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Experiment: No Comment Scores

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191–200 of 327 posts

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#191

Post by dcurtis »

unalone wrote: post #186
dcurtis wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 befo…

Who are you? Why does it seem like you're angry all the time?

I pointed out an observation. Your response used the word fuck and then called me lazy, which is extremely rude. Would you have said that to my face? This isn't personal, dude. I just get the same feeling now when scanning comments that I get when I am looking at products on Amazon and can't see the price.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#192

Post by huhtenberg »

unalone wrote: post #178
johns wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet that would lead a lot of people to start using signatures. No thanks.

Perhaps we could assign IDs to posters? The first commenter in a thread is A, the second commenter is B, so that each new thread gives users a new identity. The problem with that is that anonymity leads to trolling.

Troll posts will be modded down and deleted. That's not really a problem.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#193

Post by japherwocky »

pg wrote: post #56
joshuaxls wrote: post #7

Any chance we can see scores when we're looking at our own comments section? Often when I notice a bump in my karma I look at my comment threads to see what was so popular.

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

+1

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#194

Post by icey »

unalone wrote: post #185
icey wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

I don't know what kind of time you have available in an average day, but I can tell you that I don't have the time to go research what every yahoo with an opinion has. I don't mind being wrong, but if I say something, I am saying it because I think I'm right. Just because someone disagrees with me doesn't make me think I should go spend the time trying to prove their position.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#195

Post by unalone »

dcurtis wrote: post #191
unalone wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 befo…

Who are you? Why does it seem like you're angry all the time? I pointed out an observation. Your response used the word fuck and then called me lazy, which is extremely rude. Would you have said that to my face? This isn't personal, dude. I just get the same feeling now when scanning comments that I get when I am looking at products on Amazon and can't see the price.

I'm an art student who is very rarely angry and doesn't think swearing indicates emotion. I also believe that it's better to have to spend time thinking about what to read, how to spend your time, than it is to be offered an easy way out that risks devaluing what people are saying. (I further believe that being called lazy usually isn't an insult.)

In person, I'd probably be doubly critical. Don't think of it as rude; I think criticizing what somebody's saying is a sign of respecting them. To quote a guy I'm in the middle of reading: "The more we love our friends, the less we flatter them; it is by excusing nothing that pure love shows itself."

If I were being rude, I'd ignore your comment and not call out what I thought was stupid/wrong about it. As it is, I'm debating what you said because I think there's a discussion to be had. For instance: Why would you feel the same reading comments as you would buying things? There's no harm to reading a few extra comments. You lose nothing but your time, which you're already spending on Hacker News.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#196

Post by edw519 »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #77

Odd sort of "improvement" Hacker News -- now with less information? I would imagine that the more readers become engaged with the site the more information about the site they would want to consume, no?

Hacker News -- now with less information?

I'd say, "Hacker News -- now with less data"

Less data could = less information.

Less data could also = more information.

We've all dealt with users who become more empowered to do their jobs once we "adjust their view". Now we're the guinea pigs.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#197

Post by Perceval »

zck wrote: post #184
pascal_cuoq wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

I'm a big fan of forced anonymity in online forums. I wrote a very long article about it (which was previously covered on HN) here: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2009/3/12/33338/3000

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#198

Post by unalone »

icey wrote: post #194
unalone wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

I don't know what kind of time you have available in an average day, but I can tell you that I don't have the time to go research what every yahoo with an opinion has. I don't mind being wrong, but if I say something, I am saying it because I think I'm right. Just because someone disagrees with me doesn't make me think I should go spend the time trying to prove their position.

You're awake for sixteen hours a day and you can't spend five minutes looking up what somebody's talking about? Research nowadays doesn't take a long time.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#199

Post by Perceval »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #163
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel your pain. I don't think I like the new system that much. At least so far. 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 commen…

This is precisely the problem. Without some idea of what earlier readers think of the comments it is much harder to skim. The top-level comments presumably rise and sink based roughly on their karma (though the algorithm also seems to have other considerations, like momentum). But what of the second-tier comments and below? Ripostes are often where the action is. I might find that I'm reduced to skimming for names th…

I may be off base here, but perhaps HN isn't being designed to make skimming easy. Having only a light or superficial engagement with the content, and then voting on that content, is probably what the site is supposed to be avoiding.

PG wrote an essay which discussed the 'fluff principle' at work in other voting-based aggregator communities, in which the most superficially sensational content usually rose to the top, beating out longer-form but more intellectually substantial content: http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html

I think this move by PG is aimed at reducing the herd mentality of voting, and reducing the ability of readers to engage in voting without having engaged the content first.

However, I think your scheme of highlighting comments by quintile is probably a good one. It gets us away from thinking about raw scores, but also serves to reward and reinforce good commenting contributions/behavior by setting an example for others to follow. In order to stave off the herd mentality of 'piling on' upvotes or downvotes, perhaps votes made subsequent to highlighting (or greying out in the case of negative comments) should have half the weight.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#200

Post by chaosmachine »

adamhowell wrote: post #64

I think only showing votes for comments and links once you've voted would be a better solution. It's what I'm trying with a side-project of mine.

I was going to suggest the same thing. Most polls do not show you the results before you vote, this could work the same way.
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