Remark ordering also appears to incorporate freshness (new remarks get a moment at/near the top), and I may possibly have also observed a penalty box: hidden downweighting, or reduction in effective comment score, imposed by moderators upon troublesome users that weren't egregious enough to ban/shadowban.
A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors
61–70 of 196 posts
Re: A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors
#62The ranking algorithm also isn't some simple votes/time metric. The flame war detector for posts is an example that is mentioned, but there are also some undocumented complexities on the comment side too. An obvious one is brand new comments get a huge boost in the rankings compared to older comments. It is pretty common to see a few minute old comment at the top of a lot of comment threads. It also seems user reputa…
Re. comments lingering high based on account karma, I've suggested the same but dang says not. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16441687
Perhaps such remarks are retaining position by their own merit. An experienced or high quality commentator may simply produce remarks that are better received.
Re: A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors
#63Just one comment about vouch, which seems to have have changed behaviour fairly recently.
Used to be that if a shadowbanned user posted a clearly substantive comment a vouch would always (nearly always?) restore it. Now it never does - I guess vouch is now just a vote that needs x votes.
Suspect that's going to unintentionally have even more people talking to themselves, because they've not yet noticed the shadowban.
Re: A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors
#64One feature I’d like to see is the split between upvotes and downvotes on a comment. It’s a measure of controversiality which I would find more interesting than the net score.
While we are on the subject of downvotes, I'd love to have it require a comment (reason) to downvote. Not knowing why something gets downvoted is super frustrating. The comment doesn't have to be visible in the default listing; it perhaps can be a side option/listing or pop-up.
Re: A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors
#65Small correction: the “web” link under a story now takes you to DuckDuckGo instead of Google.
Wait, what? When did this change? Added it to the doc!
Very recently. Not a great change in my opinion. The google search always had the article in position one. The ddg so far has failed me every time. :(
Re: A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. I’d much rather read comments with a high number of votes and net zero score than the two other extremes.
Well you don't get to see other people's comment scores anyway. What I meant is for your own comments, seeing a score of +1 doesn't carry the same information than +15/-14.
Yep, I know. I was just riffing on your idea; I think the ranking algorithm should be tweaked a bit. Popularity contests don't lend to great debate or conversation. They tend to shut down one side at the expense of the other.
Re: A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors
#67The ranking algorithm also isn't some simple votes/time metric. The flame war detector for posts is an example that is mentioned, but there are also some undocumented complexities on the comment side too. An obvious one is brand new comments get a huge boost in the rankings compared to older comments. It is pretty common to see a few minute old comment at the top of a lot of comment threads. It also seems user reputa…
Re. comments lingering high based on account karma, I've suggested the same but dang says not. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16441687 Perhaps such remarks are retaining position by their own merit. An experienced or high quality commentator may simply produce remarks that are better received.
I don't know what to say other than there is something going on behinds the scenes that can be seen in play in this thread. My comment is 1 minute newer than another comment in this thread. My comment currently hasn't been upvoted yet is several spots higher in the thread. I tried upvoting the other comment and mine was still higher. My account has almost twice the karma and is older than the author of the other comment. It might not be 100% or even 1% karma related, but there seems to be some sort of user reputation effect.
Re: A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors
#68One feature I’d like to see is the split between upvotes and downvotes on a comment. It’s a measure of controversiality which I would find more interesting than the net score.
There's a potential downside; some commentators may attenuate a strongly held opinion if they discover it is more polarising than they believed. Watering down debate isn't (usually) healthy.
(Rationally speaking, none of us will lie on our deathbeds wishing we'd collected more points in the internet popularity contest, but it's only human to change behaviour in response to external measures)
Re: A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors
#69One feature I’d like to see is the split between upvotes and downvotes on a comment. It’s a measure of controversiality which I would find more interesting than the net score.
While we are on the subject of downvotes, I'd love to have it require a comment (reason) to downvote. Not knowing why something gets downvoted is super frustrating. The comment doesn't have to be visible in the default listing; it perhaps can be a side option/listing or pop-up.
> I'd love to have it require a comment (reason) to downvote
This has been something I’ve wanted to see in Reddit for a while now. I just recently learned that lobste.rs has this feature, and some other interesting stuff like a public mod-log.
I’d like to add a disclaimer that there may be very good reasons not to do this on Reddit or HN, of which I am not aware.
Re: A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
While we are on the subject of downvotes, I'd love to have it require a comment (reason) to downvote. Not knowing why something gets downvoted is super frustrating. The comment doesn't have to be visible in the default listing; it perhaps can be a side option/listing or pop-up.
> I'd love to have it require a comment (reason) to downvote This has been something I’ve wanted to see in Reddit for a while now. I just recently learned that lobste.rs has this feature, and some other interesting stuff like a public mod-log. https://lobste.rs/about I’d like to add a disclaimer that there may be very good reasons not to do this on Reddit or HN, of which I am not aware.
Personally I've long wished we would just get rid of any type of approval signalling behavior for comments (across the web too, not just HN or reddit). Probably (almost certainly likely) in the minority on that one, though.