are disinclined to reply because we can't see the discussion. Less replies mean, less discussion.

3) The system also creates a strong disincentive to comment on unpopular posts because if no one reads it you can't comment on anything else. This will slow the comments of unpopular posts further.

One solution would be to weight the number of endorsements needed by the popularity of the post. The more people seeing it the more endorsements needed. For new posts (not popular yet) I would say comments shouldn't require any endorsement and let the existing down/up system rule.
Y'all really need to get over yourselves and your belief that, "my dribble deserves to be heard, no matter how inane it is."

I don't have delicate sensibilities, I just don't care for you pissing in the metaphorical swimming pool, and unfortunately, people like you have made this moderation policy worth trying out.

This'll be my last reply to ya.
But that's only getting back part of the $1000+ that was taken from them
Faster than MD5 = strong marketing
Oddly, you've also just summed up the reasons behind many of our copyright and patent issues.
Dan- one of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act is that 64yr olds can't pay more than 3x the premiums of 20-somethings. Prior to the ACA the difference was on the order of 8-11x - so younger, healthier people are paying more and older & sicker people paying less. Don't be surprised if your cheap grandfathered plan does get canceled - this happened to me!
>>It is the most efficient possible form of wealth redistribution because there is no bureaucratic overhead needed. More money reaches the poor directly.

Unfortunately, the exact opposite will occur with an entirely new three letter agency being responsible for the distribution.
PG mentioned somewhere else that there's a 24 hour timer, after which point the pending comment is deleted -- and one can post again. It does sound to me as a rather steep penalty for wandering off the beaten path. One would be free to self-censor of course, which I suppose is the intention.

We'll see how it goes, but it does sound like it'll likely work against HN being somewhat heterogeneous, and (even more) towards group-think.
Some people might be worried that, if it's a bad change, it won't be reverted because nobody will be able to read their complaints.

This is one of the few cases where the worse a change is, the less of a voice you will have after it happens. I'm not saying it will be bad, but you can see why that would be frightening.
Sir, I certainly hope this will not be taken as being overly critical. However the change as I understand it will mean that if a new user writes a single comment that is unpopular or simply gets missed, he will forever be banned from commenting again. This is unworkable because it will mean many people will be banned just by virtue of their comment being missed, or by making a mistake and saying something that isn't appreciated by whatever senior members happen upon it.
Free Taxi in Beijing for everyone
Related to this, I imagine there are readers such as myself who tend not to engage in conversations so much as offer specialist information on sometimes obscure technical matters. Subjects that even high karma members aren't particularly qualified to have an opinion on.

For example I recently gave a short comment on the PonoPlayer submission that never made it to the front page. For the rare soul that read that submission I indicated the electronics details that indicated how it was distinguished from your usual consumer electronics. That information would be lost from what I see here.

From my own experience, I often won't offer comments unless it seems to me that a contradiction to an existing comment or stream of comments is required, if I feel there is an error. While this system would require best argumentative practice in comments, for clarity and to avoid bias traps and so on, I do hope it doesn't lead to an excess self referentiality.
> Left to your own devices (and assuming that the other 7 billion people are in the same boat) you'd be starving as a subsistence farmer making the equivalent of about $1 a day.

That's an unreasonable assumption. There are differences in productivity even among farmers. Some people are much better at farming than others.

> If you currently make $35K a year, that means that you owe 99.9% of your income to society.

So my own creativity, labor, skills, talents and education only matter for 0.1%, nothing more? Also, you're arguing that I owe part of my success to the drug addict who gets high all the time, and to the drunk who starts drinking early in the morning, and to the mugger who robs people at gunpoint? Even to people who play World of Warcraft all day?

Society is a mix of people that make wildly different contributions, and in some cases hugely negative impacts. I am immensely grateful to people like Leibniz, Newton, Shakespeare and others, but not so much to people who just coast through life. I also wish Stalin, Hitler and many others would have never existed.
I'm George, cofounder of HealthSherpa (YC S'12). Plans cost the same, whether purchased on our site or through healthcare.gov.
Hmm. I'm pretty sure I've seen more than 1 perfect bracket in the last 7 years on Yahoo, but I was certainly wrong about second round. Apparently there's only one documented case ever of a second round perfect bracket.
Wow. This one was insanely stressful compared to every other variant I've seen so far— which is weird, because (unlike the original 2048) I was actually able to win this one.

Either way, really cool.
So, a "the rich get richer" commenting system. Great.

What exactly is wrong with just downvoting? Sure every thread has trolls and useless comments, but a lot people bring up really great points and ideas and having to go through and moderate all this shit on every thread is going to be a trainwreck.

