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I don't learn anything on HN anymore, bring back the upvote count

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: I don't learn anything on HN anymore, bring back the upvote count

#121

Post by Bud »

mmaunder wrote: post #3

You need to ween yourself off your social proof addiction. The problem with vote counts is that two downvotes can start a cascade of reflex downvotes. Or at best, it won't get upvoted. When vote counts where active, this effect caused many instances where an excellent comment was found greyed out at the bottom of the page until a few smart HN folks with high karma voted it back up.

Hard to count the ways in which mmaunder is wrong here, but let's try:

>You need to ween yourself off your social proof addiction.

Judgmental and prescriptive much?

>The problem with vote counts is that two downvotes can start a cascade of reflex downvotes.

a) You're guessing b) Is that really "a problem" c) Said "cascade" can only actually amount to 3 additional downvotes before the -4 limit is hit. Not much of a "cascade".

>Or at best, it won't get upvoted.

How do you know this? And if you do know it, why are you contradicting it in your very next sentence?

>When vote counts where active, this effect caused many instances where an excellent comment was found greyed out at the bottom of the page until a few smart HN folks with high karma voted it back up.

Yeah, this sentence. Anyway, the effect also "caused" many stupid comments to be rightly downvoted. BTW, high karma does not equal "smartness"; but it's interesting that you seem to like high karma so very much, since your rating is rather high, but hate displaying the accumulated karma on actual posts. Who precisely is "addicted", here?

Re: I don't learn anything on HN anymore, bring back the upvote count

#123

Post by mixmax »

Sakes wrote: post #37
mmaunder wrote: post #3

You need to ween yourself off your social proof addiction. The problem with vote counts is that two downvotes can start a cascade of reflex downvotes. Or at best, it won't get upvoted. When vote counts where active, this effect caused many instances where an excellent comment was found greyed out at the bottom of the page until a few smart HN folks with high karma voted it back up.

I definitely agree, having upvotes visible fostered a herd mentality. What I really like is there is less of a knee jerk reaction to assigning value to a post. You can assume it's value based upon placement, but in order to determine it's value you must actually read what they say. What I don't understand is why people need to be told what is valuable. With an ever changing community, I don't see how you could foreve…

That's simply not true - "Comments with high scores seem to have slightly higher scores than they would have, but comments with low scores seem to have about the same. Probably because the -4 limit on displayed comment scores was already concealing the actual score." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465002

Re: I don't learn anything on HN anymore, bring back the upvote count

#124

Post by blhack »

lukifer wrote: post #18
mmaunder wrote: post #3

You need to ween yourself off your social proof addiction. The problem with vote counts is that two downvotes can start a cascade of reflex downvotes. Or at best, it won't get upvoted. When vote counts where active, this effect caused many instances where an excellent comment was found greyed out at the bottom of the page until a few smart HN folks with high karma voted it back up.

Idea: a [view count] link. Once clicked, votes are ignored for that comment. You can vote, or get the social proof, but not both.

How does this help the situation at all? And how long before there's a plugin to "click" all of the [view count] links?

The point is that we want to be able to see karma relative to the rest of the thread. If one comment in 20 has 150 upvotes, it means we should at least look at it because what is being said might be important.

Re: I don't learn anything on HN anymore, bring back the upvote count

#125

Post by ANH »

I prefer not seeing the number of votes, and think lukifer's idea of a "view count or vote" model is great. A visible score attached to each comment seems to me somehow demeaning. But I've never been much for grades...

And has been stated multiple times, the highly upvoted comments filter to the top already.

Re: I don't learn anything on HN anymore, bring back the upvote count

#126

Post by randallsquared »

JabavuAdams wrote: post #111
randallsquared wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may improve the "level of discussion" in some abstract way, but it certainly does make it less useful for individual readers. It was common, before, for me to jump into the comments of a dicussion, check out the few highest rated ones, and then read the article with that information in mind, coming back to read other comments after that. With nothing to differentiate upvoted comments (unless they happen to be at t…

Maybe it's making the site less useful to those who are making the site less useful.

Well, thanks for being direct, at least.

Re: I don't learn anything on HN anymore, bring back the upvote count

#127

Post by mjgoins »

lukifer wrote: post #18
mmaunder wrote: post #3

You need to ween yourself off your social proof addiction. The problem with vote counts is that two downvotes can start a cascade of reflex downvotes. Or at best, it won't get upvoted. When vote counts where active, this effect caused many instances where an excellent comment was found greyed out at the bottom of the page until a few smart HN folks with high karma voted it back up.

Idea: a [view count] link. Once clicked, votes are ignored for that comment. You can vote, or get the social proof, but not both.

Unless you create two accounts.

Re: I don't learn anything on HN anymore, bring back the upvote count

#128

Post by dmpatierno »

jimrandomh wrote: post #77

I don't use upvotes to decide what I agree with, I use them to decide what to read in the first place. Hiding the votes means I can no longer skim through a thread to pick out the comments that are gems; I'd have to read all the bad comments too. And this means that reading comments here is no longer worth my time, so I don't do it. This is definitely not the desired effect.

This is exactly how I feel. It's no longer an efficient use of my time.

Re: I don't learn anything on HN anymore, bring back the upvote count

#129

Post by [deleted] »

mixmax wrote: post #113
mmaunder wrote: post #3

You need to ween yourself off your social proof addiction. The problem with vote counts is that two downvotes can start a cascade of reflex downvotes. Or at best, it won't get upvoted. When vote counts where active, this effect caused many instances where an excellent comment was found greyed out at the bottom of the page until a few smart HN folks with high karma voted it back up.

This is a minor detail that might or might or might not be significant. I personally don't see a lot of comments with negative votes that weren't deserved, but maybe you frequent other threads than I do. On the other hand, I agree with the OP that not showing the votes has significant downsides. For instance, I don't know whether your comment is something a lot of people agree on (it has a lot of upvotes) or it has j…

[deleted]
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