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

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

#241
post #220
post #218

How come this post is not in the first page after 8 hours while the following post for example still is? Joel Spolsky: Lunch (joelonsoftware.com) 275 points by alexlmiller 12 hours ago | flag | 175 comments

"Ask HN"-types posts (i.e. without a link) are heavily disadvantaged. They take more upvotes to get to the front page, and fall down faster.

is there an explanation for that?

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

#242
post #89
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that just called "not voting"?

I think they mean "not voting but still being able to see how people voted on that particular comment"

About 4 seconds after that feature was implemented, someone would write a greasemonkey script that clicks all the abstain buttons for an HN article.

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

#243
post #38
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I want that option as an account setting, I'd gladly give up all voting rights in return for being able to see vote counts.

This makes me sad. I always thought that part of being a good user on HN was submitting feedback via comments and voting. To imagine that there are users out there who don't consider this a community, and want only to leech off the useful information contributed by others, is saddening.

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

#244
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want that option as an account setting, I'd gladly give up all voting rights in return for being able to see vote counts.

This makes me sad. I always thought that part of being a good user on HN was submitting feedback via comments and voting. To imagine that there are users out there who don't consider this a community, and want only to leech off the useful information contributed by others, is saddening.

In general I would agree, and I would agree that people should do their part in up (and down) voting comments. But to me, with no scores visible, I hardly notice the impact. I always read all the way down the page, and rather than trying to work out how high a comment has been voted based on its position on a page, I just ignore it.

So I'd rather chose to not have any votes and actually get something out of other people's votes than to have an impact that nobody can actually see.

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

#245
post #26

I've been trying to give it a chance, but so far it doesn't seem like hiding the vote counts has done anything to improve the quality of comments on HN. Honestly, I think it's had the opposite effect. The number of in-depth comments seems to have plummeted.

I've noticed that the people who seem to think that comment quality has gone down are the same people who used to skim and only read the high-voted comments.

It seems like the people who used to read all of the comments regardless of vote, seem to think that comment quality has gone up.

It's possible that the former groups impression of comment quality might be attributable to the fact that they are now reading lower quality comments that were always there, but which they weren't exposed to given their reading style.

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

#246
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they mean "not voting but still being able to see how people voted on that particular comment"

About 4 seconds after that feature was implemented, someone would write a greasemonkey script that clicks all the abstain buttons for an HN article.

If you choose to run that script then you're choosing to not vote at all (assuming votes can't be changed, which they can't now.) Which means you can't contribute to the "social confirmation up/down vote pile-on" problem either. So that particular problem would remain solved.

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

#247
Take any site like this, they all suffer from this problem when the number of users reach a certain point.

I like the slashdot way of organizing stuff. Mods who actively moderate and categorize comments. It's more work, but the end result will be of higher quality.

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

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For instance, I don't know whether your comment is something a lot of people agree on (it has a lot of upvotes) .... That highlights a major problem right there. I would hope that upvotes are for worthwhile contributions to the discussion. You (and others) seem to assume that they are for agreement. Different things. I would like to know whether lots of people think a comment is worthwhile. But except in the rare c…

Most upvotes are going to be based on agreement, its simply psychological. We're more likely to even consider upvoting something if we agree with it. Downvotes on the other hand, have a detrimental effect such that we can stop to think if this actually deserves a downvote after we get the impulse. So even though ideally upvotes should be about adding to discussion, it's just not going to play out that way.

Person feel obliged to register their opinion on some question. And upvoting appears the only acceptable way to do this (since "me too"-kind responses get downvoted quickly). So I think the ways to increase voting quality are: 1) allow to register user's agreement/disagreement with the post separately of the post itself (like another voting button), or 2) say in rules that you can't display your agreement or disagreement by upvoting. I think 2 is the best, since users will be forced to make sufficient contribution when they agree or disagree.
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