Earlier quoted context omitted.
You put that excellently. Indeed, Hacker News was and should be a place where social proof is not desired.
Everyone agrees that social proof is deleterious.
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I don't learn anything on HN anymore, bring back the upvote count
141–150 of 248 posts
Re: I don't learn anything on HN anymore, bring back the upvote count
#142You 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.
You put that excellently. Indeed, Hacker News was and should be a place where social proof is not desired.
Only in comments, or should we apply that to submissions also? If it weren't for using social proof to decide which stories should be highlighted, why do we have a voting-based front page?
Re: I don't learn anything on HN anymore, bring back the upvote count
#143You 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.
You need to ween yourself off your social proof addiction
The OP, like me, gained a great deal of value from knowing the vote counts of comments. In much the same way I (and presumably s/he) gain value from knowing the score and comment count of the post itself.
Vote counts were not perfect indicator of value, but they were better than having to guess at comment quality by observing the relative position of comments vs posting time.
[edit] Interesting. The comments from mixmax (29 minutes ago | http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2495535) and blhack (20 minutes ago | http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2495561) show higher than my brand new one. Presumably that means quite a few other people have voted them up in agreement
Re: I don't learn anything on HN anymore, bring back the upvote count
#144I've noticed the same thing. I'll see a debate which is basically a thread of two people replying to each other with no other contributors. In this circumstance, it's impossible to distinguish between a situation where one person gets 10 upvotes and holds a well-agreed opinion and the other person gets 1 or 2 upvotes and is arguing his opinion just well enough to avoid being downvoted. I understand that we're suppose…
Without some sort of vote indicator, it's hard to tell who has the most accurate opinion, except often in subjects like law, security, and seo where there are known experts that often chime in (e.g. grellas, tptacek, patio11). You assume that votes are a good indicator of who holds the most accurate opinion. My experience says that they are merely an indicator of who holds the most popular opinion, or who argues thei…
You assume that votes are a good indicator of who holds the most accurate opinion.
Mathematically, that's a good bet to make. An information cascade usually produces a good answer (probabilistically).
Re: I don't learn anything on HN anymore, bring back the upvote count
#145Learn to read critically and think critically. You don't need prior knowledge on a subject to evaluate a comment. Look for sound logic. Identify and evaluate the assertions and any hidden assumptions.
Vote counts are won't ever reliably reveal truth.
Re: I don't learn anything on HN anymore, bring back the upvote count
#146You 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.
Pretty sure they're doing this already; have you guys looked at how this thread is sorted? It's not by time of post, implying that your vote is tallied (and counts).
Re: I don't learn anything on HN anymore, bring back the upvote count
#147Can we get a user preference, as the case with show_dead and topcolor? I don't see that could be bad for anyone.
"Show score on posts: (yes/no)"
Re: I don't learn anything on HN anymore, bring back the upvote count
#148You 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…
Agreed (if you don't like short comments like mine, bring back the vote count and I'll happily upvote the parent)
Re: I don't learn anything on HN anymore, bring back the upvote count
#149I've noticed the same thing. I'll see a debate which is basically a thread of two people replying to each other with no other contributors. In this circumstance, it's impossible to distinguish between a situation where one person gets 10 upvotes and holds a well-agreed opinion and the other person gets 1 or 2 upvotes and is arguing his opinion just well enough to avoid being downvoted. I understand that we're suppose…
Without some sort of vote indicator, it's hard to tell who has the most accurate opinion, except often in subjects like law, security, and seo where there are known experts that often chime in (e.g. grellas, tptacek, patio11). You assume that votes are a good indicator of who holds the most accurate opinion. My experience says that they are merely an indicator of who holds the most popular opinion, or who argues thei…
In this particular forum I think votes are a fairly good predictor of accuratese. They're definitely better than nothing.
For instance, I know nothing about security - without votes how am I to know that tptacek is an expert at security and not just some crazy script kiddie that has nothing better to do than post here with stuff he makes up? It seems I hold this community in higher regard than you since I would infer from massive upvotes that what he says is probably correct, and not that he has good debating skills.
Re: I don't learn anything on HN anymore, bring back the upvote count
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's quite brilliant. How about up, down and abstain buttons and if you click any you get to see the vote count and you're done voting. It will encourage voting, remove the social proof influence and give the option to abstain.
How does that option help the main poster? Forcing him to vote on comments (even as abstention) is just meaningless mechanism that gets in the way.
Agreed (if you don't like short comments like mine, bring back the vote count and I'll happily upvote the parent)