[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.

[krapp]

People will need to participate otherwise there won't be any new content. I see it as just like vouching, except someone has to vouch for green accounts. A slightly more equitable (and easier to implement) version of lobste.rs' invite tree.

What I want is for green accounts not to be abused as much as they are. The number of noxious, vitriolic troll alt accounts and bots is getting ridiculous. That is almost entirely the fault of established users of course, but there's no way to deal with them poisoning the well without affecting new users.

[i_think_so]

I think you missed @sltkr's point. HN wouldn't just have less new content; it would fail to develop new users. That kind of stagnation is how sites like this die.

Aggressively filtering to raise the average post quality is a sugar rush and it has the metaphorical long term consequences of type-2 diabetes. Things start out feeling great but the acceleration of death is effectively guaranteed.

[krapp]

Given the choice, I would prefer the quiet dignity of death by stagnation over the toxic hell of cancer and metastasis.