> 1838 days ago
Trivial improvement to HN: after more than 30 days, render time in number of years and months instead of just days.
HN comments are underrated
31–40 of 383 posts
Re: HN comments are underrated
#32Removing the vote count was a step back.
You end up with highly positioned comments that are factually wrong and no way to weigh the corrections made in replies.
If you saw that a comment had 20 votes, but a reply had 500, you'd have something to go by. If nothing else, they could show the relative score of a reply to its parent.
Re: HN comments are underrated
#33I prefer cynicism over unthoughtful, inconsequential comments that floods several discussion forums that I have come across. "Nice article", "Great write-up" and the next thing you know, you have created a place where people are only interested in submitting their articles and getting it upvoted rather than make meaningful contributions. People want to make good contributions here and that's something that differenti…
".. the measure of a healthy organization is probably the degree to which
negative thoughts are allowed. In places where great work is being
done, the attitude always seems to be critical and sarcastic, not
"positive" and "supportive". The people I know who do great work
think that they suck, but that everyone else sucks even more."
-- Paul Graham
Re: HN comments are underrated
#34I admit that I usually read the comments first and then go to article.
Re: HN comments are underrated
#35Removing the vote count was a step back. You end up with highly positioned comments that are factually wrong and no way to weigh the corrections made in replies. If you saw that a comment had 20 votes, but a reply had 500, you'd have something to go by. If nothing else, they could show the relative score of a reply to its parent.
How about just reading and evaluating what the damn words say instead of relying on a "score"?
Re: HN comments are underrated
#36Coming from a certain frame, context and worldview given to someone by his/her parents, many comments are not ill-intendend but come off as unhelpful or negative. A problem with moderation on the web is that for willing people it is hard to grasp why you have been given the mdoeration you got.
An idea I'm toying with is to allow meta-comment reactions to comments. They would extend horizontally (as opposed to vertically for non-meta comments) and allow medium-to-high experienced users to provde meta-comments (feedback).
Re: HN comments are underrated
#37When I worked with the HN post data, I noticed that some years ago HN users had correctly predicted the "Show HN" projects that later got funding. Those projects had more upvotes. The more recent data has no such connection. It seems that the influx of users reduced the quality of judgement. So one way to improve HN submissions and comments is to weight points by the user's tenure on HN. I also suspect that early com…
Another factor might be the abuse of the bookmark feature. I tend to upvote stories that seem interesting when I am at a hurry just as a way to save them in the upvoted stories section for a later time.
About the comments, pretty sure the sorting algorithm still takes into account a user's avg score. I usually make late comments but they show up well above other threads.
Re: HN comments are underrated
#38HN comments are full of naive political opinion, groupthink, and a tendency to blind optimism on all things technology or new. Often older ways have merit too. It's also probably the only place left on the net where, from comments, I'll find out rapidly, and bluntly with citations, when I'm wrong (and, yes I'm often wrong on the Internet!), usually learn something new on the topic, and sometimes talk with the guy who…
>I'll find out rapidly, and bluntly with citations, when I'm wrong (and, yes I'm often wrong on the Internet!), usually learn something new on the topic If you stay off the default subreddits and only go on the intellectual/debate subreddits, then I honestly think reddit is better for this. The amount of expertise on reddit is astounding. It's very easy to find someone to rigorously challenge any view I have. I'd go…
Reddit is the new Usenet with all the good, the bad and the silly.
The advantage of small subreddits over HN is that links don't get buried.
Re: HN comments are underrated
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, using any tool or language that came out after the commenter started programming is "hipster". And you see a lot of xkcd 927 and "I can't help thinking effort would have been better spent on an existing project" when someone writes any program of any type where other examples exist.
I only post a 927 when there are >6 different standards in the field, and there's no way a new one will catch on. As for the effort better spent posts, those are awful. Never post those. Instead post about how great emacs is compared to vim: you're more likely to spawn useful discussion.
And if you post the xkcd link to a discussion about a piece of software and not a new standard for which many already exist, (and I see that post,) I will proudly downvote you no matter how many examples exist.
Just be glad I don't have the magic ability to force anyone to use QED to program their next project in Fortran on a CTSS box.
Re: HN comments are underrated
#40Another thing I've noticed about HN comments is that everything is hyped beyond what it deserves. For example, the recent DDoS attacks were just a bunch of skids with Mirai, but it was discussed as if it was the end of the internet. There's also the issue of self-censorship, where users will refrain from posting their opinion in case they get downvotes and negative karma. The things people post here are fascinating,…
To be fair those two things aren't HN specific. They seem to be human nature as they've happened in ever forum I've been part of.