Ask HN: How do we handle the rise of low quality "This is LLM" comments?
5 pointsby shantnutiwari5 hours ago7 comments
  • spats19905 hours ago
    When you encounter these comments/sentiment, pretend that LLM = Loweffort Long Mumbling. In other words, poor writing.

    Detection of "LLM" is a red herring. Quality is what matters. Always has been. Assess comment quality holistically, and you'll be fine.

    • krapp4 hours ago
      If "quality" is all that matters and maximizing quality is the goal, and if LLMs can generate higher quality comments more consistently than humans, we should close all user accounts. Don't even have this be a forum anymore. Have LLMs crawl the web, post articles then generate threads discussing them from various simulated points of view. No direct human participation, no Eternal September. Then readers can have their own agents summarize the threads for them.

      We can consider this the carcinization of online discourse - everything evolves towards the optimum of LLM summarization.

      • spats19904 hours ago
        > if LLMs can generate higher quality comments more consistently than humans

        Do you believe this?

        • krapp4 hours ago
          No, because my definition of "quality" for comments implicitly includes human intent, which LLMs lack.

          But I suspect a lot of people on HN only view these threads as data and that for them "quality" only exists within the semantics and structure of the text itself, and the human element doesn't matter to them.

  • mts_building4 hours ago
    My honest opinion is just to accept it, move on and continue writing, building, creating stuff that will resonate at least with a bunch of people. Unfortunately, what is karma farming here or on Reddit will be hateful or so comments on YouTube, etc. depending on the platform.
  • carlosjobiman hour ago
    The answer has been the same since the days of Moses:

    Drown it out with high quality submissions and high quality comments.

  • kirykl5 hours ago
    add a less severe "Flag, as AI" button
    • codingdave4 hours ago
      That would be the little downwards-facing arrow to the left.
    • Cider99864 hours ago
      Why can't we just use Flag?
  • brudgers3 hours ago
    Ignore or downvote or flag [1] depending on your confidence in your judgement, your perception of its severity of impact on the HN community, your mood, etc.

    Just like any other behavior you don’t like.

    [1] logically upvoting is also an option.

  • tabakd3 hours ago
    This is LLM
  • 65104 hours ago
    HN should add some kind of LLM detection. Preferably something that rates how unhinged a comment is.

    Smoke me a kipper i'll be back for breakfast.

    • dormento24 minutes ago
      > rates how unhinged a comment is

      No can do, too many false positives considering the usual demographics.

    • krapp4 hours ago
      The thing that rates how unhinged a comment is is the downvote button, or flag button in extreme cases.

      LLM detection is basically witchcraft, though, for all but the most obvious cases.