Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments • Hacker News Board

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#221

Post by alexcroox » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:00 AM UTC

booruguru wrote: post #172

This is ridiculous. It's bad enough that people are downvoted for contrarian opinions, but now our comments need to be vetted by the elite HN users before they can be shown to the rest. I don't get it. This site looks like something made in 1996 (with absolutely no regard for readability), but the big new upgrade we're getting is a draconian (and wholly unnecessary) comment moderation feature/policy? A lot of HN user…

Agreed, if the "elite" don't agree with your differing opinion then it will never be heard. When has that type of dictatorship ever worked out well...

I agree about choosing this for new functionality, if you are going to improve comments why not first start with notifications. Currently I'll make a comment and 10 people may reply but I'll have no idea unless I actively look through my own comments, which I might do once a month. This leads to a whole lot of dead end comment threads.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#222

Post by PhasmaFelis » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:01 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #28

cperciva wrote: post #19

Someone who has a pending comment will have to wait till it goes live to post another. We're hoping that good comments will get endorsed so quickly that there won't be a noticeable delay. Is there some timeout? If not, commenting on a several-day-old thread will guarantee that you can never post another comment, since once threads drop off the front page it's not likely that many 1000+ karma users will even see those…

Hmm, trust cperciva to find the thing I'd overlooked. I'll add a pending page that collects pending comments. Maybe that will solve the problem.

I had a bad feeling just reading the initial post, before thinking about any specific drawbacks. But this? If you failed to notice that your system would result in many users being arbitrarily and permanently banned, what else have you missed that no one else has pointed out yet?

Personally, I wouldn't read a "pending comments" page, because I come to HN to read and discuss stories that interest me, not to browse piles of random, context-free comments. I suspect that most users will feel the same, so it won't help much.

This entire thing is a bad idea, and the current state of Hacker News comments is nowhere near bad enough to warrant such drastic measures.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#223

Post by makomk » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:01 AM UTC

Fasebook wrote: post #78

mariusz79 wrote: post #10

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

HN was using more subtle censorship before, I'm glad that they are more forthcoming with what is actually visible now instead of pretending that this is an open forum.

They're keeping all the non-transparent, behind the scenes stuff though - except now it affects not just commenting yourself but also approving the wrong comments. Is the controversial but insightful comment you just approved going to pass the vague behind the scenes restrictions? Why risk it!

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#224

Post by chimeracoder » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:01 AM UTC

I fear that this is going to have the effect of drowning out minority or contrary opinions, even those that are legitimate (non-trolling) and expressed in a respectful manner.

Currently, the downvote button is only supposed to be used for unproductive comments - drivel, and the like. Of course, people use it to show their disagreement (even though that's not how it's meant to be used).

As a result, people that post controversial or minority opinions often get downvoted, even if their comments are well-thought out. This effect is less noticeable on Hacker News than on some subreddits (/r/politics is one of the worst), but it's noticeable to someone who reads Hacker News regularly.

I fear that this is going to exacerbate this effect. We can establish rules for which comments should be endorsed, just like we establish rules for which should be downvoted, but in other forums, the way that these tools are used in practice oftentimes do not match the stated guidelines.

EDIT: Also, I'm not entirely sure why this is preferable to simply allowing users to automatically hide comments below a certain score. Unless there really is a significant difference between the views of users with > 1000 karma and the rest, the "endorse" button is not fundamentally different from an upvote, is it? (In principle, not in implementation).

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#225

Post by japhyr » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:02 AM UTC

When I endorse a comment, does that also upvote the comment? Or is voting completely separate from endorsing?

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#226

Post by pg » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:02 AM UTC

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #165

diminoten wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, that's kind of the point.

If purging (substantial and interesting) one-to-one conversation is an intended effect I think that'd be a shame.

No, that's not intended. If it happens we'll fix it.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#227

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:02 AM UTC

yeukhon wrote: post #182

I think this is a horrible decision. I've never seen this work. My biggest objection is based on the fact I have to wait for someone to endorse my comment. I post a lot of comments here, regularly. Some of them get hot and turn into a linked-list O(n) depth tree... I also post during time when few people are around. By the time I want to say something interesting and hope someone can engage with me my comment would b…

[deleted]

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#228

Post by tptacek » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:02 AM UTC

waterlesscloud wrote: post #168

tsycho wrote: post #128

I fear this change will have some unintended consequences: 1. In a Ask/Show HN post, (which is often similar to a reddit AMA), the OP will not be able to reply to clarifications questions until their previous one is 'endorsed'. 2. Multiple ( 2a. Either moderators endorsing multiple such comments, due to race conditions and stale views during moderation, or 2b. Moderators would endorse the first (or "best") of them, a…

2b is not really an issue. Endorsing only the best of similar comments is a feature. You can remove your pending comment after some time. It may also have a second order "unintended" consequence over time- People would stop posting shallowly obvious responses, due to the negative feedback of never having them endorsed.

Eh. Yes, but not at the cost of wasting good-faith efforts to contribute and making it hard for them to contribute on other threads. I'd probably endorse similar comments on a thread, even though they were redundant, for that reason.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#229

Post by dinkumthinkum » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:03 AM UTC

jamesaguilar wrote: post #26

Are you at all worried that the increased comment friction will cause us to lose a lot of users? I guess the counter argument could be made that if we lose people because they are upset they can't post angry/useless comments, we might be better off without those users. And if it's so many that HN ceases to be useful to everyone, it might be better for the world if HN didn't exist. Which is a sobering thought. The oth…

I feel like it will continue down the path of groupthink that has been a criticism by some I think. I think that claim has been a bit too much but at the same time it is a real thing. But, I've also never been a fan of needing to be "sponsored" to have your say.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#230

Post by tantalor » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:03 AM UTC

cperciva wrote: post #19

Someone who has a pending comment will have to wait till it goes live to post another. We're hoping that good comments will get endorsed so quickly that there won't be a noticeable delay. Is there some timeout? If not, commenting on a several-day-old thread will guarantee that you can never post another comment, since once threads drop off the front page it's not likely that many 1000+ karma users will even see those…

The limit on 1 pending comment per user could be changed to 1 pending comment per user per top-level story. Although I don't see why limit them at all.