Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

751–760 of 854 posts

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#751

Post by opendais »

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…

I agree.

At a minimum, I'd suggest lowering the karma threshold to 100 and/or only gray out comments that are 'pending'.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#752

Post by n09n »

ldng wrote: post #718
hrktb wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The are discussions where user name matters, for instance when refering to the nth parent in the same thread, or when trying to bring more context to a point made previously or even retracting a comment (knowing it's the same user posting is important). We could get away with temporary user names, changing on a per thread basis for instance, but that might be heavy to implement.

Apply the on first participation to the thread then ?

Or just copy 4chan's system directly, since that's what you're iterating towards, and they've already solved this problem.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#754

Post by tripzilch »

mintone wrote: post #492
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…

I'm not sure that I qualify to contribute a reply (and that may be a problem here) - I've read HN for 4+ years and have only started actively contributing very recently on this account - I have neither karma nor history of posting in my favour. One of the most powerful things about HN is that it is currently not like reddit - we don't end up with 400+ comments that sit at the bottom of the page gathering dust and dow…

I think this is a great idea, it's simple (one karma = one minute) and it addresses many of the problems I foresee with this new rules, in particular getting stuck in "pending limbo" indefinitely (given that you can't post if your previous comment is still pending).

It still makes it take extremely long for a new user to obtain 1000 karma, though. Much harder than previously, I imagine. Although maybe not, since there will be less posts visible, those that are will get relatively more karma points?

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#755

Post by bradleysmith »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #355
wildfire wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A shame. Whilst I am always intrigued with what hits the front-page, I rather more often than occasionally, find myself getting to page 10 or so on the weekends. Just to see what has been going on that I missed. Your change will basically mean that someone like me who might have something to add to an existing conversation might as well not bother. It'll be years before I have enough karma on ycombinator's hackernews…

> Your change will basically mean that someone like me who might have something to add to an existing conversation might as well not bother. That is already the case. Very few people read or participate in threads more than 24 hours old. You're already walking into an empty room and having a conversation with yourself; all this change does is lock the door.

as bsder said above me, "I don't reread the thread, but I will pay attention to someone replying to my comments even after several days."

Also, (not unlike this comment) I'll find myself late to the party and add comments to posts because I believe my thoughts might be relevant.

I actually treat HN comments to be a ledger of sorts. Like other industry forums around the net, it is a collection of some very strong minds on tech-related subjects, and a decent resource to check for opinion or tangential information on all sorts of topics. If there is a discussion on something that I have unique insight to, I will post on long dead threads just to know it was posted.

I'm probably an outlier, and this use case is probably not all that prevalent, but pending comments being purged without endorsements would make this forum unarguably more temporal, for better or worse.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#756

Post by crystaln »

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.

There are so many things you've overlooked... This will be an interesting experiment, however I don't think it's a good approach and this decision will likely be reversed.

What would help HN is a system for qualitative feedback to posters who make poor posts. Currently, users notice they are slow or hell banned, have no idea why, and register another account. Why not provide warnings with one or a few preweitten reasons? How about holding banners accountable for their bans, as some seem to ban contrarian viewpoints?

Anyway, good luck with this system. I'm unlikely to spend time writing a comment that may not be seen. I already care less about what I'm writing here, because I discount the chance that it may never go live.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#757

Post by tripzilch »

mukyu wrote: post #727
bjelkeman-again wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I joined more than 2000 days ago. I don't have 1000 karma. This way I'll maybe never will reach it. Seems a bit of a high threshold to me. But maybe my commentary just isn't good enough.

Karma per post is not well correlated with the actual quality of your contributions. You can get hundreds of karma for posting superficial observations early on a post that become popular. Someone that has observed HN for long enough could probably get 1000 karma in a day from just trying to optimize for karma instead of quality. If you really do want to reach some karma threshold I would suggest trying to get it fro…

That, and doing some basic research to post additional useful information (facts, numbers, stats, references, background info, etc) on a relatively new thread.

I'm mentioning this because I believe such posts are genuinely useful and surely deserve the points they get.

BTW I don't think I ever got near a hundred points for a comment. But I suppose it can happen in the above circumstance in a popular thread.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#758

Post by elf25 »

DITTO!! We know when we're not wanted. Sounds like the "elite" want a place to rule. I won't be a part of that. EQUAL VOICE FOR ALL!

--- >hkphooey

>This perhaps marks the beginning of the end for HackerNews. Who wants to contribute to a "community" where there is active censorship of posts critical of YCombinator companies (see Dr Chrono), or you get hell-banned for no good reason, and now this poorly thought-out "rule"? CPerciva pointed out an obvious flaw. Another is this: if you had to start a brand new HackerNews tomorrow, would you implement the rule? Of course not, because nobody would have any karma points to begin with, so they wouldn't be able to approve or see pending comments, meaning no comments would ever get posted! Duh! Now you could argue that the HackerNews moderators and owners have karma points and they could approve comments to seed the system... but then why not just have a private forum for all your start-up friends, invite only, so you can be sure they all speak right?! reply

>jgh

>I have been a lurker and infrequent poster here for a number of years and have lately been feeling increasingly alienated from the HN community. I am not on "the in" by any means in startup culture or silicon valley (in fact, I live in Southern California). As somebody who very much feels on the outside looking in on the craziness that is silicon valley and the startup culture (although my entire career has been spent in startups) I feel like this move only serves to further alienate people like me.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#760

Post by tripzilch »

wtvanhest wrote: post #302
beloch wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I endorse this post strongly. I too have occasionally had some informative back-and-forth's in buried threads. With this update, this would only work if both users have >1000 karma.

Additionally, people may be more willing to have these conversations if the comments made in old threads didn't impact their average karma. Long ago I decided I didn't care about average karma and just try to add something to a larger discussion or attempt to have a conversation in an old thread, but in the beginning I was concerned. The back and forth comments deep in threads no one reads are some of the most intere…

That'd be nice, it explains why my avg karma is still less than 2 while I also get quite a few upvotes.

On the other hand, if I'm having a useful discussion with someone in an old thread, I often give them an upvote for their troubles as well. It's not like it affects the sorting or anything.

Post reply on HN