It's a really good idea, but it kinda feels awkward.
Experiment: No Comment Scores
231–240 of 327 posts
Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores
#232And they said K5 was dead...
Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Most people use swearing to indicate emotion. If you go against this convention, then you will often be misunderstood.
That's why I try to be careful how I swear. I thought that "fuck that" was casual enough to come across as being neutrally dismissive. Guess not; apologies to all!
Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores
#234One Idea I've had for fixing this problem is to weight the value of a click based on position on the page. The further down on the page, the more weight its gets. Therefore the most popular topic at the top only get marginally incremented as people read it first and decide its worthy. On the same note, if an article is waaaay down at the bottom, and someone's taken the time to read it and likes it, then it should get…
That is a good idea. I will see if I can figure out an easy way to do that. It may be enough just to make the time decay on comment scores faster.
Glad to hear you like the idea. My method for reading through HN and others is to scan through items with a certain threshold. Once I get below the "fold" of the page, I start to lower the level so I can compensate for the "decay factor" you mention.
There's tons of good gems at the bottom of the page, and they need to compete at the same level as those at the top.
You could tweek the "weighting equation" and try linear, quadratic, or exponential type formulas.
You could also apply this technique to articles, so those at the top don't get overly hyped and those at the bottom have a fair chance to making some movement to the top.
Also, one thought in terms of the scoring value is to have it with a few digits of decimal precision. So you could still see how competing articles are doing at the very top and see your vote make a difference (be it very small).
Example two competing top articles:
Article Exhibit A: (score 47.25) Article Exhibit B: (score 46.33)
Now when I click to bump exhibit "B" it moves to say 46.38 a boost of "0.05"
Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Five minutes multiplied by several people is a long time in a day. You obviously participate in HN a lot. Don't fault the rest of us for only wanting to do it part time.
It's not a matter of doing it "part-time". The original example given was that if somebody said "this way is better" and they had lots of upvotes, then it would be worth looking into. Thing is, that's a rare case in a conversation. Most talks here are opinionated, and opinions don't require research. In the off-chance that there is a comment that has, say, five responses suggesting alternative methods, then that's obviously a subject that warrants research on the part of the original commenter, if he cares at all about the subject.
Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores
#236Earlier 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.…
I'm the guy who said "Look at your comment score; looks like I'm right." The details are off a bit, though; it was "judging by your comment score, the parent speaks for the majority." I didn't participate in the discussion before that, so "I'm right" would have been a nonsequitor. More importantly, though, the discussion itself was about the poster's demeanor . In all other situations, downvoting isn't an accurate me…
Ah, that makes more sense. Thanks for clarifying!
Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
That explains why you have so much time to read all the comments. I don't have time to read all the comments so I'll look at the greatest hits. You can find the conversation based on the kharma scores, both positive and negative. If someone says something -4, it might be worth reading because it got such a reaction out of people. But a bunch of 1s and 2s on an old thread are noise that aren't worth reading.
I generally pick one or two most interesting topics from the front page, and read most of the comments on them. It seems better to read a few things in depth than reading sound bites on everything.
This also frees me of any need to complain about offtopic stuff, as long as a few on-topic posts remain.
Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can still see the votes on your comments by looking at your comments history.
And that's awkward - maybe even unusable. It takes you out of the context of the discussion.
I just open it in another window to take a quick look at then close that window when done.
Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
A simple number next to a post doesn't necessarily tell you much about whether or not you want to read it.
Sure it does. This is a community of individuals who share common interests. If the community values a particular comment, there's a high probability that I'm going to find value in it as well because of those shared interests.
You don't have to be part of the community to sign up for an account and start voting stuff up.
Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores
#240I love this idea, but it should really be initially implemented as a kind of A/B test.
Simply choose half of the UIDs at random and always show them the comment score, and don't show it to the other half. Track which comments are upvoted most when their score is visible versus when not (there are many other metrics to use as well). It should be pretty easy to determine how much groupthink plays into voting.
I suspect that most people only read (and therefore only vote on) already popular comments, so I suspect groupthink is fairly high here.