[castral]

I don't understand how this is supposed to solve anything, and I've seen it suggested as a solution multiple times. If you restrict comments to older accounts, all it's going to do is make the bot creators speculatively open and proactively age accounts for future use.

[kn100]

I would argue that we shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Adding a cost to commenting that requires aging accounts I think might discourage fly by night operations and "experiments".

[vunderba]

This already happens now. Go look through a few of the "Show HN" authors - you'll inevitably see around several accounts that are 50-100 days old with a karma of 1 to avoid a green label.

The OP is talking about posts, not comments. The simplest solution might be to prevent someone from posting a "Show HN" until they’ve earned twenty-five or fifty karma, to demonstrate that they’ve been actively participating on Hacker News rather than using it solely to promote themselves.

[brewdad]

This leads inevitably to karma farming bots who upvote each other’s submissions à la Reddit.

It’s a speed bump at best.

[vunderba]

Yeah I considered that - but any friction is better than none. Maybe integrate an additional consideration by which low karma (threshold < 5 karma) accounts cannot upvote other low karma accounts.

Honestly, we don’t really have the same cold start problem that a brand new social media site would. We already have plenty of reputable active users here. So HN could restrict new accounts to only being able to comment initially. As they participate, their comments receive upvotes, allowing them to build up enough karma (even a small amount of 25) which unlocks the ability to upvote, and then, finally, the ability to create posts.

[muldvarp]

Creating more friction can also lead to a higher percentage of bots. I for one immefiately leave when I realize that I need to jump through several hoops before I'm actually allowed to participate on a site. Someone building a bot farm on the other hand is probably willing to tolerate quite some friction before giving up.

[vunderba]

That's true. On the other hand, Hacker News is a pretty well known entity, so I think new users would be more willing to put in the time.

I also don't think it's too unreasonable to ask people to make comments and participate in the community before allowing them to do more.

[DharmaPolice]

A speed bump might still be preferable to nothing.

[zahlman]

I have seen accounts that were dormant for years suddenly start posting frequently, all with slop. (I don't know if this represents people having an epiphany about AI use, or accounts being compromised or just what.)

[vunderba]

Yeah I've seen this too - like a weird equivalent of HN sleeper agents that suddenly get activated.

[Oras]

I wish for karma based too if we managed to get filters. I want to see posts only by accounts with {x}+ karma points.

[Springtime]

Would be fine for a personal filter but if used globally would incentivize karma gaming. You can get high karma from reposts of past popular submissions (an author who was in prison who reached the front page even half-joked/resented once how many common Wikipedia articles land on the front page for the nth time).

[bakugo]

Have you taken a look at reddit recently? It's absolutely infested with bots farming karma, either by reposting old popular posts, or simply posting AI generated comments.

Actively encouraging this will only make things worse.

[elpocko]

You want other people to deal with the things you don't like and filter stuff for you, to improve your own experience and shield you from the filthy masses. God beware you have to endure a comment you don't like, your royal highness.

I'd rather see you gone than the people you complain about.

[ArekDymalski]

Core function of HN Front page is based on "other people filtering stuff for others". Filtering out by any criteria (karma, account color, first letter of the nickname, whatever) doesn't automatically mean that someone is a jerk as you have stated in the comments nearby. It just means that someone is selecting the information to consume and does not harm anyone (perhaps besides the selective person who might miss interesting info due to selection).

[sltkr]

The filtering is supposed to be based on the quality of the content, and it's only useful to the extent that people filter either on quality directly or closely correlated metrics.

If everyone votes purely on basis of the first letter of the username, to use your example, then the votes provide no useful information and you may as well abolish it.

[Springtime]

Filtering is a valid form of improving signals. If there there was a reliable heuristic for users posting low effort content that was better then the user would be considering that instead.

If someone in a chatroom for example is being spammy with their messages at the expense of noticing posts one finds more relevant then blocking them isn't due to considering them some filthy pleb but improving their experience. If the user being filtered never becomes aware there's no reason to be offended, either.

Edit: also I wasn't the one to downvote you if that makes any difference.

[eudamoniac]

My system has been working pretty well: using some extension or another that has mute functionality, if I see a person post an extremely low quality comment, I look at their comment history for two or three pages. If there is no comment of value in that set, I mute the user. The board gets better each day.

[i_think_so]

Are you doing that here? What extension(s) do you use for it?

[elpocko]

HN is already heavily moderated. Low-effort posters and spammers get downranked immediately, based on their behavior. OP is simply intolerant and unable to function in a social setting.

Minimum karma and account age filters are discriminatory, anti-social features that should not exist on any social site. The people asking for such features are intolerant jerks, no different from ageists or ableists. They are parasites, because they want the people who are not intolerant jerks to do their filtering for them, and keep the site alive by doing so.

What would happen if every single user enabled their minimum karma filter?

[Springtime]

This thread is evidence that some are unhappy with the state of a core HN feature due to users posting what they judge to be low effort content, so it does get through.

The comments here are about possible mitigations. Based on this feedback dang has apparently now restricted new accounts from posting Show HN threads, so globally now there is a form of filtering users from being seen by others based on a heuristic.

Your initial comment is written with the impression that the poster wanting to improve their chances of higher effort content is making some judgement on the posters themselves as though they're conceited ('filthy masses', 'your royal highness') when they're merely considering one approach to reducing noise from their feed.

I myself in this very comment chain have already posted that I disagree that filtering by karma would help due to gaming issues but I don't see the problem with the user's goal.

[krapp]

>What would happen if every single user enabled their minimum karma filter?

Hacker News would be a much better place.

In fact, filter stories as well as users. I want to filter out any story with fewer than three upvotes and any flagged comments. That would improve quality tremendously.

[sltkr]

How would any new user earn karma in that system? How would any story get upvoted?

Again, this system can only work if there are at least _some_ people that are willing to upvote newbies and read new posts.

It sounds like what you want isn't a community with collaborative filtering, like Hacker News, but a newsletter with editors, like Slashdot for example.

[dang]

And also invest more effort in karma farming. In other words, if we raise the bar for Show HNs we'll probably see more generated comments in the threads.

[andai]

Several of the posts I've seen are from autonomous AI agents, which don't currently seem to have that kind of long-term planning.

[rjh29]

I don't understand why we put locks on bicycles, a determined person can just saw them off.

[dom96]

My prediction is that nothing short of human verification is going to solve this.