[yukichan]

Hacker News is turning out to be the RSS feed for Wired's stupid articles and their link bait titles. I've even seen mods change the titles they're so "Upworthy" like. There hasn't been a day there haven't been one or two Wired articles on the front page and I think if they're not gaming it, something I wouldn't put past someone writing obnoxious titles like this, well then maybe we just need a weight against these "Astounding!" Wired articles.

Please just go to http://www.wired.com/ and see one gross and manipulative title after another:

"The Coolest Spaceships Ever Built, Compared by Size" Well I'll only read it if they're the coolest EVER!

"Americans Aren't Ready for the Future Google and Amazon Want to Build" I'm sure they used a scientific poll.

"Why the Console Wars Won't Be Anything Like You Expect" Right, you knew just what I was expecting.

"The Craziest, Coolest Mustangs That Never Were" So crazy, so cool, who would have known?

"Free iPhone 5s Deal Proves Apple Isn't So Special" See there you go, proof Apple isn't special.

Seriously, Wired is shit content. It's a cesspool. Yet every day it's on the HN home page. One obnoxious article after another. Usually HN is a bellwether for what will end up on techmeme or the general tech press the next day, but you think you're going to see these shit articles from Wired on techmeme or the tech page of the New York Times? How often is tptacek leaving amazing comments on these stupid Wired posts. Like never.

[dang]

Yes, this was a stupid title (I just edited it), and yes, a lot of Wired posts are fluff and inappropriate for HN. We sometimes penalize sites (without banning them) when they're responsible for too much fluff. But doing so increases the risk of missing any substantial articles.

The last three from wired.com that got significant attention on HN were:

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7590644
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7610452
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7599422

Not the most substantial ever, but not bad.

If anyone wants to throw out some things we might try to address this problem—specifically, the problem of tech press websites that put out substantive pieces but also a stream of dreck—we're interested in addressing this. It's a significant impediment to the quality of HN.

[yukichan]

That's a tough problem. Outside of human moderation I don't have any idea. I'm glad you're aware of the problem though and are working on it. You guys work hard and we pay you nothing!

[dang]

Thanks. I may write some code to show moderators a view like /newest but only from sites marked lightweight. Then we can rescue any solid articles from the penalty. If we can save most of the solid articles, it would free us to mark more borderline sites as lightweight. An experiment worth trying, anyway.

[DanAndersen]

I'd love to see a machine learning algorithm that can automatically rank headlines on their "Upworthy/clickbaity"-ness. I know there's the extension "Downworthy" that does some text-replacement, but I would really enjoy an extension that could be like a spam filter for headlines.