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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

#691

Post by radiac »

networked wrote: post #151
pg wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, deletion is possible for a pending comment as long as it's pending.

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…

The other type it could cause problems for are whoishiring.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#692

Post by ScottWhigham »

npizzolato wrote: post #544

There have been a lot of comments stating why this is a poor idea, but as someone who is sub-1000 karma, I haven't seen this reason posted yet (although I could only read the first half or so). In a typical day, I can't spend all day sitting on Hacker News refreshing threads and seeing if anyone has responded to me (or promoted my comment). But occasionally I'll read a thread, find a couple of interesting places to c…

And frankly, it would make this site much less attractive to browse as an occasional commenter.

I find myself wondering whether that's part of the unstated goal of this action - getting fewer "occasional commenters". I have no clue on the reasons but clearly that will be an effect of the change. I think we can all see how rushed this rollout was so it's possible that is an unintended consequence.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#693

Post by ScottWhigham »

michaelwww wrote: post #309

People who regularly endorse comments that fail one or both of these tests will lose the ability to endorse comments. Punishing people for endorsing comments that don't meet an arbitrary and vague content standard will inhibit endorsements. Endorsements are necessary for comments to show up. Seemingly weird comments that are brilliant only after reflection will not get endorsed. Hacker News will trend towards mediocr…

Punishing people for endorsing comments that don't meet an arbitrary and vague content standard will inhibit endorsements.

This happens already with flagging and downvoting. If you flag or downvote too often/aggressively/whatever, you will have those privileges revoked. I used to go to /newest daily and upvote/flag until I lost my flagging privileges. I eventually got the ability to flag back but now I rarely go to /newest. It's the tragedy of the commons - if I go to /newest and flag/upvote, this is a better community because I'm active and participating. But if I am worried about being punished from doing so, I won't do it and will just hope that others will.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#695

Post by AJ72 »

alirazaq wrote: post #682
mortenjorck wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might also consider merely greying out comments that have not yet been endorsed, as currently happens to down- voted comments. I agree with this, except that pending comments should probably be visually differentiated from downvoted ones (maybe a shade of green like new usernames). Otherwise, you risk subtly prejudicing a reader that has grown accustomed to the original meaning of the greying-out. Either way, I'd…

I think it's a good idea, as the quality of comments have been degrading. Perhaps after a post has reached a certain age (few hours) comments would slowly open up to users with less and less karma. Just a thought, but I agree a "show pending" toggle would be nice too.

It is important that we encourage new users to comment on HN. The reality is that early posts from new users may not make the grade set by 1000+ Karma users. Let them be visible as otherwise you may discourage such new users from re engaging/commenting further.

Color coding comments to flag they as 'pending' is fine. But complete hiding them sounds too strong

Its great to have the conversation on how to improve HN comments

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#696

Post by commandar »

doorhammer wrote: post #382
beloch wrote: post #274

My may concern with this system: Sledgehammer meets tack. The comments on HN aren't perfect, but they're far from bad when compared to other sites of this nature. There has been a downwards trend most probably due to the increasing popularity of HN. A response is warranted. However, this system has the potential to silence a lot of high quality comments on any threads that aren't on the front-page for an extended per…

To me a problem with karma systems that are based on a specific relatively well-defined ruleset is that you still end up with a score that doesn't really convey much. For instance, the karma I have is made up of meaningful discussions, which involve telling others about relevant facts, as well as one liner jokes and a few quotes from random dead folks that are smarter than I am. I always wonder how useful it is to re…

It's been a decade since I've posted there with any regularity, but this more or less lays out why I feel like I still haven't seen a more elegant solution to moderating comments than Slashdot's metamoderation system.

Comments not only receive a +/- minus score, but they receive a reason for that score. Additionally, meta-moderators are selected randomly from eligible moderators who go behind and moderate whether the scores given to a particular comment were justified. Get metamoderated down often enough and you lose your ability to moderate.

It baffles me that every site on the web keeps using simple up/down systems and then complains about how hard it is to generate quality discussion when this is hardly a new problem set.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#697

Post by netcan »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #659
tptacek wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow do I ever disagree with that. Comments on HN have gotten genuinely awful.

I hear you express this sentiment often. Could you explain your thoughts on this? If anything, I think the stories are the problem. Cool hacks and interesting science often fail to get the 2-3 upvotes they need to escape the new page. On page 2 of "New", I've found the following fairly decent stories that died recently: http://simplystatistics.org/2014/03/20/the-8020-rule-of-stat... http://googlecloudplatform.blogspo…

I don't think that 'general' topics that most people have something to say about are inherently bad (in my opinion). They just have a few problems.

First, On 'developing statistical methods' the average HNer has more insightful things to say than the average person. On alternatives to social welfare the average HN commenter is not much more insightful than the average person. The only reason to do it here is because here is the community where they discuss things online.

Second some articles contributes no more than just the topic ("Yay basic income, no facts, no reasoning, yay"). HN isn't for that so it fails. It works for discussing articles or specific facts and news items, not for discussing 'topics.^' ATM it looks like there are 2-3 of these on page one.

^BTW, is there any software specifically designed to allow discussion of these "forever topics." IE, the topics that keeps popping up in every forum and get pinned in the traditional BB forums?

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#698

Post by conformal »

c23gooey wrote: post #147

So only popular posters with popular opinions will be allowed to endorse posts. This feels like you are walling off HN for those who are already established here. I've been here for years, I like to feel like I have a chance to contribute to discussions without hoping some karma overlord will approve. I believe this change will cause HN to stagnate and become an echo chamber of the thoughts of those who are already p…

it's pretty clear to me that HN is already an echo chamber in many respects - the consensus VC and corporate views are frequently those that get the most upvotes. requiring approval from 'old guard' users will only exacerbate this echo chamber property of HN and will, imo, likely degrade the quality of discussions more than it will help.

what has made HN and reddit so popular is the ability for anyone to participate, even if their comments get downvoted. by removing this open posting property, you are going to switch from a "burning man" culture to a "popular nightclub" culture. i would like to think that most of the developer types on HN recognize this as a bad thing.

i, for one, will not bother participating in discussions with the same frequency if i know that it requires approval from a karma overlord. i expect this chilling effect will be similar with many users of your site.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#700

Post by gahahaha »

minimaxir wrote: post #370
beloch wrote: post #274

My may concern with this system: Sledgehammer meets tack. The comments on HN aren't perfect, but they're far from bad when compared to other sites of this nature. There has been a downwards trend most probably due to the increasing popularity of HN. A response is warranted. However, this system has the potential to silence a lot of high quality comments on any threads that aren't on the front-page for an extended per…

For note, HN isn't necessarily increasing in popularity. Number of HN submissions over 3 years: http://i.imgur.com/r9Ayvb1.png Number of HN comments over 3 years: http://i.imgur.com/4FwglA8.png

According to Google Trends Hacker News' interest seems to be be stable: http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-US&q=hacker+news&...
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