I'd like see some kind of solution where submissions don't disappear so quicky.
Maybe using tags that become sub-forums of sorts and the front page is just an aggregate.
Like tags for SSL, ddos, security, centos, payment-solutions etc.
Tags are not hard to implement, there could even be a limited set to choose from, that only certain users can add to, if there is any concern about new tag creation abuse.
And then a submission can span multiple tags, it may get buried under one tag but rank better under other tags.
In terms of "doing" something with the points, I quite like Stack Overflow's approach of letting users with higher reputations do more things. There is a little of this on HN (e.g. flagging), but on SO it includes things like editing posts, deleting comments, review flags, etc. But that would lead to a broader, less centralized system than YC is likely to prefer, and it's their site and decision ultimately.
I think it would be great if there was an "old" button next to "new" in the header, in which submissions of the past month (or so) show up, ordered by a score that allows for old stories to be bumped back to the top, like
points * age * comment rate.
Not really what you describe, but it's along the lines of "give me an alternative to the frontpage or /new." I don't know precisely how it works. I think it gives more weight to votes from older accounts, but that's just a guess. It does seem to be a slightly higher quality frontpage, but that might just be confirmation bias. After all, if it were truly better, then /classic would be the actual frontpage.
There's also http://hckrnews.com/ which shows a time-ordered list of all submissions that reach the frontpage each day. I prefer it to HN's frontpage, both because you can scroll back over the past few days and because there aren't that many submissions that reach the front page each day, so it's easy to quickly scroll through a list of all of them to pick out anything of interest.
Tags allow a submission to exist across different pseudo-subs.
So a link may be buried under one popular tag but more prominent under another.
Its interesting to note that some people got on the leader board via only commenting when their posts were relevant, the avg. 5+ points people and some got on their through just making sure their voice was heard, even if they didn't have anything relevant to say, the people with an avg below 3 points.
I've always treated HN's a bit differently from other message boards in that I only comment when I think I have something relevant to say, which is probably driven from the average point tracking system.
I'm actually surprised at the number of leaders with avg scores under 2. I'm guessing these people treat HN's like a regular message board and just comment on everything. The average of the top 100 seems to be 4.3 so it looks like
Giving feedback on a less popular "Show HN" is a good example. In most cases, you'll just get one vote, from the person who posted the story. Sometimes they don't even bother giving a vote, so you'll get nothing. If they ask a follow-up question and you reply, you probably won't get any votes at all because your comment won't be generally useful, just useful to the person with the question. For example, this series of comments, for which I received not a single vote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8009176
It also goes the other way... here's a comment where I received 13 points for doing arithmetic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7720950 (Actually, I didn't even do the arithmetic, Wolfram Alpha did.)
I have nothing against the simple stats -- why waste time on complex pseudoscience when basic pseudoscience will do? -- but the risk is that we'll design a stats page by adding numbers one at a time, in laziest-first order, until the screen starts to look cluttered, at which point we'll pick the most promising pattern we've spotted so far and start trying to optimize it. This is a great way to generate Powerpoint slides with lines that move up and to the right, and a lousy way to measure value. The micromanagement of statistical placebos is the occupational hazard of our age, and we should try to push back.
It's easy, too easy, to game my average-points ranking. I should contribute only popular thoughts to popular posts. I should assiduously avoid commenting on anything that's not on the homepage, or replying to people who are not near the top of a thread. I should make sure to comment within the newly-arrived-on-the-home-page time window, which is presumably now measured in milliseconds. I should certainly avoid giving advice to people on Ask HN.
That's no way to live.
Submissions get buried quickly now because of the sheer volume.
Points are silly though. People who join today are never, ever going to catch up to someone who joined five years ago.
I'm fairly certain they changed the ranking algorithm for comments around April/May. My average used to be 10 (it's 4.5 now), and this meant that I could comment on a thread and it would essentially always be the top comment, even if it only had 1 point and the comments below had more.
This created a positive feedback loop - because the top comments get read more, they also get voted up more (as long as they're not blatant trolls/spam). So once you had an average of about 6 or more, it was very easy to maintain and rack up points.
They seem to have changed the algorithm them - I remember when they did it, because I noticed the effects almost immediately (not just on my own account, but on others' accounts, like tptacek and tokenadult).
Overall, this is probably a change for the better, since it mitigates the "rich get richer" effect of commenting frequently while still rewarding people who consistently contribute valuable comments.
I set a goal several years back of getting into the top 100, then top 50, and so on, and was commenting and posting loads. I guess they didn't like that too much and it disappeared onto the Lists page ;-) I don't post as much now but that's probably a good thing for me.
Why? Oh, why? I look at my own HN posting as a personal weakness that does nothing to advance my career, general happiness, or sense of personal development. The really successful people I've known in my life don't get caught up in tussling in Internet forums. They stay focused like a laser on goals that are much more recognizable as "success".
And that reminds me to close my browser and think about what I really want to accomplish today!
1. Like this :-) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8362307
I guess the rationale for this change is to stop the silly competition (if there was any) once at the top of the pack. I'm not sure there ever was such a competition, mind you. I was #7 once upon a time and it never affected my posting habits.
(hint: avg 52+)
http://web.archive.org/web/20070302084140/http://news.ycombi...
http://web.archive.org/web/20090722153500/http://news.ycombi...
The closest power law fit is
predicted average score = 0.27 * (total score) ^ 0.25
The main reason we haven't done anything about it is that it's not clear what to do. For example, we could make it use a shorter time window than "forever"—but do we really want to gamify karma further? I doubt it.
I ran into that while putting together a profile of prolific HN posters [2]. I put it together a bit at a time over several days, and noticed that people were appearing and disappearing from the list, which seemed odd. I ended up finding a third-party list on Heroku that was more stable day-to-day [3]. However it seems not to be updating any more– the numbers are now a few months old.
[1] https://github.com/HackerNews/HN/issues/49
Slashdot used to have a thing where your karma would eventually just say something like, "Lots".