Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

can't respond to PG's comment directly for some reason. Any cool software ideas you'd like to briefly share?

Sounds like a system very slow to change, nearly self-perpetuating, like more of an echo chamber, like stew without garlic or pepper, like ignoring that a stream bed is cold and uncomfortable, full of mud and gravel, but also one of the best places to look for gold.

Fundamentally the high karma people pleased the masses at HN and/or have been commenting at HN for a long time and maybe have made the better comments but still are in the middle of the road. So, content that is new and takes some effort and reflection, is challenging to the status quo, is radical and provocative will have less of a chance to be seen at all.

With some irony, the Silicon Valley world of startups is heavily about being disruptive, not self-perpetuating.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders. Way more than 100, almost certainly more than 1,000, and very likely more than 10,000 if my guesswork based on those figures is correct.

I fear this change will have some unintended consequences:

1. In a Ask/Show HN post, (which is often similar to a reddit AMA), the OP will not be able to reply to clarifications questions until their previous one is 'endorsed'.

2. Multiple (2a. Either moderators endorsing multiple such comments, due to race conditions and stale views during moderation, or

2b. Moderators would endorse the first (or "best") of them, and many people with reasonable comments will be in limbo in the rest of HN, for the fault of writing a similar response to another endorsed poster.

3. (NEW) If a user has something meaningful to say to two different posts, he/she is now more likely to choose the one with more activity since he can't post on both anymore, and he/she wouldn't want to wait for the moderators to see the less active post. As a result, the power law distribution on post activity is going to become even more prominent than before.

I would recommend the following changes:

1. Apply this policy on a per-page basis, rather than on a global HN basis.

2. Allow 2 or 3 pending comments per person, rather than 1. Anyone who needs more than that, and is not getting endorsed at all, is probably trolling or spamming, and can be dealt with other means.

3. Auto-accept pending comments after 24hrs for users with >250 karma (or some other lowish number that filters out absolutely green accounts).

4. Add a "showpending" option. Even if people can't upvote/reply to them, it's democratic to be able to see them.

5. (UPDATE, adding tantalor's suggestion) #1 above can be solved by auto-accepting the OP's comments instantaneously. I would even go further and give endorser rights to the OP on a Ask/Show HN post.

> So if you're not sure whether you should endorse a comment, don't.

hi!

So will there still be a karma system and how does this new comment system will affect karma?

thanks.