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Experiment: No Comment Scores

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Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#271

Post by unalone »

Confusion wrote: post #269
xenophanes wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got mad at him for making an impersonal remark, and now you say to him "Who are you? Why does it seem like you're angry all the time?" Which is an angry, personal remark. The word "fuck", not directed at anyone, is not important. Personal attacks are. If you don't like unalone's style, ignore him, don't psychologize him. Personally I appreciate the fact that he wrote substantive on-topic comments.

You got mad at him for making an impersonal remark I think Are you saying that you're too lazy to read what people are saying and form your own opinions? is a rather personal remark. A psychologizing one at that. Pot, meet kettle.

If by "pot, meet kettle", you're mentioning how dcurtis responded to my remark with a personal psychologizing remark, then the expression makes sense; otherwise, I'm confused. I didn't get mad at what dcurtis said, so I don't know who's the pot and who's the kettle here.

"Are you saying that" is an opener that means, "How is it that you're viewing this, because I see it like this". I wasn't trying to be snide and put him down. I was letting him know that's how I was viewing the situation, and asking him his interpretation. It was also a teeny bit tongue-in-cheek, considering, again, he's currently spending a month of his life flying in planes.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#272

Post by DanielBMarkham »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #163
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel your pain. I don't think I like the new system that much. At least so far. I'm used to scanning comments as a way to determine which articles to read. Postings with a lot of comment action usually indicate something emotionally appealing. Once I go to the comments section, then I filter by score, only looking at comments above a certain threshold (depending on how much time I have). I usually try not to commen…

This is precisely the problem. Without some idea of what earlier readers think of the comments it is much harder to skim. The top-level comments presumably rise and sink based roughly on their karma (though the algorithm also seems to have other considerations, like momentum). But what of the second-tier comments and below? Ripostes are often where the action is. I might find that I'm reduced to skimming for names th…

This is precisely the problem. Without some idea of what earlier readers think of the comments it is much harder to skim.

Yes. It's like "we want the voting system for our own purposes. You schmucks can just read every comment under an article because your time is not as valuable to us as our desire to prevent mobbing"

I'm sure that's not the case, but that's the way the new system feels.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#273

Post by jacquesm »

jrwoodruff wrote: post #213
unalone wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an art student who is very rarely angry and doesn't think swearing indicates emotion. I also believe that it's better to have to spend time thinking about what to read, how to spend your time, than it is to be offered an easy way out that risks devaluing what people are saying. (I further believe that being called lazy usually isn't an insult.) In person, I'd probably be doubly critical. Don't think of it as rude…

"Top-rated comments appear at the top of the thread" True, but often times the top comment will not be the highest rated, but the reply or subsequent replies below the comment will be rated higher than the orginal post, but the entire thread gets moved to the top because of that. Now I have no way of knowing that. [edit] I also have no way of knowing when the MAJORITY of readers are disagreeing with me. Up votes/down…

> I also have no way of knowing when the MAJORITY of readers are disagreeing with me.

Why would that matter ? The majority isn't always right.

HN is not a popularity contest, but when you look at the comments that way it certainly starts to look like it.

Let's see what I can say that many people will agree with so I can be voted up ?

As unalone already remarked, now you have to make up your own mind about what you are reading, which is a huge improvement over the groupthink mentality. It forces you to think for yourself before casting your vote, it takes care of the huge feedback loop that was in HN before this change.

Even now, there is still some of that left, after all the sort order still tells you what the majority voted for, but that's subtle enough that it probably won't matter too much, and the new sorting algorithm seems to do a very good job of bringing the good stuff to the top.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#274

Post by jacquesm »

I see a lot of comments here that basically say the same thing: "don't change anything, I was used to the old situation, now I'm lost".

Give it a couple of days worth of trying before casting your 'vote' on the changes, it's a pretty disruptive change because it breaks the routine, but I really think this sort of experimenting is what will bring out the best in HN, if hackers are starting to be conservatives then we really are in trouble.

Give it the benefit of the doubt and an honest chance.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#275

Post by zck »

pg wrote: post #242

I'm now experimenting with changing the function used to rank comments. I'm hopeful this will both help users find the good comments on a thread, and solve the problem of good but late comments getting stuck at the bottom of the page.

One suggestion: the point ranking could be merely probabilistic -- for each comment set its "page-sort" score by selecting a random number between 1 and the comment's score. (For negative comments, between 0 and their score?) Then sort the comments by their page-sort score. I've looked at this mostly on reddit, since their threads are much more popular than on HN, but finding late wheat in the chaff of low-voted comments can be a problem when threads get large.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#276

Post by johnnybgoode »

I'm seeing dots for some comments instead of the score. It looks like gray dots for comments with a high score and red dots for comments with a very high score. Doesn't this defeat the purpose of the change to some extent?

