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Tell HN: Please bring back comment scores

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Re: Tell HN: Please bring back comment scores

#121

Post by brudgers »

bruce511 wrote: post #96
abeppu wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet clearly people do compare scores. The problem is that scores aren't like trends; they're like integrating a 'popularity' measure over time. As a consequence, you get a strong bias towards the stuff with the most points being comments from near the beginning of the discussion, not what's most correct or interesting or insightful.

Since I can't see your score, and you can't see mine, I honestly have no idea at this point whether more people agree with you than with me. Or indeed if no-one cares at all. When this thread is referenced to a week from now there is no way to see what sort of agreement occurred with either one of us. There are a bunch of "for" comments, and a bunch of "against" comments, but ultimately no resolution (that either of…

>"When this thread is referenced to a week from now there is no way to see what sort of agreement occurred with either one of us."

That just means that people will have to read the comments and decide for themselves based on the merits of the comments.

One might argue that that is better than deciding based on points because some people interpret points as assent to the beliefs expressed in the comment while others interpret points as a indicating the technical quality of the comment, e.g relevant supporting rationales and examples assembled logically.

Re: Tell HN: Please bring back comment scores

#122

Post by tokenadult »

blhack wrote: post #114
tokenadult wrote: post #100

Since I registered a username here on HN 890 days ago, I've seen a lot of comments about comment karma and about upvoting and downvoting. The most significant statement I have seen about comment voting here on HN was posted recently by pg, the founder of HN, in a thread-opening post 22 days ago titled "Ask HN: How to stave off decline of HN?" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696 He wrote, "The problem has seve…

One of the big assumptions that's being made here is that people are dumb calculators. I can tell the difference between a stupid comment that got a lot of points for being stupid, and a useful comment that got a lot of points for being useful. When I look at amazon and see that twilight has 3000 5 star ratings, I don't assume this means it's a great piece of literature, but it is useful information to me: it's a pop…

I'm not stupid, I can tell the difference between "popular because it's funny/pandering" and "popular because it's useful"

Let me make sure I understand correctly what you mean in light of what pg said about the reasons for the current experiment (quoted in my post to which you reply). Is it simply a mistake to say that high comment scores on comments that are mean or dumb is a problem? I ask, because pg has said that there has been a recent problem with comment scores.

One of the big assumptions that's being made here is that people are dumb calculators.

I think that there is a huge body of research showing that all human beings, without exception, high-IQ or low-IQ, are "cognitive misers"

http://www.psychwiki.com/wiki/Cognitive_Miser

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/11/04/...

(there is a good self-test at the link above)

http://lesswrong.com/lw/2ey/a_taxonomy_of_bias_the_cognitive...

in the sense of preferring less effort-demanding problem-solving techniques to more accurate, but more effort-demanding, techniques. Snap judgments spare mental effort for everything else that we are busy with.

Here on HN, the only thing most participants contribute to the community is good comments and good submissions and votes about other participants' submissions and comments. A few founders, pg and his core of curators (editors),

http://ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

do actual work to keep the site running, and they get the best compensation for their volunteer efforts if all the signals about story quality and comment quality are true, thoughtful signals rather than noise.

Re: Tell HN: Please bring back comment scores

#123

Post by Terretta »

RuadhanMc wrote: post #19

Without the comment scores we're confronted with a wall of text that is hard to filter. Should I have to read every single comment just to find the gems? Comments scores have their downsides but they make filtering out noise much easier. Unfortunately I don't think everyone has time to judge each comment on its own merits -- there are simply too many comments -- so we need a little crowd-sourced ranking. It does lead…

In my experience, "wall of text" and "TL;DR" began as terms used by those generally uncomfortable with literacy or focused attention.

Skimming is a valuable skill, becoming even more important as the world generates information ever faster.

Re: Tell HN: Please bring back comment scores

#124

Post by J3L2404 »

gloob wrote: post #111
J3L2404 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously it would be terrible if everyone posted 'I agree' comments, that's the point. Numbers show the viewers sentiment towards a comment without clogging the thread.

It is self-evidently true that removing visible comment scores mostly removes methods for trivially measuring "viewer sentiment". It is the contention of those in support of non-visible comment scores that trivial measurement of viewer sentiment harms, rather than aids, discussion. You have made no argument against that point.

Trying to aid discussion by limiting information is fine, unless you happen to want that information.

Re: Tell HN: Please bring back comment scores

#125

Post by hernan7 »

abeppu wrote: post #58
blhack wrote: post #25

People can be wrong about things, and comment scores are useful information that helps us know if they are. "that is not how mysql works" with 2 Points And "that is not how mysql works" with 102 points Are not the same piece of info. I don't see any benefit to hiding this from people. It also helps newbies understand the customs here (they can get feedback on other people's comments) edit now that I'm not on my phone…

But two comments with equal points given at different times on the same thread are likely not equally informative; the newer one had fewer impressions but receiving the same points has a higher points to views ratio. Part of the problem with points is that people try to use them like you are -- to gauge agreement for correctness, or who 'won' a discussion or whatever -- but points are a really crappy indicator of tha…

Comment sparklines?

