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Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#101

Post by skybrian »

mstrem wrote: post #4

This seems quite drastic to me. Personally I don't have a lot of Karma (and I don't really care to) but every known and again I post a comment and usually I hope it provides a good contribution. Like this the system is putting a lot of weight on the users with more Karma... and I am guessing there are "many" more users with less than 1000 compared to those with more? Some people may never have a chance to state their…

It's not that hard to get to 1000+ slowly. All you have to do is hang around for years and make the occasional decent comment. If anything this is biased towards old timers.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#102

Post by lunixbochs »

temuze wrote: post #66

This sounds promising. I'm worried about two things: 1) Will a minimum number of endorsements lead to groupthink? Will a substantial, polite but unpopular comment still get endorsed? 2) If this works initially and improves comments immediately, could it have negative long term affects? Will new users find it confusing or intimidating? Will people comment less knowing that others are less likely to see it? And one que…

There probably enough people with 1000+ karma to reduce potential groupthink. You just need three people to say "this comment doesn't inspire rage", not necessarily as far as "I really like this comment". That's still the upvote's role.

0-3 upvote hiding would massively inflate karma, as you'd have a minimum of 3 karma for every "acceptable" comment. Not to say it couldn't work, as the karma source is then at least slightly filtered, but it would change the fact you can post a ton of average but not inappropriate comments and maintain close to zero karma.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#103

Post by thaumaturgy »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #80
thenmar wrote: post #33

The obvious big concern here is comments about minority groups and social justice. Are the 1000+ karma users going to shut down those voices?

I'm personally no fan of postmodernism, but I hope that people will settle their ideological differences in endorsing comments.

You only need one person that sees some kind of value in your comment to endorse it, even if they disagree with it.

There are a lot of users with > 1000 points.

edit: not one, a few.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#104

Post by jsmthrowaway »

gruseom wrote: post #57
donatj wrote: post #47

I feel like this really discourages unpopular truths from the discussion. This is one of the worst options I've ever heard for a comment system.

As I understand the idea, endorsing a comment doesn't mean you agree with it. It just means you think it deserves to be in the thread. That should leave room for unpopular views as long as they're respectfully expressed.

> As I understand the idea, endorsing a comment doesn't mean you agree with it.

Yeah, that's exactly how it will be used.

Sarcasm aside, the word "endorse" has a very specific definition which basically guarantees how this system will be used, intentions or not. I think about every single grayed-out comment I've seen, downvoted simply because it shared an opinion that made people feel uncomfortable but was nonetheless on-point, and now realize that we'll never even see those comments.

Real bummer for those inheriting HN to get it after this bad decision has been made. Will probably represent the end of useful dissent on HN.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#105

Post by rdl »

Some thoughts:

1) It would be fun to try this on only a subset of articles posted, so we could get real A/B testing on how well it works. The same issues get posted under multiple submissions, so we could see if the quantity and quality of comments is improved by pending, independent of the topics.

2) "showpending" to allow 3) These's now a huge incentive to farm a few 1001 karma point alt accounts. You can do that with a few submissions.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#106

Post by krapp »

sampo wrote: post #92
danso wrote: post #3

Wow, this seems like a rather large change -- with a lot of dynamics and moving parts -- for what seems like a relatively minor problem on HN. Not that there aren't bad comments, but bad comments get a lukewarm response, and insightful comments seem to do pretty well. Comments that get more airtime than they might deserve will still get approved by someone (and upvoted/downvoted accordingly) The bigger problem to me…

> "after I've read a thread a couple of times, I probably won't re-check it" It's funny, since we lost usenet 10+ years ago, we lost reader software that show which comments are new since you last time looked at a thread. In this sense, the software we had in the 90's was technically superior to the web forums we have today.

To be fair other web forums have that capability.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#107

Post by baddox »

danso wrote: post #3

Wow, this seems like a rather large change -- with a lot of dynamics and moving parts -- for what seems like a relatively minor problem on HN. Not that there aren't bad comments, but bad comments get a lukewarm response, and insightful comments seem to do pretty well. Comments that get more airtime than they might deserve will still get approved by someone (and upvoted/downvoted accordingly) The bigger problem to me…

It sounds to me like an excuse to drastically slow down discussion under the guise of improving the community. Imagine this scenario, which feels plausible to me: "good" discussions on HN don't offer much value to HN stakeholders, but "bad" ones (whether regarding employment discrimination, or bad press for YC companies, etc.) pose a credible threat to HN stakeholders. Then, anything that simply dampers discussions, even if it does so at a constant rate across all types of discussions and comments, if good for HN stakeholders. Shutting HN down altogether would do the same, but might itself result in bad press throughout the community.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#108

Post by pg »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #85
pg wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's impossible to predict the future perfectly, but I hope to leave completely. The only YC thing I'm going to do is office hours with the startups.

Any idea what you'll be doing next?

What I was doing before: writing essays and software.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#109

Post by mariusz79 »

jmtame wrote: post #39
mariusz79 wrote: post #10

This is nothing but a censorship and will make HN useless.

As an early HN member who has seen comments decline since the early days, I like this change. This comment you've written falls in line as one I would not endorse. Would you say that Amazon is censoring their products because not all reviews show up on a given page? The community decides what shows up, that's not up to Amazon. Same thing going on here; the earliest and most active members are the ones who decide what…

It doesn't change that fact that this is censorship. If it wasn't any comment would have a chance to be shown. If the comment is bad it can be flagged or voted down, but still anyone can see it.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#110

Post by lunixbochs »

gus_massa wrote: post #54
joeblau wrote: post #7

Wow, this sounds great. My only question is if you're sure you want to put the "endorse" button so close to the "flag" button? I don't want to accidentally flag something incorrectly.

It's not a very big problem, because it's possible to unflag a comment.

Is it possible to unendorse a comment?
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