141–150 of 172 posts
Hidden comment scores help us avoid groupthink.
But make it harder to filter information. I feel safe from groupthink, hence the post.
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…
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You can see how agreeable a comment is by how far up the page it is. Except if it's nested. Sometimes the most useful comments are replies to less-interesting top-level comments. In this case the lower-scored item is positioned higher up the page than the higher-scored item.
Exactly! Right now it's impossible to tell if more people agree with you, or the person you are replying to. Frustrating.
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But often there are multiple replies with opposing opinions. Without the points we don't know which opinion HN agrees with.
HN isn't an entity - and you can't rely on aggregation to form an opinion. You still need to think and form your own opinions.
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But often there are multiple replies with opposing opinions. Without the points we don't know which opinion HN agrees with.
HN isn't an entity - and you can't rely on aggregation to form an opinion. You still need to think and form your own opinions.
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> 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.
The readers here tend toward the more sophisticated end of the spectrum, and of course the presence of scores doesn't preclude future readings in depth. We all understand that scores are blunt indicators, but why not have access to that information? Knowing how the community "graded" a particular comment is an interesting piece of meta-information, even if you believe the cognitive anchoring effect diminishes its val…
"likely ... positive", granted, but strong correlation, no.
Keep in mind the change was an experiment to mitigate effects of HN growth and the corresponding trend towards average of audience. The "tend" you mention had been unquestionably moving back to the middle.
That said, I don't have a problem with points switching on after the comments page goes to archive mode. I can ignore them then, while those who want to see them then can neither vote based on bias nor vote to correct perceived bias.
Discussion and reading should be thoughtful instead based on clicks
One's own comments can be self-appraised by seeing one's own score in real time, influencing one's own future thoughtfulness.
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So many of the discussions around these points here center around the "TL;DR" point of view. I wonder how these people ever managed to make it through a newspaper without scores telling them which articles are worth it. Learn to survey, skim, and dive in. All your endeavors will be the better for it. PS. Your method (don't read if don't like score) also ensures you won't be soiled by accidentally reading an unpopular…
A better example would be choosing which newspapers to read based on your friend's recommendations, versus choosing by yourself. All articles from the same newspaper share a source and it already ensures some quality.
You make an excellent point, applicable here: newspaper brand = web brand.
Articles not flagged [dead] on news.ycombinator.com already ensure some quality, and both similarly share a "front page".
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Start with the assumption all comments are wrong; after all there's no absolute truth. The scores are a measure of popularity, which is often right and sometimes wrong. Plus everyone is entitled to an opinion. I don't think scores help anything, it's a measure of someones self-righteousness that i 'd rather not have. It's enough that unpopular opinions float to the bottom, where they belong. If anything i'd suggest t…
>> It's enough that unpopular opinions float to the bottom, where they belong. Unpopular opinions are exactly what make the conversation interesting. While not every unpopular opinion is necessarily valid, it's fair to say that on many occasions the "unpopular" viewpoint is both valid, and often correct. But regardless of the correctness of the opinion, it is the unpopular viewpoint which makes us stop, think about,…
Cant we have a "showcommentscores" option for displaying comment scores? Personally, I really ( really ) miss seeing comment scores, but its apparent that there are a lot of people who like HN the other way.
The problem is that part of what we like about not displaying the comment scores is the effect it has on other people's behavior. Letting others opt in to seeing the scores would defeat a large part of the purpose.
That, I believe is more correct. I miss the scores, personally, and found them rather useful.
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> "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…
But it's not necessarily about judging a comment for an upvote/downvote. The number can be used to gauge whether you should stop and read something carefully. Maybe an expert comes along and makes an extremely informative comment and maybe I just scan it. Seeing a bunch of upvotes indicates that I should probably slow down and try to learn something from it. Or maybe a well-reasoned debate has a large voting discrepa…
In your argument, you are using yourself as the measure of value, rather than using the community, i.e. saving you as an individual time by helping you ignore the less popular side of an argument doesn't demonstrably improve the quality of comments of the community in general (or even your comments in particular - though it may help you choose which side to comment on in order to maximize the upvotes your comments receive).
In the case where a "well-reasoned" debate has a large discrepancy then using points as a measure of value indicates an interpretation of votes as agreement with ideas rather than an objective indication of a comment's quality.