This is a great forum for debates and discussions on technology but also the issues affecting our world. Can we please choose not to limit everyone's voice to the whim of the "karma wealthy" just to stave off a bit of bickering and "lol kewl site" comments?
There have been a lot of comments stating why this is a poor idea, but as someone who is sub-1000 karma, I haven't seen this reason posted yet (although I could only read the first half or so). In a typical day, I can't spend all day sitting on Hacker News refreshing threads and seeing if anyone has responded to me (or promoted my comment). But occasionally I'll read a thread, find a couple of interesting places to comment, and then go about my day until I can check in again later. Only being able to leave one comment in a single reasonable-length session would absolutely kill that use case. And frankly, it would make this site much less attractive to browse as an occasional commenter. Maybe you're okay with that, but I think that would be a mistake.
disagree: I just don't see the problem it's trying to solve. HN doesn't have a fluff problem or a flamewar problem - it happens, but not frequently enough to really be a problem.

The problem with HN's comments is the overwhelming negativity. Anything new, any change to something that already exists, is met with a reaction of fear or anger in the comments. I'd like to see effort go into fixing that problem, rather than wasting effort trying to solve a problem that other forums have and this one doesn't. And yes, I know i'm being part of this problem right now.
While that is true, I think most of the time people think they know what they want, and then when they get what they asked for, it can be fairly shitty.

As I see it, trying something, even for an extended period while it totally fails, means that pg et all want to improve the level of commentary as they have seen it decline, and are taking steps to do what they can to improve it.

I don't think any community has gotten it right so far, and I am willing to surf it out, even if it means my ability to comment is curtailed a bit.

I was first attracted to HN not for the stories, though they are good, but for the extremely good commentary from people who know what they are talking about.
Ask HN: What can I expect to get out of an AI education?
I'm interested in learning about AI because I think it'd be cool to create something that is somewhat intelligent. That's what I'm hoping for. But I have a feeling that I'm going to end up getting a lot of abstract theory and only enough practical knowledge to create something basic like a recommender for related things on a website. So I'd really like to hear from other people who've done a masters or other specialization in AI:

What were you hoping for and what did you end up getting?
tl;dr

Microshat shill, fearing the massive amount of negative news about Microsoft, conjures up some story where he thinks Google spied on him (because he can sense these things, y'know). Gets upset when no one believes him.
Can we grandfather in people with at least 5.6 years of HN participation? Okay, I happen to have only 593 karma point but I've been around for a while, 5.6 years actually.
Stretching before running increases your risk of injury. This is because you inhibit the pain response and increase your mobility.
> I feel this takes a way a lot of the fun.

Agreed. Building the kit by the instructions was only about 1/10th of the fun. The real fun was building new stuff out of the pieces from all the sets you have.
> Working on solved problems sucks

I don't think there is such a thing as a solved problem. The more I get into web dev, the more fascinated I become by it. There's just so much to learn, if it were such a "solved problem" then 99% of the code I have to maintain, including my own, wouldn't utterly suck.
Yeah, the 24 hour rule seems a bit excessive. I see a lot of Show HN posts where the OP will respond to questions that users have about the particular thing they are showing off. The OP now needs to hope that a 1000+ user is continually monitoring their post in order for them to quickly answer any questions others may have.
FYI -- Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments @ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7445761
You've also been here for almost 4 years. So that would be nearly a year of being treated like a second class citizen. I agree with the parent that this would stifle participation by newer users.
> This is meant to subsidize those who are living below the poverty line

Now that's just silly. If it were meant to subsidize people living below the poverty line it would target people living below the poverty line, not households making over 50k a year who would likely sock away the money or spend it on a bathroom renovation.
Great work, Jason... I'm impressed.
> People who regularly endorse comments that fail one or both of these tests will lose the ability to endorse comments. So if you're not sure whether you should endorse a comment, don't. There are a lot of people on HN. If a point is important, someone else will probably come along and make it without gratuitous nastiness.

So there will be a group of people (group B) who are going to check the quality of HN users with 1000 karma (group A)?

and, will there be another group of people(group C) who are going to check the quality of the work of group B?
I don't know whether I like it or not, but I know for sure that we'll get used to it.
Inflation in a currency is not a wealth tax, its a (inflating currency)-denominated-asset tax. There's a substantial difference.
I'd rather see it rolled out on some articles but not all, so we can see it in parallel with the old system.
That's not entirely so. The user will have the option of deleting his pending comment and submitting something new.

It does mean he can only participate in one discussion at a time, though, provided his comment isn't endorsed immediately.
The previous thread said that pending comments will expire after 24 hours of non-acceptance (releasing their lock), and can also be deleted at any time while in the pending state (which also releases the lock.)
Your information is incorrect. The pending comments will be removed after a certain time and the user will be able to comment again.

You can also delete the comment in a certain time period.

There were also some suggestions about restrictions of the single comment.
I'm sure there are different types of HN users, but I would never have reached 1k karma by submitting stories. I go to HN to read news, not make news. Now, that might be good or bad, depending on your perspective.
A few notes:

1) That poll was conducted well after the change. That makes it a very different type of poll.

2) This change has half as much support, if you ignore the wait-and-sees.
No, that's a pretty shitty incentive since I can't raise the kid for 18 years on my fond memories of paternity leave.