Edit: Sorry, it looks like this was explained after I had loaded this page. Still, this seems like a partial reversal. Also, this story is at #16 on the front page and really should be at #1 considering the magnitude of the change.

Oh and just one more question: I'm seeing this comment at the top of the page. Is that just how it looks for me, or is it that way for everyone because of the new ranking algorithm?

Another edit: From PG's explanation, I thought the gray dots were all turned red, but I still see gray dots for some comments (including one with a negative score).

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#277

Post by NathanKP »

johnnybgoode wrote: post #276

I'm seeing dots for some comments instead of the score. It looks like gray dots for comments with a high score and red dots for comments with a very high score. Doesn't this defeat the purpose of the change to some extent? Edit: Sorry, it looks like this was explained after I had loaded this page. Still, this seems like a partial reversal. Also, this story is at #16 on the front page and really should be at #1 consid…

Where was it explained? I'm still searching.....

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#278

Post by jacquesm »

unalone wrote: post #207
krschultz wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That explains why you have so much time to read all the comments. I don't have time to read all the comments so I'll look at the greatest hits. You can find the conversation based on the kharma scores, both positive and negative. If someone says something -4, it might be worth reading because it got such a reaction out of people. But a bunch of 1s and 2s on an old thread are noise that aren't worth reading.

That explains why you have so much time to read all the comments. What, that I'm a student? Reading comments doesn't take that long. As I said above: Fifteen minutes at most? And that's if it's a seriously long thread. Most threads are five minutes' skimming at most. If someone says something -4, it might be worth reading because it got such a reaction out of people. But a bunch of 1s and 2s on an old thread are nois…

I take a lot longer to read a thread, but I think it is well worth it, even the downvoted comments sometimes contain really good stuff, and sometimes the downvotes are based on ambiguity or misunderstandings (or cultural gaps).

So if I pick a thread I read all of it, sometimes again at a later point in time (or via the 'threads' page).

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#279

Post by DanielBMarkham »

jacquesm wrote: post #273
jrwoodruff wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Top-rated comments appear at the top of the thread" True, but often times the top comment will not be the highest rated, but the reply or subsequent replies below the comment will be rated higher than the orginal post, but the entire thread gets moved to the top because of that. Now I have no way of knowing that. [edit] I also have no way of knowing when the MAJORITY of readers are disagreeing with me. Up votes/down…

> I also have no way of knowing when the MAJORITY of readers are disagreeing with me. Why would that matter ? The majority isn't always right. HN is not a popularity contest, but when you look at the comments that way it certainly starts to look like it. Let's see what I can say that many people will agree with so I can be voted up ? As unalone already remarked, now you have to make up your own mind about what you ar…

Ok. This is starting to congeal for me.

What the old system did was to provide a numeric indicator of other readers' emotive participation in the discussion. It wasn't a popularity contest (although it could be for some) and it wasn't an agree/disagree rank (although it could be for some)

These "bad" uses of the score caused the system to get out of whack as more and more people participated. The problem is, there are "good" uses of the score, which is to use it as a way to filter the site. After all, there are thousands of comments added per hour and it's crazy to think that I'm going to have time to read every single one. I need an indicator of those comments that seem to affect the most number of readers because that's where I want to add my limited amount of effort.

I am not on a treasure hunt for good comments. I am not here to please PG or the other readers. Some might be but I am not. I am not jumping onboard to upvote things already upvoted -- the sad fact is that I can't read everything, so some things will have to have higher priority than others. If you take away the numeric system, I'll find some other way to filter -- perhaps by comment author or by scanning the front page for buzzwords that interest me.

I, the user, have a need to skim. Now the system can either easily provide that for me, or I'll probably go somewhere else. I don't mean that as a threat or anything -- I'm sure nobody gives a hoot where I read on the net or not -- but as an indication of the type of reaction the general public is going to have.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#280

Post by [deleted] »

NathanKP wrote: post #277
johnnybgoode wrote: post #276

I'm seeing dots for some comments instead of the score. It looks like gray dots for comments with a high score and red dots for comments with a very high score. Doesn't this defeat the purpose of the change to some extent? Edit: Sorry, it looks like this was explained after I had loaded this page. Still, this seems like a partial reversal. Also, this story is at #16 on the front page and really should be at #1 consid…

Where was it explained? I'm still searching.....

[deleted]
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