Re: Tell HN: Please bring back comment scores

#126

Post by estel »

Terretta wrote: post #117
bruce511 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since I can't see your score, and you can't see mine, I honestly have no idea at this point whether more people agree with you than with me. Or indeed if no-one cares at all. When this thread is referenced to a week from now there is no way to see what sort of agreement occurred with either one of us. There are a bunch of "for" comments, and a bunch of "against" comments, but ultimately no resolution (that either of…

> Since I can't see your score, and you can't see mine, I honestly have no idea at this point whether more people agree with you than with me... When this thread is referenced to a week from now there is no way to see what sort of agreement occurred with either one of us. It's almost as though the future reader would need to form an opinion... for themselves.

But that doesn't negate the value in seeing which side of the debate was most widely agreed upon at the time.

Edit: of course, this argument would be satisfied by no more than making comment scores visible on discussions older than n days.

Re: Tell HN: Please bring back comment scores

#127

Post by hernan7 »

raquo wrote: post #33
raganwald wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ABSOLUTELY. Comment scores in the midst of an active discussion narrow thinking. Comment scores on historical artifacts are useful for research.

So the evident solution then would be to show comment scores after X (24?) hours since the news item was posted.

More like after 1 week, I would say, but yes.

Re: Tell HN: Please bring back comment scores

#128

Post by lotusleaf1987 »

jaxn wrote: post #66
lotusleaf1987 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

|The most important aspect of the comment scores was that they let me know what the HN community thought of a particular point or argument. I'm capable of making up my own mind about any topic. I find it interesting and useful to see what other people think That seems like cognitive dissonance to me and a rationalization. If you truly make up your own mind about something then why would you care so granularly about h…

Why care? Because up votes are also coming from the community and I believe we are all here because we respect the opinions of the people here. Also, comments sort within threads. Sometimes the best reply is to a no-so-great parent comment.

|I believe we are all here because we respect the opinions of the people here.

What does that even mean? That by not showing the comments we're somehow disrespecting those opinions?

|Sometimes the best reply is to a no-so-great parent comment.

And even then those replies are sorted again... what is your concern? Time? If you were saying hey, I only have so much time, I could maybe understand. But... I think it would be better for HN as a community to train people for more thought out discussions, fewer flame wars, and more of a focus on actually reading the comments and evaluating them based on their own content and not just on what others have said.

As someone in this thread also pointed out, it also ends the perception that an argument can be won by popularity or upvotes-- I believe this has been especially beneficial at preventing/reducing typical fan-boy flaming. I think HN has already begun to benefit for the changes. Also, I would rather read fewer threads with better comments, than more threads with worse comments.

Note: Better subjectively being defined as more thought out, less antagonistic, more discussion based, more logic, and more citations/sources.

Re: Tell HN: Please bring back comment scores

#129

Post by estel »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #79
blhack wrote: post #25

People can be wrong about things, and comment scores are useful information that helps us know if they are. "that is not how mysql works" with 2 Points And "that is not how mysql works" with 102 points Are not the same piece of info. I don't see any benefit to hiding this from people. It also helps newbies understand the customs here (they can get feedback on other people's comments) edit now that I'm not on my phone…

Why aren't they the same piece of info? Scores just reflect popularity, not expert analysis. I find scoring systems like at reddit or slashdot just promote, usually wrong, group think (ZOMG OBAMA IS A COMMIE KENYAN!!) or whatever group values the majority accepts (GAYS SHOULDNT GET MARRIED!!). There's a lot of faith in the wisdom of crowds with these systems and that's not a faith I find particularly convincing. The…

Surely that's no different to what we have now: the most "popular" comments / submissions are, with the application of some secret sauce, the most visible and promoted to the top of the thread. The fact that we can't see the underlying numbers makes no difference.

Re: Tell HN: Please bring back comment scores

#130

Post by brudgers »

JacobAldridge wrote: post #77
RossM wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps they should be visible for the author only?

Comment scores are currently visible for the author. That's what I mean by not learning from other's examples: Let's say you say "mysql won't help with foo" and get no upvotes. Ten minutes later, in the same thread, someone says the same thing but adds a link and get 20 upvotes. You can't tell that their behaviour - adding the link - was valuable to the group. They're above you, which could be a time thing only, so y…

The example seems more hypothetical than actual.

A more likely case is a person who posts "mysql won't help you with foo" with no link and for no upvotes and "this is the ninja lisp trick" with a link and notices that they get far more upvoates for it.

But the most likely case is a person who notices that the first person to refer to Balmer as "monkey boy" in a hit thread gets massive upvotes.

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