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Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

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Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#211

Post by thaumaturgy »

booruguru wrote: post #172

This is ridiculous. It's bad enough that people are downvoted for contrarian opinions, but now our comments need to be vetted by the elite HN users before they can be shown to the rest. I don't get it. This site looks like something made in 1996 (with absolutely no regard for readability), but the big new upgrade we're getting is a draconian (and wholly unnecessary) comment moderation feature/policy? A lot of HN user…

Well, I wouldn't endorse it. But, since some of your points are often raised...

> It's bad enough that people are downvoted for contrarian opinions

That particular disease doesn't seem to have taken hold here yet. Comments that are downvoted below 1 more often are angry, abusive, trollish, or devoid of content.

> ...but now our comments need to be vetted by the elite HN users...

An "elite" group of, by a rough estimate, 50% of the site's users. A lot of users, anyway.

> This site looks like something made in 1996 (with absolutely no regard for readability)...

This mistakes graphic design for community value. Reddit was also (and still also, by most measures) one of the ugliest sites online.

> ...but the big new upgrade we're getting is a draconian (and wholly unnecessary)...

I think the most common complaint on HN, especially among its longtime users, has been the diminishing quality of comment threads. So this is an update that's dealing with the #1 problem on HN.

> A lot of HN users bitch about Reddit, but they would never implement something this ridiculous since it would kill their community.

On the contrary, some of the Reddit communities with the most recognition for high quality discussions are the ones with the heaviest moderation. /r/askhistorians is consistently great; /r/askscience is another good one.

Some people finally seem to be coming around to the realization that you don't have to hear everybody's opinion on everything to have a worthwhile community.

> Ironically, this comment is precisely the kind of thing that may never receive an "endorsement."

Well, and no offense intended, but hopefully not, since your comment is a good example of the problem this is trying to solve. It's unnecessarily angry.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#213

Post by baddox »

derefr wrote: post #191
baddox wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To kill conversations which are deemed useful by all participants and have no negative impact other than the negligible cost of hosting them?

There's something like a "scrolling cost" -- people are only willing to skim so much of a comments thread, without seeing something interesting to them, before closing it. This is why HN dislikes humorous fluff-posts: they both easily rise to the top, and encourage humorous fluff-replies, which means the first few screenfuls of comments will be guaranteed to induce the kind of "scroll-pain" that makes people close th…

Fair enough. I would much prefer fixing the long comment thread problem with 5 lines of JavaScript than implementing this bizarre system.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#214

Post by jiggy2011 »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #111
cperciva wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether that makes sense depends on the context. Particularly in the case of someone submitting a link to their own (startup|open source code|blog post|etc), people often ask questions along the lines of "what does the author think about X" and the identity of the person replying matters a great deal to whether a reply is meaningful.

It should be obvious whether such an answer sounds authoritative or not, and it sounds like a comment could still be downvoted once endorsed. So I don't think this is as big of a problem as users endorsing (or not endorsing) based on username.

There's also certain commentators who are more authoritative on certain topics, because they are known to have positions at certain companies etc.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#215

Post by Wistar »

eogas wrote: post #97

This seems like a rather hostile change to an already hostile community. HN has never felt like a welcoming place to me, and I don't think this will help. Maybe PG prefers the community to be small, so he's trying to trim it down? Because I'm fairly certain this will drive users away, and not just the ones he wants to keep out. Please noble 1000+ers, free my humble comment from the depths of the low-karma peasants. F…

Exactly my thoughts. I know if my first comments had been voted off the island I would have swam away.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#216

Post by analog31 »

An interesting, and perhaps time saving option would be an "endorse entire thread" or "endorse entire sub thread" button, for threads that are interesting but really so tame that the likelihood of bad posts is small.

Also, it would be interesting to know what problem this solves, and how you will know if it works.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#217

Post by MBCook »

booruguru wrote: post #172

This is ridiculous. It's bad enough that people are downvoted for contrarian opinions, but now our comments need to be vetted by the elite HN users before they can be shown to the rest. I don't get it. This site looks like something made in 1996 (with absolutely no regard for readability), but the big new upgrade we're getting is a draconian (and wholly unnecessary) comment moderation feature/policy? A lot of HN user…

I wonder if this'll be a good idea to, but I'm willing to give it a try. My biggest worry would be that it slowed-down discussions too much.

> I don't get it. This site looks like something made in 1996 (with absolutely no regard for readability), but the big new upgrade we're getting is a draconian (and wholly unnecessary) comment moderation feature/policy?

I like the look of HN, it has all I need and nothing else, plus it loads fast. The only thing I'd like is a way to collapse comments (Reddit style) so I can easily get past a long chain in a discussion. I'm curious why you think it's hard to read.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#218

Post by hamburglar »

pg wrote: post #77
DangerousPie wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about purging pending comments after a certain time (say 24 hours)? If they haven't been endorsed by that time, they will most likely never be endorsed. And even if they would be, nobody would read them anymore.

That is exactly what happens.

Will the comment actually disappear completely, or will it just go into a state where nobody else can see it? It seems like it is 1) useful to be able to see your comments that never got endorsed (to let people build a mental model of what makes the cut and what doesn't), and 2) less confusing than just having stuff mysteriously disappear.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#219

Post by malisper »

Just throwing out an idea, but why not allow the user who posts the article to select whether or not they want to use pending comments? This way one user doing a simple Ask HN can get immediate feedback while another posting a controversial article can have an intelligent conversation.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#220

Post by shakethemonkey »

booruguru wrote: post #172

This is ridiculous. It's bad enough that people are downvoted for contrarian opinions, but now our comments need to be vetted by the elite HN users before they can be shown to the rest. I don't get it. This site looks like something made in 1996 (with absolutely no regard for readability), but the big new upgrade we're getting is a draconian (and wholly unnecessary) comment moderation feature/policy? A lot of HN user…

This is helpfully "fixing" something that isn't particularly broken.
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