With all due respect Joel, it seems you missed a good number of the
inputs you could have used to train your classifier.
If I (jcr) want to know what classifies as "interesting to Joel"
(joelthelion), I simply look at the "comments" and "submissions" links
in your HN profile. It will show me the stuff you took the time to
comment on, or took the time to submit to HN.
If I want to know what's "interesting" to me, the "saved stories" link
is visible in my own profile even through it is not visible to others.
In the "saved stories" is THE goldmine of every submission I've either
submitted or up-voted.
Depending on your personal bookmarking habits, your bookmarks file/db
can be another useful input. I'm in the habit of bookmarking both the
submitted article, and the HN discussion page (if it's good). Assuming I
didn't book the HN discussion, I could easily find the HN
discussion/submission for all of the sites that I've ever bookmarked
with a search engine. Give google an URL and ask it for all of the sites
linking to that URL, then parse for HN, and you've got the target.
The serious problem I see with your approach was already mentioned by
ck2; you're creating a bubble and will miss out on all the fantastic
stuff that is interesting to you, but you don't yet know that it's
interesting to you.
One of the primary benefits of HN and similar sites is learning about
the things that others find interesting. Those things may not interest
me, but the fact that others find them interesting is, well,
interesting.
Why to they consider it interesting?
Why do I consider it uninteresting?
Even if my personal opinions remain unchanged, these are important
questions for me to keep asking myself, repeatedly.
This is also why cabals are so destructive. They cause homogeneity on what would normally be a diverse set of topics. I wonder if you could train your classifier to reject topics that are similar or are being promoted by the same set of people?
If I (jcr) want to know what classifies as "interesting to Joel" (joelthelion), I simply look at the "comments" and "submissions" links in your HN profile. It will show me the stuff you took the time to comment on, or took the time to submit to HN.
If I want to know what's "interesting" to me, the "saved stories" link is visible in my own profile even through it is not visible to others. In the "saved stories" is THE goldmine of every submission I've either submitted or up-voted.
https://hackernews.hn/saved?id=jcr
Depending on your personal bookmarking habits, your bookmarks file/db can be another useful input. I'm in the habit of bookmarking both the submitted article, and the HN discussion page (if it's good). Assuming I didn't book the HN discussion, I could easily find the HN discussion/submission for all of the sites that I've ever bookmarked with a search engine. Give google an URL and ask it for all of the sites linking to that URL, then parse for HN, and you've got the target.
The serious problem I see with your approach was already mentioned by ck2; you're creating a bubble and will miss out on all the fantastic stuff that is interesting to you, but you don't yet know that it's interesting to you.
One of the primary benefits of HN and similar sites is learning about the things that others find interesting. Those things may not interest me, but the fact that others find them interesting is, well, interesting.
Why to they consider it interesting?
Why do I consider it uninteresting?
Even if my personal opinions remain unchanged, these are important questions for me to keep asking myself, repeatedly.