What matters is the quality of the information, not the amount. One of my goals has always been to decrease the amount of stupid information flowing through the system. That's why there are no downvotes on submissions: my observations of Reddit suggested that downvotes were more often reflexive than upvotes.
I'm with you on your motives, and it'll be interesting to see how the site reacts.
It just clashes with the idea that sites should be very simple to use, but engaging in detail over time -- that as users spend more time on a site they become interested in more details, whatever those details are. I think you see this in the number of HN mining apps posted. People who are engaged want more stuff from what they're engaged in.
I'm definitely not for information for information's sake, just find your tweaking counter-intuitive. Seems like shooting all of the animals to prevent them from escaping the barn.
I look forward to somebody telling us how the experiment went.
Greater amounts of Information widely dispersed == "good/better" and less/restricted information == "bad/worse" is a very dominant underlying assumption - sometimes so embedded in our intuition that we see restricting information as counter-intuitive.
If this experiment succeeds, then it might show that in some situations, the opposite is true?
As a thought experiment, suppose you could know the exact moment of your death. This is more information than you have today. Is this good or bad? (I can see arguments for both sides)
Suppose everyone knew. Would this be good or bad? (I can see arguments for both sides here too)
If this experiment succeeds, then it might show that in some situations, the opposite is true?
Yes -- it's a very interesting experiment and I'm really curious as to how it will play out. There's obviously a bit of mob rule mentality on HN and something should be done about it. Perhaps this is it?
I've always thought that in making a web site you make it completely intuitive and engaging -- then you incrementally add more detail and complexity to satisfy power users. Sort of like the qualities of a good game where it's easy to learn but hard to master.
But I'm probably off-base. As you said, there are a lot of underlying assumptions here -- on both sides. The beauty of experimenting is that you can move from talking about things to actually seeing what works.
Hacker News -- now with less information?
I would imagine that the more readers become engaged with the site the more information about the site they would want to consume, no?