101–110 of 327 posts
Why not hide the usernames as well then and let the comments be judged purely based on their content ?
One PLUS of karma scores next to comments is that I know when to stop reading :) If my personal interest + the comment score < arbitrary threshold, i quit
You know, if there's one thing programmers should appreciate, it's making it easy to see which information you don't want to read.
Won't this lead us towards a bimodal distribution? Without the crucial knowledge of where the comment's score is, the votes will tend towards extremes: we can't collectively decide when the target comment is near the range that we find appropriate.
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...
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 comment, unless some comment has been upvoted to a high level and doesn't make sense to me.
Alas, there are a huge number of comments that I disagree with or fail to understand, and only by knowing the score am I able to determine whether or not my adding to the discussion will help the other readers.
That don't work no more. Now I'm just blindly poking around in the comments section, not really feeling connected to the discussion at all...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
pvg said -> "It would be a little difficult to have an exchange with someone if you can't tell who is who." cperciva said "Knowing who wrote a comment often provides very useful context" You are both completely right. My suggestion doesn't make sense. It was just a "spur of the moment" suggestion to provoke thought (de Bono's PO mental operator). I dind't think it through at all.
You could give everyone a unique identifier per thread.
For instance, the ggp is a security professional. I give more credence to his opinions than others.
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 s…
The entire point of using karma is that it means something -- it has value. Heck, I bet to some folks it has a lot of value. I'd further bet that it has so much value to some folks that you could monetize it. But that's a discussion for another day.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Hmmm... I always considered that a feature rather than a bug. Only voting when the scores looked "wrong" was an optimization. How do I decide when to vote now? I have a feeling I'm going to settle into a pattern of voting to reorder comments and that I'm going to vote less overall.
I do think that people make too much of karma and comments scores. But I don't understand why pg thinks this particular aspect is an improvement.
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 s…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 s…
Repeat after me: you cannot have a system with points and expect people not to play games with it. Just accept it as a given and try to work around mob voting in other ways. Perhaps there is a way to make the system work against it's own mob tendencies. The entire point of using karma is that it means something -- it has value. Heck, I bet to some folks it has a lot of value. I'd further bet that it has so much value…