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

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#341

Post by vacri » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:45 AM UTC

chimeracoder wrote: post #224

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 c…

Currently, the downvote button is only supposed to be used for unproductive comments

pg has previously stated that it's perfectly acceptable to use the downvote button as "I disagree".

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#342

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:45 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #252

networked wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see. You said above that a comment only has a day to make it out of pending. Why not auto-delete it when it doesn't? Edit: Never mind that question. Based on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7446005 this seems to be the case (i.e., you won't have to delete a failed pending comment manually). On a related note, the new system may prevent people from posting in the feature suggestion thread ( https://news.ycombin…

Oops, yes, another thing I overlooked.

[deleted]

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#343

Post by yeukhon » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:46 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #265

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one compromise could be to remove this restriction from users with > x karma. It's not ideal to me but it is something ...

A bad comment is a bad comment whether I write it or a green-named user does. Jerkface.

The number of bad comment is relatively low. And what kind of bad comments are we after?

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#344

Post by bvttf » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:46 AM UTC

derefr wrote: post #273

chrismonsanto wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to this is to allow collapsing uninteresting comment threads. I use this all the time on Reddit.

You have to read a thread enough to know you want to collapse it, which incurs exactly the same "scroll-pain" as actually scrolling. It's not a physical tax from the action required to scroll, but rather a mental stress from making a decision to skip something. Enough of that stress building up at once, and you decide that the comments page itself is probably skippable. If uninteresting comment threads could start co…

Disagree on your first point, the top comment is often obviously spawning a huge argument that goes nowhere because it touched some hot-button political issue that was a minor part of the story.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#345

Post by angersock » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:46 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #316

bmelton wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering Patrick's tendency for amassing huge amounts of karma (not a dis), even on older threads, I'd be surprised if that poses any issue whatsoever.

I'm just wondering if there's maybe an atypical gap between the time Patrick tends to post comments and the time those comments tend to soak up their comment, so that the endorsement delay could be an issue.

I'm not particularly optimistic, but I'm all for experimentation.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#346

Post by yew » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:47 AM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #17

molecule wrote: post #8

> Someone who has a pending comment will have to wait till it goes live to post another. As currently stated, if a comment's never endorsed out of pending, the commenter will never be able to post again?

This sounds like a feature, not a bug. :-)

It breaks down for threads that only ever get a single viewer (who comments).

At least, I don't get the impression that this update is intended to prevent such posts regardless of content (eg a reference to a related paper on some obscure topic).

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#347

Post by pg » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:47 AM UTC

tedsanders wrote: post #317

PG, instead of adding an endorse button, why not just use the upvote button and display the pending comment after it's been upvoted by a few 1000+ karma users? Do you want the standards for endorsement to be different than the standards for upvotes?

Yes. It should be possible to endorse something without agreeing with it.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#348

Post by tptacek » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:47 AM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #334

tptacek wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just wondering if there's maybe an atypical gap between the time Patrick tends to post comments and the time those comments tend to soak up their comment, so that the endorsement delay could be an issue.

There will probably be a nonzero negative impact. Patrick and a couple of other users recently tag-team-assisted someone with a website problem in the middle of the night, and this new feature probably would have about killed that. I still think it's a net win though. A few of us with very broken sleep patterns can put a little more effort into checking comment threads.

I agree that this is going to be a net win.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#349

Post by gruseom » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:47 AM UTC

chimeracoder wrote: post #224

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 c…

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).

No, that's wrong. Downvoting for disagreement is how downvoting is meant to be used, as pg has made clear on HN many times over the years.

[I edited the previous sentence to make it less ambiguous.]

The confusion persists because Reddit's rules are different, and people remember those and mistakenly assume they apply to HN.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#350

Post by redler » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 1:47 AM UTC

pygy_ wrote: post #157

cperciva wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might work... but only if people actually read that page. Given how few people look at /newest (as estimated by the fraction of votes which are cast before submissions hit the frontpage) I'm not optimistic. How about only placing comments into the "pending" purgatory if the submission they're attached to has received more than X comments in the past Y minutes? I assume it's the chatty discussions which you're co…

> How about only placing comments into the "pending" purgatory if the submission they're attached to has received more than X comments in the past Y minutes? Fluff will pass through. Another option would be to enable the pending machine on big stories for the time they are on the home page, then auto-validate everything (but mark the unendorsed comments as such). It would be nice if users with a lower karma could val…

I like this idea; perhaps it could be a continuous function. There's already some sort of velocity-like calculation, with a time coefficient, so stories have to kick increasingly hard to keep their heads above water. It seems logical to attach the posting threshold -- a new cooling saucer dimension -- to that same calculation.