Experiment: No Comment Scores • Hacker News Board

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#181

Post by unalone » Sat, Sep 26, 2009, 2:34 PM UTC

timwiseman wrote: post #157

I anticipate that one effect of this will be that there will be more threads simply saying "I agree" or "Good comment" since this will no longer be so visibly reflected by the voting.

I think that those threads will be downvoted same as always, and when they grey out it'll give other users the impression that those comments are less interesting/worthwhile than other comments.

And, to rant a teeny bit, that's what downvoting is used for. You don't downvote people that disagree with you or that say something you don't like. Downvoting is for removing comments that aren't relevant to the discussion. That's why they go grey. When I saw your comment, you'd been downvoted and greyed out, and you made a comment with a relevant or interesting point. You should not have been downvoted.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#182

Post by unalone » Sat, Sep 26, 2009, 2:36 PM UTC

Herring wrote: post #148

lamby wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There just isn't enough time to go through all the content; it's much easier to learn the site's bias & compensate.

That's one man's opinion. I read all the comments on every thread here, and find that not all the high-quality comments rise to the top. It's hit-and-miss. In a way that invalidates the theory of upvote-judging, no?

It's a shitty system that forces you to adapt to biases. Right now PG's experimenting with removing a bias and improving the system. You're arguing that it would be better if he left the system flawed.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#183

Post by dcurtis » Sat, Sep 26, 2009, 2:42 PM UTC

unalone wrote: post #166

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.

Like price, comment score is the best indicator of context, class, and quality. Fuck that. Are you saying that you're too lazy to read what people are saying and form your own opinions? That groupthink is just going to naturally turn out better than forcing every member to think about what they're reading? For the longest time, HN has become more and more "accessible", at the cost of a lot of intellectual discussion.…

Fuck that.

Don't you think that reaction is a little bit extreme? Unlike you, apparently, I don't have time to read all 800 comments on all the threads on this site.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#184

Post by zck » Sat, Sep 26, 2009, 2:42 PM UTC

pascal_cuoq wrote: post #150

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.

"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 H…

Yes; if anything, hiding the username might be just as useful.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#185

Post by unalone » Sat, Sep 26, 2009, 2:42 PM UTC

icey wrote: post #176

unalone wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That implies you trust the community more than you trust your own judgment. If somebody refutes you elegantly, then you should look into their refutation regardless of whether or not the refutation has many points.

I'm in a similar boat to Confusion on this one. I don't care about elegance; if I make a comment and then someone shows up with 2 sentences that basically say "You're an idiot. Obviously the answer is X." then context is important. Without knowing what the score is, I'll probably disregard the comment because I obviously disagree. However, if my comment has 1 point and the responder's has 50 points, then I know there…

Perhaps I'm in the minority; I'd downvote that even if it was right because that's a shitty attitude for somebody to take.

Meanwhile, I think if somebody replies to you with something like that, it's worth investigating regardless of if they're the top answer or not. I'll draw a parallel to Reddit's "What's your favorite album?" threads. If you were to go by comment points alone, you'd think Radiohead's OK Computer was the best album of all time and that NIN took the four spots under that; meanwhile, albums out of the hive mind don't get as many upvotes, even if the commenter is more passionately in love with them.

Similarly, just because a lot of people think one thing on HN doesn't mean that one thing is the best answer. Looking up multiple solutions may take more time, but that leads to learning and growth, which I think should be the point of any community.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#186

Post by unalone » Sat, Sep 26, 2009, 2:45 PM UTC

dcurtis wrote: post #183

unalone wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like price, comment score is the best indicator of context, class, and quality. Fuck that. Are you saying that you're too lazy to read what people are saying and form your own opinions? That groupthink is just going to naturally turn out better than forcing every member to think about what they're reading? For the longest time, HN has become more and more "accessible", at the cost of a lot of intellectual discussion.…

Fuck that. Don't you think that reaction is a little bit extreme? Unlike you, apparently, I don't have time to read all 800 comments on all the threads on this site.

If I'd just said Fuck that, absolutely! As it is, I went on to add a whole ton of details.

Unlike you, apparently, I don't have time to read all 800 comments on all the threads on this site.

Really? When you're spending 30 days flying around on a plane and sleeping in airports, I'd imagine you're the one with more time to waste.

The top comments on HN are still the highest-voted ones. Read however many you want before the discussion tires you. Also, I can't think of many HN threads that ended up with more than 300 comments. 300 is at most an hour's reading; an hour isn't very long.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#187

Post by camccann » Sat, Sep 26, 2009, 2:48 PM UTC

unalone wrote: post #173

camccann wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that negative-scored comments still start to gray out, so you'll be able to upvote something you think has been unjustly penalized. What you won't be able to do is aim things toward a desired positive score, such as downvoting a one-liner joke with 100+ points that you wouldn't downvote if it were at 20 points or less.

It'll be curious to see, then, if those one-liners get even more massively upvoted, or if the reaction towards them becomes something negative.

My guess would be: More groupthink, less bandwagon.

That is, comments that (intentionally or not) pander to the audience will get more upvotes, but good comments that happen to get several early upvotes won't get the same pile-on effect. That's just a WAG, though.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#188

Post by mechanical_fish » Sat, Sep 26, 2009, 2:50 PM UTC

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?

Apropos of nothing, let me not one side effect of this recent change to HN: I'm really having a much harder time resisting the urge to downvote ideas just because they're really bad.

Instead, let me just say that this common notion -- that because good content is the ultimate signal of quality, we should read all the content before making a choice -- is like saying that, because the way your spouse gets along with children is vitally important to your future happiness, you should try having a child with all the eligible spouses you can find before you choose one.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#189

Post by unalone » Sat, Sep 26, 2009, 2:53 PM UTC

camccann wrote: post #187

unalone wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll be curious to see, then, if those one-liners get even more massively upvoted, or if the reaction towards them becomes something negative.

My guess would be: More groupthink, less bandwagon. That is, comments that (intentionally or not) pander to the audience will get more upvotes, but good comments that happen to get several early upvotes won't get the same pile-on effect. That's just a WAG, though.

One thing I do notice: I'm already much less frustrated at comments I'm reading here. If somebody says something I disagree with, I can't see if half the site has voted them up, to me it's just a typical comment that I can either ignore or respond to.

Similarly, now dcurtis and I are arguing upthread, and I'm not anxiously wondering if he's been voted up more than me. We're just in a normal argument where neither of us will be proved by the community to be "more" right than the other. That's good.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#190

Post by ivankirigin » Sat, Sep 26, 2009, 2:55 PM UTC

siong1987 wrote: post #112

ivankirigin wrote: post #45

I think you can remove the word "by"

"10 points by ivankirigin" is actually quite misleading. It looks like "ivankirign" gave the comment 10 points. We are having the same problem on how to show it correctly on GraffitiGeo. We ended up using "by ivinkirigin, points: 10", which in my opinion is still not perfect. Any idea on this?

10 ivankirigin 4 hours ago

If the numbers are changing you get accustomed to it quickly.

By the way, my original comment has an absurdly high karma count. I think that is a direct result of hiding the count.