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Ask HN: Don't show points?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: Don't show points?

#21

Post by almost »

I think this is a very good idea, but for a slightly different reason. The whole points-for-posts thing creates a meta-game of accumulating points above the normal game of participating in discussion. This leads to those annoying meta-disucssions where people complain about being down modded and all that goes with that.

The modding system is useful for ranking comments so that when I read a massive thread the most interesting ones tend to be around the top.

It may also be useful for users as a feedback mechanism to figure out when they're doing something that's not cool (like the things we've been discussing in the guidelines thread today) but I don't think you need a precise numerical score for that. And I think it's the precise score that gets people in the karma-game mindset. It certainly does that for me.

Re: Ask HN: Don't show points?

#22

Post by jsmcgd »

markessien wrote: post #11

The points provide information about what others think about the submission, which is useful in guaging the status of the comment. It does not have to affect your opinion, unless you let it.

I think people are much less in control of what influences them than what we'd like to admit.

Re: Ask HN: Don't show points?

#25

Post by TomOfTTB »

wehriam wrote: post #18
TomOfTTB wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most cases you’re probably right. But not always. The problem is you don’t know the moral character or intelligence level of the people who first stumbled on to a comment. If two ignorant people happen to see a quality comment first and both vote it down that comment is essentially lost to the group. I think we can all agree there are at least a few fools running around here so the idea isn’t farfetched. So the qu…

But 10 people's moral character? 30? If the comment was really sparkling, it seems unlikely that the first two ignoramuses would drown out the larger cast of HN. It's not all about timing.

But the whole premise is that once a comment gets a negative score people don't read it anymore. 2 or 3 people could easily do that.

Also, 10 people on a site that gets in the area of 200,000 uniques isn't that significant.

Re: Ask HN: Don't show points?

#26

Post by vaksel »

staunch wrote: post #2

The way it works on Perlmonks(.org) is that you don't see points on a comment/submission until after you've voted. If you want to see the score you can do a "null vote". I definitely think this is a better way to handle it. I really can't think of any reason why you'd want to show score before voting.

few things wrong with that: a) HN presorts comments more or less by karma rating, you pretty much know where everything will wind up before voting. b) it also changes the color when you start getting negative points.

So sure you may not know that something is at 1 or 500 points, but you you sure can guess

Re: Ask HN: Don't show points?

#27

Post by unalone »

jsmcgd wrote: post #22
markessien wrote: post #11

The points provide information about what others think about the submission, which is useful in guaging the status of the comment. It does not have to affect your opinion, unless you let it.

I think people are much less in control of what influences them than what we'd like to admit.

I can confirm this. Halfway through reading his post, I noticed that you had more points than him, stopped to read yours, then read his with skepticism. Possibly it's because you do make a legitimate point, but I'd suspect that your score disrupted the flow of my reading.

Re: Ask HN: Don't show points?

#28

Post by 10ren »

wehriam wrote: post #19
mighty wrote: post #17

Completely agree, and said as much not long ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=447563 I tend to find myself influenced by the karma count more than anything else. I have to log myself out after commenting to increase the cost of checking the change to my net karma. I'm a strong advocate of hiding the karma counts entirely (for users, submissions, and comments). That greatly reduces the conditioning effect, not…

You are not good at locking yourself out of your account. While I appreciate the struggle with compulsion, I'm not sure you're fit to dictate guidelines.

Why do you think he is not good at locking himself out of his account? (He is now posting from a new account)

In what way do you think he is "dictating" guidelines?

Re: Ask HN: Don't show points?

#29

Post by 10ren »

Seeing the scores doesn't affect my opinion! I'm impartial!

... except that a few times, I've observed my attitude towards a comment change when its score changed. What is a little frightening is I have also witnessed a struggle within me between what seems to be true to me, and fitting in with the group's opinion.

This psychological phenomenon has been confirmed experimentally (though I have met one extremely detached person (borderline autistic?) who I would bet would be above it). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments

A struggle for perception of reality is a struggle for reality.

Re: Ask HN: Don't show points?

#30

Post by chandler »

staunch wrote: post #2

The way it works on Perlmonks(.org) is that you don't see points on a comment/submission until after you've voted. If you want to see the score you can do a "null vote". I definitely think this is a better way to handle it. I really can't think of any reason why you'd want to show score before voting.

>> I really can't think of any reason why you'd want to show score before voting.

When I vote (here), I'm pushing a comment towards an idealized score. To make the decisions "do I think this is rated too highly" and "do I think this is rated too lowly" requires knowledge of the current score.

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