I'm not upset with the front page changing-- I think it's still just as awesome as before, and I'm sure Paul and the moderators are doing a great job at keeping the crap off.
What I am worried about are these increasingly common AskYC posts reflecting on News.YC. This post, for example, is a somewhat self-centered broadcast of BrandonM's exit. I hope this doesn't become a common practice, because this is the kind of stuff I don't like seeing on the front page.
There's certainly a ton of awesome conversation still going on. But I wish the community would feel like off-white paint again: unnoticeable and non-criticizable. It's what the people in the community say that matters, not the color of the walls.
That is one real change. There are more Ask YC type posts on the frontpage than there used to be. I've been thinking of measures to fix that. One possibility is to have a karma threshold for posting them, but I don't want to silence new users. So I think what I may do is make gravity stronger for Ask YC posts: make them have to get e.g. 2x as many points to stay at a given position on the frontpage.
Good Ask YC posts are among my favorite on HN. Many news stories offer little meat for discussion--they're straightforward. My feed reader catches most interesting news, already, so for me, the discussion provides the greatest value.
To keep the baby not the bathwater, what about putting up the submission-level down arrow, but only for Ask YC submissions?
I don't think down arrows would be enough. Unfortunately a lot of new Ask YC posts are opinionated and people vote as means of identifying with the post rather than as a measure of interest or quality. Its interesting how well the poll system reverted the up arrow to a quality measure rather than an agreement measure in polls.
Most of the objectionable AskYC posts could probably be shoe-horned into polls by editors - just with 'agree' or 'disagree' options.
Maybe every post could have additional [agree] [disagree] buttons, because a lot of poor quality submissions are equally opinionated.
The missing thread-level down arrow does prevent reddit-style polling. Pg might not like this suggestion because a worse nightmare might be "vote up if you like candy" threads.
If the down-arrows were karma-restricted to ensure adequate assimilation, though...
What about having a separated board for ask yc? Wouldn't that work even better? That way, if you are looking for site references you look one place, if you're looking for questions and their answers you look other place.
I'm sorry this post made it to the front page, actually, and it's part of the problem I'm talking about. There's nothing wrong with submitting bad stories, but they should never get 30 points. I find it a bit unfortunate that after commenting on average more than once per day, this submission is the one that achieved the highest karma, just beating out http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=107729
What I am worried about are these increasingly common AskYC posts reflecting on News.YC. This post, for example, is a somewhat self-centered broadcast of BrandonM's exit. I hope this doesn't become a common practice, because this is the kind of stuff I don't like seeing on the front page.
There's certainly a ton of awesome conversation still going on. But I wish the community would feel like off-white paint again: unnoticeable and non-criticizable. It's what the people in the community say that matters, not the color of the walls.