Ask HN: Do you feel excluded from HN/Lobste.rs/Reddit?

[Lk7Of3vfJS2n]

HackerNews makes it hard to post anonymously. If you signup and try to post a lot of text or god forbid a Show HN you spent weeks building, it shadow bans you for at least five days. It forces you to wait before you can participate.

Lobste.rs doesn't allow signups without invitation. What if you don't know personally someone who is a user there to invite you?

Many Reddit channels don't let you post unless the account has 10-25 points of karma and is ten days old. This doesn't let you share something important with many people anonymously and quickly.

Do these policies of online forums make you feel excluded? Do you wish these sites ran differently? How would your ideal online forum run?

[dcminter]

> If you signup and try to post a lot of text or god forbid a Show HN you spent weeks building, it shadow bans you for at least five days. It forces you to wait before you can participate.

Firstly is that actually true? I feel like I've seen any number of interesting posts from brand new accounts.

Secondly, if you have "spent weeks building" something it will not kill you to wait for five days to tell us about it.

> This doesn't let you share something important with many people anonymously and quickly.

Nothing springs to mind that is that important that:

• It can't wait a week or two

• Would be of no interest to conventional news organisations

What specifically did you have in mind?

Because at the end of the day, without clarification, this sounds a lot like "Spammer would like to know how avoid the spam filtering please."

[Lk7Of3vfJS2n]

> Firstly is that actually true?

I created a new account, posted legit content, and none of the content appeared until ~5 days later.

> it will not kill you

How do you know it will not kill me?

What if I don't have to pay this month's rent and launching the site today instead of five days later amounts to $500? Both of these are true for me right now. The creators of HN can't possibly know the cost to a user to post something.

How did you estimate that "it will not kill me" also means it will not kill my spirits to not try again? How do you measure this cost?

> Nothing springs to mind that is that important that:

Merely because nothing springs to mind isn't proof that no such thing exists.

> What specifically did you have in mind?

I have different things in mind for different sites.

[dcminter]

> I created a new account, posted legit content, and none of the content appeared until ~5 days later.

This proves that it happened to you for the content that you posted, not that it's a general issue. Even if we assume your content is indeed "legit" then this seems like an inconvenience to you but not particularly one to this community. Which one do you think the community would value more?

> How do you know it will not kill me?

Unless you are posting from beyond the grave then it did not kill you. QED.

If you won't present specifics then I don't see why anyone here should care that you're disgruntled about it.

[edent]

The problem is, without these measures forums quickly get overrun by spam.

So they use reputation / points / karma / invitations as a proxy for trust.

You don't have the right to demand people's attention. You have to earn that.

[Lk7Of3vfJS2n]

These measures aren't the only way to stop spam.

[edent]

Sure. But they're the cheapest and easiest.

But, if you don't like it, then it is relatively easy to start your own community site. Something like Lemmy or kbin might be suitable for you. Let us know how it goes - and whether you solve the spam problem.

[Lk7Of3vfJS2n]

How did you measure that they're the cheapest and easiest? And cheapest and easiest for whom?

I did and I did.

[dcminter]

They are "cheapest and easiest" because they're the ones that currently exist. Any other approach would require work on the part of the site owners. If you want them to change that then you're going to have to present a case as to why it's in their interest, not why it's in yours.

Nobody is opposed to you setting up a competing forum with different spam-filtering qualities.

[dave4420]

If you already have access to such a great forum, why do you also need access to HN, Reddit, Lobsters etc?

[tredre3]

> HackerNews makes it hard to post anonymously. If you signup and try to post a lot of text or god forbid a Show HN you spent weeks building, it shadow bans you for at least five days. It forces you to wait before you can participate.

I don't think that is automatically true, I've seen many new accounts with a single post/comment.

Maybe what happens is that the threshold for your comment to be greyed out is probably lower for new accounts. Same for flagged post, maybe a single flag is enough to kill a submission by a new account?

[catchnear4321]

five days is nothing.

invitations are for hype as much as for filtering. diminishing returns. eventually invites get to those “you” didn’t want to invite.

there are subreddits to help you boost karma to get over the karma hump. ten days is still basically nothing.

these policies help deter bad actors. but not well. bad actors can plan ahead.

feel excluded? no.

there is no ideal. there are only attempts to mitigate humanity’s negative impact. some work better than others. none work great. humans are stubborn.

[trexicong]

I don't think this is true of HN. Here I am posting a comment from a brand new account. Can you see it?

[dcminter]

I think OP is talking about new posts rather than new threads on existing posts. Although I'm still inclined to suspect that spam mitigation factors¹ caught their particular post rather than this being a general thing, because I'm pretty sure I have seen brand new accounts post interesting stuff.

Seems like OP's nose is just out of joint because their terribly important post got clobbered :shrug:

¹ Which is not to accuse them of posting spam - just that it scored high on some metric or other.