This is one of the very few sites I've flagged in my 3+ year HN history. Here's why: HN seems to work because we focus our attention on high-quality posts and "content-filled" comments. Low-quality (and sometimes unpopular, unfortunately) comments are penalized.
This project -- if it does what it claims -- seems to focus on people that create low-quality comments (i.e., "trolls"). In a way, it's rewarding them for their behavior. (and yes, I realize the irony in my comment).
Also, it blanket labels anyone meeting its algorithmic threshold as a "hater", when in fact they may just have written something unpopular.
So I'd prefer for people to create value using HN's API in more positive, constructive ways.
I would say this project alone seems harmless enough, but this regarding this comment from the author's blog post I have to say I agree with you on:
> *Side Note: Eventually I would love to turn this into a Chrome App that will just real-time analyze any user on a page when you visit hacker news and put a score right next to them so the world can see if they hate or love. I’m also going to build versions of this for Twitter, reddit, Instagram, Facebook, and maybe even dating apps. If you want to help, reach out!
I think both of you have great points. I am not trying to demean anyone or give extra credit to trolls. I do agree that this app is focused on "haters" though. It was more just a fun experiment to see how well it would even work. One thing I noticed is that most people on Hacker News have well thought out comments and are not in fact "haters" (usually only a few percent likely they post insulting comments.) As far as a chrome extension, my intention would be to help give people context for comments based on previous actions. I think transparency can sometimes be powerful and give someone an additional lens to look through when encountering an encouraging or discouraging comment.
Apparently, this is my worst comment... which can't possibly be true:
"Even then, you're aware of the contacts or the implant,
unless you're living in the Matrix and were genetically
engineered with a AV jack in your spinal column."
@krapp there were some challenges building out a great model but you can download the whole repo and pull out just the machine learning part and see what I did, I have it commented out in an iPython Notebook. :)
It basically uses word tokenization using scikit-learn's count vectorizer and some extra features I added like "bad words", ratio of bad words to total words used, speaking in all CAPS, and a few other features. I then took the features and use logistic regression to predict the likely hood that a specific comment is insulting then average all a user's comments into one score.
I used training data from a kaggle competition and was able to score near the same level as the winners but it will definitely be improved as I keep working on it.
Like every other site on the internet with game-ified comment scoring (starting perhaps with Slashdot), it mostly encourages groupthink and discourages dissenting views from being expressed.
OTOH, at least HN lets you create throwaway accounts easily.
It is! My most hateful comment is about the Apple Air: "Please provide an example why a screw or removable panel would provide less value to the consumer than gluing the thing and making it impossible to replace the battery on your own. I eagerly await your response."
Reliability. Screws come loose, especially when flexed in a pocket etc. Its considered a win in mechanical engineering circles when you remove a screw from a design.
I look forward to metal-air batteries, where the charge can be expected to exceed the lifetime of the device.
Sorry! The site has been getting hammered with people so it keeps crashing. Trying to scale it up now. It has to make a separate API calls for each of your comments (max 50) so it takes a while and since there are so many people using it sometimes it times out...
Interesting, my most downvoted comment is also my highest rated: "Downvoted because enough is enough! The "14 competing standards" comic was really funny the first few hundred times it was snarked into HN comments." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8354087
"If you have multiple modes you can basically reuse the entire keyboard for commands. That's one advantage that is impossible to achieve in non-modal editors. Ctrl-ing, Alt-ing, Shift-ing stuff just isn't the same, especially as those commands get more and more complex."
"The sort of incivility we're worried about is the more explicit type where someone replies to a comment with "You are an idiot. Don't you realize that x y z?" when they could have simply said "x y z." I'm pretty ..."
It would be cool to ignore/weight down quoted text somehow.
No moderator touched that post. It was killed by user flags. (Also, why on earth would we "nuke" a post sharing original work done with the HN API? That's why we made the API in the first place.)
That said, the methodology here is totally broken. I expected my worst comment to be related to one of the many gender debates on HN, but no.
Apparently, it's this:
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You can try "Masters of Deception: The Gang that Ruled Cyberspace".
It's a fictionalized retelling of the stories of the two prominent BBS hacker/phreaker groups during the 80s and early 90s.
It's not really brain food or anything like that, but it's a quick and decent read if you have free time.
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Truly this is the pinnacle of vitriol. I then looked at some of the other darker hues in the periodic table. More mundane stuff.