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Experiment: No Comment Scores

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#141

Post by [deleted] »

sev wrote: post #116
nandemo wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also considered that a feature. I have 3 choices: -1, 0 and 1, and almost always I choose 0. 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.

I can see why the change is for the better: my vote (-1, 0, 1) should not be skewed/altered based on past events (others voting). Also, an "appropriate" total vote count is not something that an individual should be determining; it should be a collective thought. The only thing an individual should decide on is whether to award the comment a -1/0/1 purely based on the comment, nothing more. This change removes everyt…

[deleted]

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#142

Post by billswift »

frossie wrote: post #135
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…

It's interesting - I manfully tried for a bit, but my interest in voting seems to have evaporated with the numbers. Like tc, I often vote to "balance out" as much as to "join the mob". My prediction: comment voting will drop precipitously.

My response is different. I find I'm voting more, without being able to "balance out" I am now tending to vote up more than before. I'm also downvoting more, though that hasn't changed as much as the upvoting.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#143

Post by billswift »

plinkplonk wrote: post #76
joez wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are far enough removed from each other on the internet. Knowing who posted something tells a lot. For example, I've been browsing HN about 3 months and I already know to pay extra attention to what tptacek on security. I believe people have gotten jobs from Hacker News too based on their reputation. I think HN is a great community and implementing this would just weaken it.

"I believe people have gotten jobs from Hacker News too based on their reputation." Whoa! Nice :-). Any concrete examples?

I remember a couple of discussions that were headed that way; then they reasonably enough shifted to email, so I don't know whether they went through.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#144

Post by billswift »

j_baker wrote: post #54

I notice that nobody here is playing devil's advocate, so allow me. What was wrong with the site beforehand? Sure the comments have a mob feel to them sometimes, but that's just something a social anything app has to deal with. Over all, I like the comments on HN much more than say reddit or digg by far. Plus, I've never seen a community that responds so well to criticism as this one does.

Overall I agree with you, but I think this will be an interesting experiment, I want to see what happens.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#145

Post by billswift »

mynameishere wrote: post #79

The bandwagon effect (which is just ridiculous on reddit) occurs because top-rated comments stay at the top. Typical reddit comment at the top of a thread: reddit_user 622 points Glenn Beck is a wanker! He sniffs arses! Everyone agrees with this, needless to say, but they only upmod it because it's at the top of the pile. Otherwise, it's a worthless comment. I find the lack of mod points distracting to an unexpected…

That depends on how you define "bad quantification".

Bad as inaccurate quantification is worse than none.

Bad as rough, but roughly accurate is better than none.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#146

Post by Confusion »

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...

For me, comment rankings also serve to verify the correctness of my thoughts about the article or a previous comment. I believe this is completely normal and reflects the ability to doubt yourself. The fact that I initially think a story or comment is valuable, does not mean it actually is valuable: I may be wrong. As there will usually be comments reflecting different sides of the issue, I need to know what the community thinks the value of these comments is, relative to each other.

20 Points for a comment 'supporting' my position and 20 for a comment arguing 'against' my position indicate that I shouldn't be too certain, but that my position is (probably) at least rational.

20 Points for a comment 'supporting' my position and 1 for a comment arguing 'against' my position is an additional sign that I am probably on the right track.

1 Point for a comment 'supporting' my position and 20 for a comment arguing 'against' my position is a clear sign that I may have missed something and should read that comment carefully.

I really dislike this change.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#147

Post by lamby »

dcurtis wrote: post #121
pg wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, now there should be scores next to your own comments. Better?

You know how sometimes online stores won't tell you the price of something until you add it to your cart? Hacker News feels kind of like that now. Like price, comment score is the best indicator of context, class, and quality. I feel kind of lost.

Surely the content is the best indicator of context, class, and quality? If you feel lost, perhaps you were relying too much on others to judge an opinion for yourself?

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#148

Post by Herring »

lamby wrote: post #147
dcurtis wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know how sometimes online stores won't tell you the price of something until you add it to your cart? Hacker News feels kind of like that now. Like price, comment score is the best indicator of context, class, and quality. I feel kind of lost.

Surely the content is the best indicator of context, class, and quality? If you feel lost, perhaps you were relying too much on others to judge an opinion for yourself?

That's the entire premise behind this site: popular items become more visible. There just isn't enough time to go through all the content; it's much easier to learn the site's bias & compensate.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#149

Post by noamsml »

edd wrote: post #137
sdp wrote: post #19

PG: Will you be applying some metric to determine if this improves site feel? If so, what metric?

I think the two obvious metrics are volume of comment votes and average comment score. I don't know which way you would want those two to go though.

I'd say the most obvious metric would be whether it evens the distribution of comment scores.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#150

Post by pascal_cuoq »

dcurtis wrote: post #121
pg wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, now there should be scores next to your own comments. Better?

You know how sometimes online stores won't tell you the price of something until you add it to your cart? Hacker News feels kind of like that now. Like price, comment score is the best indicator of context, class, and quality. I feel kind of lost.

"Best indicator" are not the words I would have used. Like other (all that I know of, in fact) voting systems on popular social sites, Hacker News' is biased in favor of comments that repeat the established, arrive early, and are written by popular authors. All criteria which are subtly different from quality of contents.

My first comment was http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=739112 Being my first intervention on HN, I thought I would be able to post anonymously so I included my name at the bottom of the post. The first reply (which, I admit is polite, well written and from a relatively famous person in this community, although not completely on-topic with respect to the article originally linked) got upvoted above ten. My comment, which revealed a lesser-know but true fact strongly related to the original article, with reference to an experiment that you can reproduce at home, was upvoted twice or something like that.

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