An Update on Hacker News

Post by vacri » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 8:08 PM UTC

krat0sprakhar wrote: post #10

angersock wrote: post #8

A third experiment didn't go so well: we briefly made the software kill comments that had been sufficiently downvoted. Many users objected, arguing that killing downvoted comments is too harsh a punishment for unpopular opinions, especially since downvoted comments get faded to begin with. We heard that and reversed the change. Good to hear they decided to roll that back. PG opened a pandora's box when he said that d…

> In the meantime, we will simply have to stop assuming that downvoted comments are actually, you know, bad. I don't think this is true. Given that downvoted comments become faded, I have a strong reason to believe that the intent is to hide them because they are actually bad

Post by tptacek » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 8:08 PM UTC

jonnathanson wrote: post #54

readerrrr wrote: post #14

If I understand the rules correctly, downvoting is used for not agreeing with a comment, and flags are used for inappropriate comments. But is fading the comment really the correct behaviour. Isn't the position on the page deciding whether the community agrees with the comment? My suggestion is: remove the fading; let downvoting only move the comments down, since the comment is appropriate yet the community doesn't a…

"If I understand the rules correctly, downvoting is used for not agreeing with a comment, and flags are used for inappropriate comments." In theory, no, downvoting is not supposed to be used to disagree. It's supposed to be used to move "stupid" comments (inarticulate, illogical, poorly argued, etc.) down towards the bottom of the screen. Flagging, on the other hand, is meant to call out wildly inappropriate, offensi…

Post by xorcist » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 8:08 PM UTC

readerrrr wrote: post #33

mblevin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving comments down completely can break the threading - e.g. you could have a highly upvoted parent comment with a single child comment that was heavily downvoted. You can't move the child any further down the tree. You CAN indicative that the comment has been downvoted - the fading accomplishes that objective.

That sounds like an incorrect fix. Since the comments are separated by trees, they should be positioned and compared to comments relative to that tree, not relative to the master tree. Being at the bottom of a sub-tree marks the comment automatically as the most downvoted in that tree. Applying fading to all the comments just because a downvoted comment has a parent that happens to be at the top, seems wrong.

Post by dsirijus » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 8:10 PM UTC

michaelochurch wrote: post #30

I still read HN. There's a good article or two per day. That said, the moderation needs work. (Or, more accurately, to be put out of work.) I've been under "rankban" for at least a year, if not longer. This means that my posts, even if they get a lot of upvotes, fall to or near the bottom. I don't really care, and while I could use sock puppets to get around that, I'm too old for that shit and I don't really care. St…

Post by Eduard » Mon, Nov 10, 2014, 8:10 PM UTC