Curation IS arguably one of the most critical factors. A library is useful because of what it doesn't contain, not because of what it does contain. The hypothetical "library of all possible books" isn't useful to anyone.

That's a long way of agreeing with you that there is positive in the duration bias of HackerNews and other sites.

Of course anything can be hijacked, and metrics proverbially tend towards becoming targets (and hence a dumb arms race), but the general concept of the value of curation is sound.

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progval 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> The hypothetical "library of all possible books" isn't useful to anyone.

That's an archive, and it has its own uses for researchers, especially historians.

	▲	hexaga 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		In the spirit of the library, which contains both your comment and mine: > The hypothetical "library of all possible books" isn't useful to anyone. That's not an archive, and has no uses even for researchers, especially not for historians.
	▲	400thecat 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		a library containing all possible books is no more useful than having a random number generator

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schrodinger 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Thanks -- totally agree that curation is essential, and I suspect my original point may have come across as advocating against curation, which I wasn’t.

My goal isn’t to randomize the homepage or flatten quality, but to involve a broader swath of users in the curation process. It’s currently dominated by the few who browse “new”, essentially a self-selected minority of curators.

Concretely, I was imagining something like: * Every new post is shown to a small % of users as part of their regular homepage (not in a “new” tab they’d have to seek out). * Posts that get engagement from that slice are shown to more users, and so on — a gradual ramp-up based on actual interest rather than early-bird luck.

So it’s not removing filtering; it’s just moving from a binary gate (past the goalpost = homepage) to a more continuous, probabilistic exposure curve.

Curation still happens, but more people get to participate in it, and the system becomes more robust to time-of-day luck or early vote pile-ons.

Anyway, I mostly wanted to clarify that I’m not against filtering -- just having a thought experiment about how we might make it more adaptive and inclusive.

Does that clarify my point? Any thoughts? I appreciate your engagement!

	▲	schrodinger 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Apologize for the poor formatting in the parent post; I can't edit it now, but here it is as intended: Thanks -- totally agree that curation is essential, and I suspect my original point may have come across as advocating against curation, which I wasn’t. My goal isn’t to randomize the homepage or flatten quality, but to involve a broader swath of users in the curation process. It’s currently dominated by the few who browse “new”, essentially a self-selected minority of curators. Concretely, I was thikinking something like: * Every new post is shown to a small % of users as part of their regular homepage (not in a “new” tab they’d have to seek out). * Posts that get engagement from that slice are shown to more users, and so on — a gradual ramp-up based on actual interest rather than early-bird luck. So it’s not removing filtering; it’s just moving from a binary gate (past the goalpost = homepage) to a more continuous, probabilistic exposure curve. Curation still happens, but more people get to participate in it, and the system becomes more robust to time-of-day luck or early vote pile-ons. Anyway, I mostly wanted to clarify that I’m not against filtering -- just having a thought experiment about how we might make it more adaptive and inclusive. Does that clarify my point? Any thoughts? I appreciate your engagement!