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Experiment: No Comment Scores

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#91

Post by gojomo »

pg wrote: post #50
tc wrote: post #40

Wow, this interferes with key elements of my system for voting/commenting on HN. Here are some things that don't work now: * If a comment is sitting at 1 or 0, I'll try to avoid downvoting it unless I really think the comment subtracts value from the site. * If a child is attracting more votes than the parent, and I think this is because the child commenter didn't comprehend what the parent was saying, I vote to leve…

Voting patterns showed a lot of users voted to get a comment to what they felt was an appropriate score: they wouldn't up- or downvote something unless they felt its current score was too low or high respectively. But if comment scores aren't displayed, you won't need to anymore.

I think your previous guidance helped create the "vote toward a target score" behavior. You've spoken against piling-on voting, and your clipping of the negative range advances the idea: once a signal is 'far enough' in one direction, people should hold off.

I can see ways hidden scores may work for or against extreme totals. On the one hand, without the satisfaction of seeing a vote take immediate effect, overall voting may go down. But on the other, without the indication that a comment is already 'far enough' in a desired direction, charged comments may rack up unprecedented positive or negative values. I hope you can share info about which effect predominates.

I will miss the chance to quickly 'rescue' slightly-downvoted comments I don't particularly like or agree with, but feel have been unfairly squelched into nether-ratings by hair-trigger down-voters.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#93

Post by axod »

pg wrote: post #24
pg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, will investigate.

Ok, should be fixed now. Sorry, the javascript for modifying displayed scores was breaking now that there weren't any.

Now when I upmod a story on the main page, the score of the story doesn't change :/

BTW Cool experiment, think it might get rid of some of the group-think

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#94

Post by neilk »

huhtenberg wrote: post #42

Why not hide the usernames as well then and let the comments be judged purely based on their content ?

That would be potentially neat if you were only interested in raw argument. But HN is a place for people to meet as well.

Also, credibility matters. Some people are known for their expertise in certain areas, like Matt Maroon and poker.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#96

Post by fauigerzigerk »

stuntgoat wrote: post #68

If you gave me the option to switch karma on/off for submissions and comments, I would likely leave both off. Leaving karma off somehow gives me confidence to contribute more. Another idea is to remove the (time 'ago). Good comments are timeless :) and old comments seem like nobody is watching anymore, so the dialog seems over. Thank you Paul

I don't need karma either, but the time of submission is important to know whether the poster is likely to read a reply.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#97

Post by kniwor »

But now I cant quickly skim off information from a thread. There are 87 comments in this thread at this moment. I am not interested in reading 87 comments about this experiment. I am however very much interested in seeing what the top few most insightful comments in this thread are. That feedback is very important. Right now I am feeling blind as a bat...

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#98

Post by kniwor »

pg wrote: post #50
tc wrote: post #40

Wow, this interferes with key elements of my system for voting/commenting on HN. Here are some things that don't work now: * If a comment is sitting at 1 or 0, I'll try to avoid downvoting it unless I really think the comment subtracts value from the site. * If a child is attracting more votes than the parent, and I think this is because the child commenter didn't comprehend what the parent was saying, I vote to leve…

Voting patterns showed a lot of users voted to get a comment to what they felt was an appropriate score: they wouldn't up- or downvote something unless they felt its current score was too low or high respectively. But if comment scores aren't displayed, you won't need to anymore.

In fact I will go as far as to say that the ideal interface would be one that let me specify what the ideal score of every comment should be and my vote should be counted as an upvote if its below that value and a downvote if its above that...

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#99

Post by tumult »

kniwor wrote: post #97

But now I cant quickly skim off information from a thread. There are 87 comments in this thread at this moment. I am not interested in reading 87 comments about this experiment. I am however very much interested in seeing what the top few most insightful comments in this thread are. That feedback is very important. Right now I am feeling blind as a bat...

Ones near the top are some kind of product of age (more recent) and score (higher).

By the way, the kind of skimming you're describing is what leads to mob voting :) People skim for the highest rated stuff, read it, then rate it up more. Plenty of good comments never get rated up, and people who say the most inflammatory stuff (or just make stupid jokes) get the votes early on and stay in the "lead" as it were, the system having been made into a game.

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