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Ask PG: Any chance of an update on "What I've learned from Hacker News"?

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Re: Ask PG: Any chance of an update on "What I've learned from Hacker News"?

#31

Post by icebraining »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #29
stralep wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see no reason to use additional mechanism. Why not use upvote? I'm upvoting stories so I could see them later (as ColinWright noted), why not create a page I could see comments I liked?

Separation of concerns. You might want to be able to tag a post or comment as noteworthy but not want to upvote it. For example, to remind you to come back to it and add a comment explaining why its wrong or that you disagree with it. Basically: Upvote != Save for Later

Isn't that what bookmarks are for? Why do we need HN to recreate basic browser functionality?

Re: Ask PG: Any chance of an update on "What I've learned from Hacker News"?

#32

Post by beagle3 »

mixmax wrote: post #24
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like seeing comment points but I'm not sure that it's a good thing to display them. Threads are already sorted by comment score so that the best comments are close to the top - I'm not sure what additional benefit comes from seeing the actual snapshot numbers aside from sheer curiosity.

We had this discussion back when the points were being hidden, and I went through a few posts with many comments to see whether it would be possible to find the good comments based on where they were in the thread. It turned out that because of the threaded comment system you get very little information about which comments have many votes and which don't. In the sample I checked it was impossible to get any idea of…

The solution, I think, is some sort of "unthreaded" view (with link to the contextual "threaded" view). Because, even if you do see the score, it is unlikely anyone will notice a +1000 answer to a -2 top level post when there are 20 of the latter.

The numbers themselves don't (and shouldn't) matter - only the rank.

Re: Ask PG: Any chance of an update on "What I've learned from Hacker News"?

#33

Post by prpx »

tokenadult wrote: post #25

In the submitted article from February 2009, Paul Graham wrote, "Probably the most important thing I've learned about dilution is that it's measured more in behavior than users. It's bad behavior you want to keep out more than bad people. User behavior turns out to be surprisingly malleable. If people are expected to behave well, they tend to; and vice versa. "Though of course forbidding bad behavior does tend to kee…

Correct me if I'm wrong, but your previous karma and/or average counts more nowadays e.g. a comment on the bestcomment list might not be the top comment on the story page.

Re: Ask PG: Any chance of an update on "What I've learned from Hacker News"?

#34

Post by dclowd9901 »

mixmax wrote: post #2

on a somewhat related note; any chance of getting points on comments back? My personal opinion is that it degrades the site tremendously not to be able to skim through a thread and see which comments others have deemed interesting/noteworthy/insightful by upvoting them.

I don't think this is a good idea. I think that when someone sees a comment that would otherwise not be agreeable on a personal level, when it has votes from many other members, it has a tendency to sway your personal convictions a bit, just enough to make you second guess your own opinions.

Let a comment stand for its merit. I honestly wish they'd take names off the comments too. I feel like there are way too many recognizeable handles around here, which can have a similar effect of self-fulfilling prophecy. Case in point: has PG ever been downvoted? Ever?

Re: Ask PG: Any chance of an update on "What I've learned from Hacker News"?

#35

Post by lucisferre »

tokenadult wrote: post #25

In the submitted article from February 2009, Paul Graham wrote, "Probably the most important thing I've learned about dilution is that it's measured more in behavior than users. It's bad behavior you want to keep out more than bad people. User behavior turns out to be surprisingly malleable. If people are expected to behave well, they tend to; and vice versa. "Though of course forbidding bad behavior does tend to kee…

Perhaps subjectively this change did improve the comment quality a bit, I still see plenty of ongoing examples of the problem though. What I'd like to see is the actual removal of karma (at least comment karma) from the user profiles as well.

I see no good reason to incentivize intelligent thoughtful conversation, no one actually does it for karma. I do realize there is a bit of a feedback system in place (upvotes tell you you're doing the right thing, downvotes suggest you should change your tack). So perhaps you can still see the overall direction of your comment (like the current gray for downvotes).

Obviously voting should still stick around so people can bump the best comments to the top of a thread, but any sort of visible scoring system on comments seems more likely to work against it's own intent than for it.

Re: Ask PG: Any chance of an update on "What I've learned from Hacker News"?

