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HN comments are underrated

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Re: HN comments are underrated

#81

Post by berntb »

curiousgal wrote: post #37
anton_tarasenko wrote: post #11

When 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.

I use the bookmark feature for articles that I want to keep, not read later. For instance, I seldom bookmark news. (I would, without data, guess your way is more popular.)

Otoh, I often bookmark an article just to keep a reference to the comments.

Re: HN comments are underrated

#82

Post by VodkaHaze »

shawnee_ wrote: post #78
Jimmy wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Business startup ideas are essentially experiments in economic theory. Yet HN comments are vastly inferior to Reddit's when regarding anything to do with economics. It didn't used to be this way, and I kind of miss the HN of old... where logic and fearlessness were valued more than affiliation or keeping up of brand appearances. I've been finding it increasingly disconcerting that the incentive here lately has been t…

Reddit is a swamp of filth wrt economics comments.

Basically all the subreddits except /r/academiceconomics, /r/badeconomics, /r/econpapers are awful. I'm friends with the mods of /r/economics and they have a really hard time reigning in the masses of ideologues (on all sides) ruining what should remain pure economics discussions.

Re: HN comments are underrated

#83

Post by sharpercoder »

humanrebar wrote: post #63
sharpercoder wrote: post #36

Coming 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 vertica…

> ...many comments are not ill-intendend but come off as unhelpful or negative. Unhelpful to whom? Pointing out bad examples as bad examples is helpful to the inexperienced; they may learn to avoid some pitfalls. People who publicly push back against popular bad schools of thought provide encouragement to others in the minority who might give up the fight out of fatigue instead of conceding on the merits.

I'm trying to point out that meta-comments (feedback) can help guide the discussion in the correct direction. It's generally unwanted to mix meta and non-meta discussion. So it may be practical to do allow for meta-commenting on comments, but display it horizontally. This would allow users to focus more and better on the matter at hand.

Re: HN comments are underrated

#85

Post by nekopa »

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #24

You post a list of the best comments on HN without putting The Wisdom of Bane on the list? Seriously, how did The Wisdom of Bane not make it one here? That is one of the best comments on all of HN. For the uninitiated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8902739

Heh, I prefer to refer to that whole comment as Bane's Rule. I have had many interesting discussions with IT managers face to face after having them read that, especially regarding the idea of having vendors show that their product beats out the current system.

For programmers, I think one of the key takeaways from that comment is not the clever coding, but the direct tie into business results from the coding. Not just immediate business results, but also how the system was set up for growth and improvement easily too.

Re: HN comments are underrated

#86

Post by internaut »

panic wrote: post #67
internaut wrote: post #56

It's not complicated, just hard to digest. Anti-white racism. It's identical to the antisemitism of the far right in the 30s and 40s, except it is with whites.

There's more to racism than just not liking someone's opinion.

Let's not pretend we don't have a clue where this stuff is coming from. We know very well where it is coming from. It is straight out of one specific set of political doctrines.

Re: HN comments are underrated

#87

Post by Broken_Hippo »

k__ wrote: post #7

I follow many people on twitter who dislike HN. Reason for this is opinions here are alsmost entirely from white males with money.

If that is an issue you find, why not comment and offer views from other walks of life? I certainly do at times.

I'm legally white - but depending on the amount of sun I have, am not always viewed as such in the common world. I'm female, not exactly rich, and have blue hair. Naturally, my viewpoints can be different.

There are others like me - folks from other countries, not rich, not male.

At the same time, knowing that the crowd has that bias should help you vet out some of the comments.

Re: HN comments are underrated

#88

Post by [deleted] »

latch wrote: post #32

Removing 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.

[deleted]

Re: HN comments are underrated

#89

Post by eternauta3k »

Jimmy wrote: post #27
anexprogrammer wrote: post #3

HN 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…

> only go on the intellectual/debate subreddits

Any recommendations?

Re: HN comments are underrated

#90

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

blt wrote: post #47

I think the culture of rejecting joke-only comments is significant. I love a good joke, but so does everybody else. Rewarding jokes would have a major effect on the signal/noise ratio.

Maybe have a [jokular] tag and let readers flag a comment as such, then allow [jokular] comments to be hidden for the people who find them noisy.

Edit: this comment deservers the [overengineering] tag...

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