Comment by brudgers
10 years ago
This morning, I just felt that the green was striking and drew my attention to those articles. Admittedly, a lot of it could be my habits and expectations. But I know I wouldn't ordinarily have focused on them based on other factors.
I'm not being controversial, though now that I think about it, there is a shift in the semantics of the color: it used to be reserved exclusively for people, now it is also being used for "things". That may account for some of the undercurrent for resistance to change.
I can see why it is helpful for moderation. I guess the real question is does the green spike the level of participation in moderation activities? As a reader, it doesn't really highlight the sort of information that I make my decisions on.
We just turned it off. These were all experiments, the green sites generated more negative than positive feedback, and it's fine for an experiment to fail.
Also, the same information is available by clicking on the domain: if you see only that story in the list, it means there has only been the one submission from that site.
Was there any change in behavior...other than a new target for complaints? I'm curious about how much editorial activity users do, particularly since mine seems erratic at best.
Maybe it could be a profile option at 50 karma [aka badge]. Even at the risk of people saying HN is turning into StackOverflow, gamification for editorial engagement may be worth pursuing.
It was too soon to have observed any change in behavior. But the feedback was more negative than positive, and it did visually disrupt the front page—not something we want to do without a strong reason.