Item — HN Reader

Do you think this variation on reddit would be interesting?

- the front page would be like reddit's top

- instead of a new page, there's a random page that shows links in completely random order (each refresh shows a new random order)

- vote up if you want to bring a link to the front page

- vote down when you want a link to disappear from the front page (e.g., you don't like it or you like it but don't want to see any more discussion on it)

2 comments

The random page could also take into account the link score so that links with higher scores have a better chance of ranking more highly.

that seems considerably less random ;-)

I'm not sure I see the point, actually. Why would this be more interesting than the current reddit behavior?

Users would have more control over what appears on the front page and for how long. Also, old submissions would still have a chance to make it to the front page.

Ah. For even more control over what appears on the front page, it might be useful to have a certain pool of points for each user, derived from site metrics, which the users could then apportion as they saw fit, rather than only one per submission. You really want this story to reach the front page? Spend half of your 34 points on it, or whatever.

Kind of like Slashdot's moderation system, where you only have 5 points to use per day. (At least that's how it was 3-4 years ago when I stopped reading /.)

Slashdot only gives you moderation points some days, though. I read slashdot two or three times a week, still, and hardly ever have mod points. I dunno if you can use more than one mod point on a single comment, there.

My reference to site metrics assumed that you'd give out the same amount of mod points to each person, based on some calculation involving the number of articles, users, and how many you wanted on the front page each day.

I can imagine someone being annoyed that they don't have enough mod points to give a single point to each article they find interesting, though, and it would be a pain to have to constantly fine tune the calculation, so one way to mitigate that would be to allow everyone to mod up any article by one point (like on reddit) without using their pool of mod points, and then they could use the mod points for "extra" ups.