My cop out answer is that we don't know because we haven't approached the equilibrium of the current system yet, nor have we seen all the wallet-postponed improvements.

My straight answer is that I think Stacker News was in a better place in the past, but I'm not sure how much to attribute that to the ranking algo.

Undisciplined

Question to this, as currently the only metric is sats spent, so we have this system of the fewest unknowable assumptions: do you think that the front page for say the past month, on average, was more valuable as a recommendation system than it was one year ago over the same month?

I'm asking because I think that if we want to measure what gets zapped the most, then measuring what gets zapped is per definition the best metric. And from a holistic p.o.v. this makes total sense. But from a usefulness perspective for the stackers that come and spend their sats here, as in head count not sat count, do we really think that sum(sats) is an actual good metric for quality content?

AskSN

Shitcoin/scam ads on SN - yay or nay, and why?

optimism

Question to this, as currently the only metric is sats spent, so we have this system of the fewest unknowable assumptions: do you think that the front page for say the past month, on average, was more valuable as a recommendation system than it was one year ago over the same month?

I'm asking because I think that if we want to measure what gets zapped the most, then measuring what gets zapped is per definition the best metric. And from a holistic p.o.v. this makes total sense. But from a usefulness perspective for the stackers that come and spend their sats here, as in head count not sat count, do we really think that sum(sats) is an actual good metric for quality content?