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A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors

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Re: A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors

#21

Post by dang »

Crinus wrote: post #10

> Downvoted comments (i.e. with a score This desaturation is the most annoying misfeature of Hacker News IMO, it makes reading comments very hard and negates the "bandwagoning prevention" that not showing a visible score has (which is a good idea). I'd rather judge for myself a comment's worth than have it faded out for me. (yes there are workarounds, like using Stylus to override the CSS, but my comment is against t…

I don't disagree, but other factors are dispositive. There need to be visual signals that the community doesn't support a post. Fading downvoted comments and displaying [flagged] provide such signals. Internally, this is important because it gives the community feedback about what kind of posts are wanted here. Feedback is the best way to regulate a complex system. Externally, it provides a check against people passing around links to dreck that showed up on HN and claiming that it represents the community. (For example, people sometimes do this on a popular twittering site that shall remain nameless.) With these visual signals, visitors to such links can see when the community immune system has rejected the comment.

Do these mechanisms get mis-applied to some comments that are unpopular but don't break the site guidelines? Yes they do. We do a pretty good job of undoing that in the case of flagging, but there are still some comments that end up getting downvoted and faded undeservedly. I don't know what to do about that, other than urge HN users to give such comments corrective a.k.a. compensatory upvotes. I don't believe that it would be good to reduce the power of downvotes, e.g. by not fading the comments. The bottom of the internet barrel gets ugly. We need those white blood cells.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314

Re: A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors

#22

Post by dang »

Crinus wrote: post #13
ComodoHacker wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd rather judge for myself a comment's worth than have it faded out for me. It's not for you, it's a feedback for the commenter. And making your comment unpleasant for others adds an emotional component into the feedback, which is quite effective.

But it also affects "me" and anyone who tries to follow a discussion by making the text harder to read. The commenter already has a feedback on the visible-to-them score. Why not make negative scores visible to everyone instead (even make the score red or whatever to point out this is a negative comment)? After all at the moment you introduce this visual change you do not care about the bandwagoning aspect anymore.

You can always read the comment by clicking on its timestamp to go to its page. The comment shouldn't be faded when you do that.

Re: A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors

#23

Post by dang »

kgwxd wrote: post #11

"One popular "trick" for obfuscating voting manipulation on Hacker News is to link to the Hacker News's /newest page of new submissions (instead of a direct link which would otherwise make voting manipulation obvious), and asking friends to upvote the submission from that page. This trick doesn't actually work." I use /newest to find and upvote new stuff all the time, are my votes being silently ignored?

No. I looked at your upvotes from /newest and they have a very high rate of being counted.

Thanks for upvoting from /newest!

Re: A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors

#24

Post by marktangotango »

dang wrote: post #21
Crinus wrote: post #10

> Downvoted comments (i.e. with a score This desaturation is the most annoying misfeature of Hacker News IMO, it makes reading comments very hard and negates the "bandwagoning prevention" that not showing a visible score has (which is a good idea). I'd rather judge for myself a comment's worth than have it faded out for me. (yes there are workarounds, like using Stylus to override the CSS, but my comment is against t…

I don't disagree, but other factors are dispositive. There need to be visual signals that the community doesn't support a post. Fading downvoted comments and displaying [flagged] provide such signals. Internally, this is important because it gives the community feedback about what kind of posts are wanted here. Feedback is the best way to regulate a complex system. Externally, it provides a check against people passi…

compensatory upvotes

I’ve been doing this, but didn’t have a name for it. Often times I’ll see reasonable comments greyed and give it an up vote. I think others are doing this to because just as often the comment will be black after some time. I suppose it’s easy for subjects in which I don’t have a side.

Re: A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors

#25

Post by DoreenMichele »

marktangotango wrote: post #24
dang wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree, but other factors are dispositive. There need to be visual signals that the community doesn't support a post. Fading downvoted comments and displaying [flagged] provide such signals. Internally, this is important because it gives the community feedback about what kind of posts are wanted here. Feedback is the best way to regulate a complex system. Externally, it provides a check against people passi…

compensatory upvotes I’ve been doing this, but didn’t have a name for it. Often times I’ll see reasonable comments greyed and give it an up vote. I think others are doing this to because just as often the comment will be black after some time. I suppose it’s easy for subjects in which I don’t have a side.

Some people call them corrective upvotes.

Re: A List of Hacker News's Undocumented Features and Behaviors

#27

Post by [deleted] »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #25
marktangotango wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

compensatory upvotes I’ve been doing this, but didn’t have a name for it. Often times I’ll see reasonable comments greyed and give it an up vote. I think others are doing this to because just as often the comment will be black after some time. I suppose it’s easy for subjects in which I don’t have a side.

Some people call them corrective upvotes.

[deleted]
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