Not too seldom have I seen the author or a significant party of a story chime in through a fresh green account, as they were alerted by the story being posted here one way or another. And usually when they do it's very interesting.
As such I would find it detrimental if they had to jump through too many hoops so they don't bother or it takes too long so the thread dies before they can participate.
(a bit more about this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47056384, with a reply from the OP)
So maybe some sort of filter like that? Only show it to those kinds of accounts at first?
The downside is that if that group isn't big enough you get a lot of groupthink, but if your sample is wide enough, it can be avoided. To be honest, I don't recall why we stopped doing it.
what I’m seeing is new or sleeper accounts that have been idle for over a decade with low (<99) karma getting into comment circles. Over the last couple of weeks i’ll see several top comments on articles with back and forth between other similar accounts… it’s got to the point that I check a user habitually before I even bother reading… and I have never hidden so many comments before getting to something substantive in the comments…
Like many here, I don’t wish to limit new users, but this does seem from my armchair perspective to be a pattern to be on the look out for.
I've noticed this kind of behavior on Reddit but never on HM
Rumor had it that there is also some kind of social-network metric detecting when socially adjacent accounts (or alts) are engaged in astroturfing, the practice where a small cabal tries to pass themselves off as a broader grassroots campaign.
Flip that around though and the same metrics might allow new accounts to be meaningfully vouched for by existing ones.
A few people in these comments seem wildly confident that it is written by an LLM. If anything, I hope it was written by a human as an elaborate troll to trigger these so-called immaculate LLM detectors.
Would seem to require some discernment to classify. Not all assistive use is slop.
Who aside from Fred fucking Durst writes like that?
Ugh... Clearly llm generated. This is how internet has become. 90% of posts are variations of tropes like these.
> Not all assistive use is slop.
That's right, and the key is to discern which posts/projects are interesting.
Well, the simplest automated method would be to run the post and comment together through an LLM with a prompt that's roughly:
"Is this person claiming to be the author or co-creator of the work discussed in this submission?"
Only green accounts subject to it. I predict you'd probably have a very low false positive and false negative rate.
It's of course a terribly slippery slope. My perhaps overly-cynical take is that once the infra is place some of your bosses would be prone to eventually abusing it.
Personally I'm here for it: Dang, moderator turned whistleblower—on the run from dark VC money—in a race against time to save freedom. Still working on a title for the film.
Reddit has forums where you need a minimum karma to post to certain subreddits and that is typically upvotes on your comments, but it could also be upvotes on someone else’s moderated subreddit.
1. some interesting projects gets to HN main page
2. author of the project is not on HN so creates a green account and interacts
even if that person would have the patience to stick around, by the time they would be able to respond, it would be too late for it to be relevant to the (now stale) discussion.
For sure a problem worth considering.
I can't think of anything easy...
Only even remotely sensible thought I have at present:
We add a check box to replies created by new accounts. Maybe created by all accounts?
The prompt reads something to the effect of: I am mentioned in the article. And then they get to say how.
-This is my project -I am mentioned by name -Etc...
Whatever it is they wrote, appears somehow, maybe as a required line or something.
Others can see that and either flag the account or vouch.
This at least some what distributes the required attention load.
That said, I don't like it. Have nothing better, so here it is!
Then others seeing that
This is a fundamental part of how HN sees its own functioning; they refer to it as "rate limiting".
This doesn't mean it doesn't have a strong sense of what bad behavior is. It clearly does.
Everything else seems to eventually cause new blood to dry up.
Mm, balancing against “long-time lurker, made an account just to post this”…
And, as another commenter mentions, if someone shares your work, you should be able to comment on that thread without delay.
It's really not a problem that can be solved easily :(
Actually cross the will out. They are already doing this to avoid the green smell. This account replied to me today. 4 months old, but only started posting today. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=BelVisgarra
Oh damn, that's the one who posted the AskHN about the verified job portal on the frontpage today. Either this is some chilling still in build up, or it's an actual human being with severe LLM slop impersonation derangement syndrome.
I was able to have discussions where one party has significantly unpopular opinions. Such discussions are unique to HN, please don't kill them.
Example[.]com
But don’t worry, HN has been thoughtful about links from new accounts for months and months (can’t speak for longer, but maybe/probably). Effort could well be duplicative unless I’m unaware of some more granular detail.
I don't think the solution is changing the dynamic but flagging, this site self-moderates quite well, aside from dang and tomhow's great work.
New account can be invited or vouched for by an old account with good karma. If an account that you vouched for starts spamming and/or slopposting, you lose your vouching for abilities for a period of time or forever.
If the discussion is related to a public project, like in the examples in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47303604
...you can use existing communication channels (website, readme on github) to ask people for an invite to participate in it.
It’s perhaps unintentional, but your framing makes it seem that this is a baseless whimsy.
At this point, it appears that we will be talking to bots more than humans.
It’s a brave new world, and not adapting to it will see the humans leave.
Because if new account restrictions create enough friction, you lose legitimate users who periodically rotate accounts for privacy reasons.
At some point the annoyance tips toward just lurking, and a forum where only old accounts talk is a stagnant forum given enough time.