A recurring cash payment meeting or exceeding the costs of raising the kid on the other hand...
The majority of it was from a tiny number of comments and submissions in a small amount of time.
I think the thing that would best help the comment system would be to have all comments in a thread begin collapsed.
This is great. HN used to be a real community, but lately there has been no incentive to post anything intelligent because every comment gets buried in a sea of crap, and there are so many throwaway comments that it's impossible to find the ones by regular contributors. The amount of noise also just brings out the worst in everyone. I know you can't step on the same stream twice, but hopefully this at least makes it readable for a while.
Perhaps that could work, although it goes a bit down the road toward heavier and more explicit mechanics, as at Slashdot and Stack Overflow. In another comment somewhere in this thread, pg mentions that he'd like to keep it as simple as possible. Unspoken is the "...but no simpler" part.

It's fun to consider that a dynamic system could provide someone on the back end (or a smart algorithm) with a variable nozzle controlling comment flow.
Climate science is utterly dependent on computer models, so computer scientists may, in fact, be perfectly qualified to criticize those models.
While I don't speak for others who will moderate, there is a difference between being unpopular and being a poor comment. I have no issue encouraging good content that I disagree with. However, all too often people confuse having an unpopular opinion and being rude. They'll get down voted because they are not being civil, and they also happen to have an unpopular opinion. They will then point to that comment and claim they are being silenced by the majority (they will do this in another comment, which will also get down voted for good reason).
Not quite. He is helping himself by raising his profile.
HN comment quality has decreased a bit as it's grown, as you would expect. Some people don't have a problem with that, other find it bad enough to leave (and, ironically, sometimes leave a particularly low-quality comment in doing so).

I do have a problem with 'only one pending comment', which I think is a particularly bad part of the upcoming change. It effectively means that you can't participate in two different conversations happening in the same post. If you have karma 10k+ you are (currently planned to) 'auto-endorse', so those people can have multiple conversations.

One clear example - there was a post recently where an immigration and tax lawyer (can't remember the handle, sorry) did an AMA-style comment, which was massively popular with the community, and he answered a lot of raised questions.

If he could only make one pending comment at a time, it would not have worked: 1) Respond to a question. 2) Wait until enough people have freshly loaded the page to have the new comment in it. 3) Wait until enough people have scrolled to the right place to see his particular comment amongst all the other pendings. 4) Wait until enough of those people were endorse-capable and endorse-willing. 5) During all this waiting, keep on refreshing so you know when you're good to post the next comment.

That lawyer's one posting spree provided many people with pertinent, site-relevant, professional information... but the new system would have made it so onerous that he probably would have decided that he deals with enough boilerplate micromanagement in his day job.

Having only a single pending comment at a time will decrease the sense of community, simply by significantly reducing the number of conversations you can have.
I think instead of presenting the problems it is important to provide solutions. Do not presume a large portion of your audience has not already thought these same things. Instead, take Brett Victor's approach and offer slightly more tangible advice.

Instead of hating on the way things are currently done, show a better way. It will mean a lot more in the end.

Don't mean to be harsh, just saying that there are plenty of us who have questioned all these things and still do not have the answer.
You might also consider merely greying out comments that
have not yet been endorsed, as currently happens to down-
voted comments.

I agree with this, except that pending comments should probably be visually differentiated from downvoted ones (maybe a shade of green like new usernames). Otherwise, you risk subtly prejudicing a reader that has grown accustomed to the original meaning of the greying-out.

Either way, I'd advocate for a "showpending" toggle for users with under 1000 karma.
But what's stopping you from just working hard, saving your money, and then taking extended time off of work to do what you want to? Why does that money need to come from other people? Maybe if the government just let you keep the majority of your earnings you could use that money to "work on what (you) like or not work at all when (you) don't want to".
I like trying new things.
Hey not really answering your question, but since it sounds like you're heading for a "javascript all the way down" approach, I thought I'd suggest the mean stack (http://mean.io).

Digital Ocean offers a one-click mean install (https://www.digitalocean.com/company/blog/announcing-mean-on...) that could be hosted for $5 or $10 as a showcase.

But for an answer, I'd say that MongoDB seems to make for rapid MVPs.
The maxim in firmware is "this demonstrates the importance of not being seen".

The comparison to exploitae is .. modestly nauseating ( but perfectly understandable ) ; I never ran into a story about exploits where the perpetrator really wanted to be invisible.

There is no narcissism in firmware. It is the perfect satisfaction of leaving no ripple in the pond.
that's an interesting find :)
Why not implement a simple algorithm:

If your past 5 comments have not gotten more than 3 cumulative upvotes from ranking users then your commenting is throttled to 1 comment per day

If your past 5 comments have a cumulative negative score your commenting is limited to 1 comment per week

There is no pending comments list, only a message telling you: sorry, try to post higher quality content to be able to comment more often. You will be able to post another comment tomorrow / next week

New users are limited to one comment per day until they get at least 3 cumulative upvotes in the last 5 comments
Exactly. Why I never bothered applying. I have been reading HN for a long long time. I have a memory.
The "karma elite" will be able to read their complaints. Usefully, the people with the ability to revert the change are a strict subset of the karma elite.