There's a lot of stuff on HN I like, and a lot of stuff I find boring or irrelevant. Unfortunately, the stuff that I really like tends to be novel and unpredictable, so trying to teach some kind of Bayesian classifier to recognise things I'll like is probably not going to work.
Personally, I think I'd be perfectly happy with an old-school killfile: do not show me posts whose headlines contain the strings "X", "Y" or "Z", or that link to sites "A", "B" or "C".
I have a hacked up version of HN that I've added tags and a decent search to that I am using as a personal journal. I haven't removed account creation or anything from the regular HN, so you can still post new stories, vote and comment with an account: http://kruhft.dyndns.org/discuss
Or maybe even going down the "subreddit" route, i.e. a separate section for Apple content, Python hacking, SOPA/PIPA etc. In other words, create a "bucket" for the general high-level, recurring HN topics and allow users to pick which ones they want to see and those they don't.
What if you set your initial goals small? The goal is not to highlight only the good stuff, but to get rid of the obviously bad things for you?
Make two classifiers, one that tries to decide "is it interesting for thristian". And make another that decides "is this similar to an existing story". Then it gets demoted only if both it is not interesting and it is similar to something that already exists.
> do not show me posts whose headlines contain the strings "X", "Y" or "Z"
The problem with that is these days there's so many "clickbait" headlines, some of which offer absolutely no insight into the content itself.
Without policing each and every submission to ensure the headlines accurately define the linked article - it would be difficult to guarantee any kind of success with basic headline filters.
Personally, I think I'd be perfectly happy with an old-school killfile: do not show me posts whose headlines contain the strings "X", "Y" or "Z", or that link to sites "A", "B" or "C".