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

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#771

Post by hga » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 6:23 PM UTC

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'd also like to point out that plenty of us with plenty of karma also have some degree of RSI (repetitive strain injury, sometimes loosely called carpal tunnel syndrome (that's just one of many forms of RSI)), in part acquired by what allowed us to get so much karma.

No way can I afford to spend a lot of mousing and clicking on a zillion "pending" comments to make them visible to the hoi polli. Heck, ignoring the greater good, why would I personally care, I've probably got enough karma to see everything.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#772

Post by tripzilch » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 6:23 PM UTC

stormbrew wrote: post #525

pg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A site I used to work for had a pre-moderation system for pictures posted on the site that worked like this, to the best of my memory: There was a moderation queue and various volunteers (here it could be the >1000 karma people, I guess) went through it and gave their vote. A picture had to reach all positive 3 to go live or positive six to go live if there were any negative votes. Moderators were awarded points base…

> Moderators were awarded points based on how many of their votes matched the consensus.

That's cool because I can imagine for a picture site you want all pictures to gravitate around the consensus, a strong self-selecting group-think can be very desirable.

But for HN ... well at least the people who end up sticking around will surely love it ...

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#773

Post by tripzilch » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 6:32 PM UTC

chrismonsanto wrote: post #256

derefr wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something like a "scrolling cost" -- people are only willing to skim so much of a comments thread, without seeing something interesting to them, before closing it. This is why HN dislikes humorous fluff-posts: they both easily rise to the top, and encourage humorous fluff-replies, which means the first few screenfuls of comments will be guaranteed to induce the kind of "scroll-pain" that makes people close th…

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

Of course this is the most obvious solution, least intrusive that changes the least things and as far as I can see has only positive side-effects.

But for some reason or other pg won't do that.

I know there's some extensions/bookmarklets and I use them, but they can't do the auto-collapsing based on score+amount, the very simple yet elegant algorithm Reddit employs, pretty much the one thing that is absolutely necessary to have a well-usable threaded commenting system.

Instead, pg "just wrote the simplest thing first", or something.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#774

Post by tripzilch » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 6:37 PM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #360

baddox wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. I would much prefer fixing the long comment thread problem with 5 lines of JavaScript than implementing this bizarre system.

If you have a solution to this particular problem, whether in 5 or 500 lines of JS, I think it would be novel. I've yet to see any discussion forum solve the problem of long threads with lots of useless fluff floating to the top.

You don't use Reddit do you?

They use a very simple system, collapsing posts after a certain depth, and hiding more comments after a certain number (10, I believe) at the level below the top comment (sorted by score obviously).

It works extremely well, and thanks to the fast JS collapsing, it's not at all a hassle to read a subthread that happened to get collapsed if it piques your interest.

It's so simple it may easily be overlooked in its obviousness, but really you don't need a very complex system that is strictly a lot better than no collapsing at all.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#775

Post by yaelwrites » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 6:43 PM UTC

Great, once I get 991 more karma points I'll be welcome into the conversation.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#776

Post by tripzilch » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 6:48 PM UTC

gruseom wrote: post #349

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 conf…

> Downvoting for disagreement is how downvoting is meant to be used

Ha! I am so downvoting this comment, because I disagree with it.

(but but but ... yeah figure it out)

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#777

Post by gasull » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 6:50 PM UTC

pg wrote: post #46

nicklovescode wrote: post #12

"Since I'm going to check out of HN at the end of this YC cycle" To be clear, you mean you are going to stop maintaining the codebase of HN, not stop actively participating in the community, right?

It's impossible to predict the future perfectly, but I hope to leave completely. The only YC thing I'm going to do is office hours with the startups.

I feel suddenly very sad. I don't think HN will be the same without PG. I hope this frees your time to write more essays.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#778

Post by tripzilch » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 6:54 PM UTC

pg wrote: post #291

rabino wrote: post #186

> Someone who has a pending comment will have to wait till it goes live to post another. This is kinda crazy. You can't expect 100% of our comments to be brilliant. There needs to be some timeout or something, if not, people will start creating new accounts every day.

Comments don't have to be brilliant. All they have to be is not stupid or mean.

> Comments don't have to be brilliant. All they have to be is not stupid or mean.

You can wish all you want, that people will use the endorse button in exactly this way and not the other.

Easier is, to simply wish that all comments will be thoughtful and constructive as they are posted.

You have about the same chance of seeing either fulfilled. Good luck!

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#779

Post by tripzilch » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 6:56 PM UTC

probably_wrong wrote: post #690

buttsex wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. This will only work to increase the echo chamber that is HN. Any type of debate will now need to go through the HN elite. I really didn't have a problem with the current system, any obvious troll comments were always downvoted out of sight. I rather see any unapproved comment and make up my own mind on its "worthiness" instead of someone else.

> This will only work to increase the echo chamber that is HN. Any type of debate will now need to go through the HN elite. I think that's not a bug, that's a feature. PG mentioned before that HN was growing too fast and that keeping up was hard. I'm guessing the problem trying to be solved is the Eternal September[1], and this feature does exactly that: you are only allowed to post once you learned how to behave the…

Cool, so how did that work out for Usenet? :)

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#780

Post by tripzilch » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 6:58 PM UTC

vacri wrote: post #648

briantakita wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvotes meaning "I disagree" contribute to groupthink, no?

I think the moderation system in use on HN is inferior to moderation systems seen on some forums as far back as the turn of the century. I am not a fan of it (see my profile page) and don't like it in the least. I think it's better than having nothing at all (no up/down at all), but that's not saying much.

I wanted to downvote your above post just for the delicious paradox of it, but that profile page made me reconsider ;)