Live data from Hacker News

Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

news.ycombinator.com

761–770 of 854 posts

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#761
It really feels like this is solving a problem that doesn't exist, and as a result will hurt discussion. Additionally it assumes that people with 1,000 karma will sift through all of the comments to approve. Based on how few things get upvoted in the "new" section, I sincerely doubt that your members will sit on the "pending" tab waiting to approve.

We'll see how this plays out, but I'm probably done trying to comment here for now.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#763
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about purging pending comments after a certain time (say 24 hours)? If they haven't been endorsed by that time, they will most likely never be endorsed. And even if they would be, nobody would read them anymore.

That is exactly what happens.

Oh, that's just a great solution.

You have any idea how much time I spend sometimes on a comment?

(it can sometimes be quite a bit longer than the average person would on a similar comment, for reasons I don't really want to go into)

The first time one of those gets flushed down the toilet for no other reason than that nobody with >1k karma happened to notice it within 24 hours, I will know not to bother contributing any more.

Sometimes when I make a contribution to an older or less popular thread, I take the trouble anyway because I know there will at least be a few people that see it. Random passers-by, maybe in a few years arriving from some Google search. There's gems there. But I don't like to gamble on whether my post will even be kept around or not.

Downvote, bury, sure. But to delete without ever even being seen?? Well I guess it ties in with the joyful hellbanning theme here, or something.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#764
post #579
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that people are being penalized for writing something completely reasonable because someone wrote something slightly better or wrote it first, even if they were unaware of the other comment existing at the time of posting. As a penalty, they will have to go back and delete their pending comment from whatever thread they were on, if they came back to HN after a break. cperciva's auto-purge or my auto-ac…

Perhaps another feature is needed: mark redundant. So when you mark one of several similar comments as good, you can mark a others as redundant -- so that the owner can retract it. I suppose preferably you'd link it somehow, so that the author of a "redundant" comment would get a "deemed redundant due to: comment . Why list: maybe 1kkarma-user #1 found commend x to be best, #2 found y to be best, and both found your…

That sounds like a waste of time for the non-winning comment writer (especially if they could have seen the situation comin from the beginning like now). People put time and effort in their comments; I suspect they don't want to play quality lottery with it.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#765
Why not add a user setting - like Google does for censored results? You'd tick a box "Show less relevant / unmoderated comments" - provided directly on the discussion pages. You would tick that box at your own risk, knowing you may find offending comments. And if you find too much spam, and can't seem to enjoy moderated comments enough, just untick it and the spam goes away. This way you ensure moderation can't be abused for censorship purposes.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#766

This is a poorly thought out, reactionary response to allegations of dreadful comment quality. 1. It doesn't solve any problems of group think, because if pg and the Y Combinator folks think the system is already tilted toward a certain group and set of beliefs - this now empowers them all as citizen moderators. 2. It further empowers this group by giving them the ability to remove other members of the group's abilit…

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 co…

Honestly, it's a shit idea and I will stop contributing entirely.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#767

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mind…

No you're not an outlier. This will change the face of HN, and I'm not really sure what for.

(well I have an inkling and it's spelled pretty clearly in the OP but I fear it may be considered "gratuitous nastiness", to speak my heart)

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#768
FYI: Pending comments will not be enabled by default as pg just clarified here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7449857

So, this isn't going to be a drastic change, rather it'll be more like a tool for the moderator to improve the quality of conversations that are becoming nasty.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#769
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about purging pending comments after a certain time (say 24 hours)? If they haven't been endorsed by that time, they will most likely never be endorsed. And even if they would be, nobody would read them anymore.

That is exactly what happens.

Another problem that you may not have thought of:

Several sub-kilo-karma users may realize the same useful and valuable thing to comment (say, a reference link or clarification). They all post this before the first one gets endorsed.

All the others get penalized with a 24 hour no-posting timeout, for contributing a thoughtful/useful post.

(maybe a few of them will eventually get endorsed, so they may suffer a somewhat shorter penalty, at the cost of everybody else seeing duplicate content)

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#770
post #628
post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who can see pending comments (= those who can endorse them) will always be able to see them. They just won't be endorsable after a day.

Hmm... Now I find myself hoping that I never hit 1000 karma so I won't have to wade through all the never-endorsed comments. Could this feature deter high karma users from logging into the site?

If the quality of "showdead" comments is any indication I don't think you have anything to worry about.

(they are perfectly fine most of the time, their light-greyness is in fact more of an annoyance than the actually quite rare racist slur)

Post reply on HN