#36

Post by tokenadult »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #34
mixmax wrote: post #2

on a somewhat related note; any chance of getting points on comments back? My personal opinion is that it degrades the site tremendously not to be able to skim through a thread and see which comments others have deemed interesting/noteworthy/insightful by upvoting them.

I don't think this is a good idea. I think that when someone sees a comment that would otherwise not be agreeable on a personal level, when it has votes from many other members, it has a tendency to sway your personal convictions a bit, just enough to make you second guess your own opinions . Let a comment stand for its merit. I honestly wish they'd take names off the comments too. I feel like there are way too many…

Case in point: has PG ever been downvoted? Ever?

I downvoted a recent comment by pg that for quite a while was (and STILL is) the top comment in its thread

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4253156

but that pg later acknowledged didn't have a sufficient factual basis.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4254592

Conspiracy theories are very enticing to the human mind, so they often get too many upvotes here on HN. Although I did downvote pg's first comment in the thread mentioned here, I was outnumbered by many more people who upvoted it, mistakenly.

Re: Ask PG: Any chance of an update on "What I've learned from Hacker News"?

#37

Post by WiseWeasel »

mixmax wrote: post #2

on a somewhat related note; any chance of getting points on comments back? My personal opinion is that it degrades the site tremendously not to be able to skim through a thread and see which comments others have deemed interesting/noteworthy/insightful by upvoting them.

The only way I see to satisfy both sides of this argument is to hide the scores until you're done voting on comments for that page. Maybe an "I'm done voting" button at the top and bottom of the page, which removes all voting arrows and replaces them with scores. The score for a comment could also be displayed after you've voted on it.

[The problem might lie in the implementation for this solution. You probably don't want to store the 'done voting on this story' information in cookies, since that's tied to a single device and vulnerable to user manipulation. This means that you need to maintain a list of stories for which each user is done voting in your database, and then check against that list on each page load. This adds a significant amount of server resource usage, as well as maintenance and performance tuning work for what amounts to an unnecessary feature. Showing scores for a comment after voting on it should be easy to implement, but then you'd be encouraging people to vote just so they can see a score, possibly even up-voting everything on the page. My guess is we're stuck with the status quo for the foreseeable future.]

Re: Ask PG: Any chance of an update on "What I've learned from Hacker News"?

#38

Post by jeswin »

tokenadult wrote: post #36
dclowd9901 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is a good idea. I think that when someone sees a comment that would otherwise not be agreeable on a personal level, when it has votes from many other members, it has a tendency to sway your personal convictions a bit, just enough to make you second guess your own opinions . Let a comment stand for its merit. I honestly wish they'd take names off the comments too. I feel like there are way too many…

Case in point: has PG ever been downvoted? Ever? I downvoted a recent comment by pg that for quite a while was (and STILL is) the top comment in its thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4253156 but that pg later acknowledged didn't have a sufficient factual basis. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4254592 Conspiracy theories are very enticing to the human mind, so they often get too many upvotes here on HN. A…

It is perhaps more useful when a mistake is corrected with a reply/comment, than with a down-vote.

Doing so gets people to read both. Besides in the absence of the original comment (incorrect as it may be), the followups lose context.

Reserve down votes for opinions that do not deserve a reply. Such as pure trolling.

Re: Ask PG: Any chance of an update on "What I've learned from Hacker News"?

#40

Post by scott_s »

jeswin wrote: post #38
tokenadult wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Case in point: has PG ever been downvoted? Ever? I downvoted a recent comment by pg that for quite a while was (and STILL is) the top comment in its thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4253156 but that pg later acknowledged didn't have a sufficient factual basis. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4254592 Conspiracy theories are very enticing to the human mind, so they often get too many upvotes here on HN. A…

It is perhaps more useful when a mistake is corrected with a reply/comment, than with a down-vote. Doing so gets people to read both. Besides in the absence of the original comment (incorrect as it may be), the followups lose context. Reserve down votes for opinions that do not deserve a reply. Such as pure trolling.

Top comments in a thread frame discussion - if the top comment in a thread is a conspiracy theory, then it's likely that the entire discussion will be derailed. For that reason, I think it's valid to downvote such comments, to prevent them from derailing the discussion.
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