Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Experiment: No Comment Scores

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 327 posts

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#301

Post by buugs »

pg wrote: post #300
johnnybgoode wrote: post #276

I'm seeing dots for some comments instead of the score. It looks like gray dots for comments with a high score and red dots for comments with a very high score. Doesn't this defeat the purpose of the change to some extent? Edit: Sorry, it looks like this was explained after I had loaded this page. Still, this seems like a partial reversal. Also, this story is at #16 on the front page and really should be at #1 consid…

I've been experimenting with various ways of indicating high scoring comments. At the moment I use an orange dot after the time. At one point I tried giving all comments initial dots, and turned them red when the comment had a high score.

I think the red was much less distracting than the orange, although it may be that it is after the time that is causing that (rather than next to the arrows).

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#302

Post by jacquesm »

plinkplonk wrote: post #69
jubbam wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious... why author? Why not just content?

"Just curious... why author? Why not just content?" Oh i was just referring to the "vote pg up anyway" trend. If the author is someone you know (and I've made many friends from YC) there is a minor incentive to upvote a comment even if it doesn't read well because you know the person and can guess at what he was trying to say. So instead of judge(content), the subroutine becomes judge(content, person). It sort of fee…

I'm not so sure about that. I think content should stand on its own, regardless of who wrote it.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#303

Post by pyre »

unalone wrote: post #233
scott_s wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

The problem is that in-person you can use body language and tone of voice to moderate the effects of using something like, "Fuck that!" but when you're expressing yourself completely in text you are at the whim of the reader's interpretation of your words.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#304

Post by jwecker »

jparise wrote: post #293
cvg wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps this is just me, but doesn't red seem counter-intuitive for a positive score? I think we're conditioned to think red is bad and green is good. Could this dot be changed to green? Also, could you put an alt or label on that dot with something like "over 5 votes" or some other descriptive text? A bit more accessible.

I'd stay away from red and green and go with orange, to match the header color. These dots shouldn't map to any specific connotation; they're just visual indicators.

It's not every day you get a genuine "what color to paint the bike-shed" discussion :)

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#305

Post by huhtenberg »

pg wrote: post #256
njl wrote: post #244

This change might improve voting, but it decreases the value of that voting. I'll stipulate that the voting might be more "fair", if that is a goal. I'm not sure it should be. It might make the "game" of getting high karma more fair, but I'm not bothering with or bothered by that game anyway. On the other hand, I can no longer use the results of this voting to help me skim a conversation. I want to know what everyone…

Ok, comments over a threshold (currently 5) now have a red dot prepended to them. Is that better?

> Is that better?

No, it's about the same.

It's not a problem with hiding/showing scores/hints, it is a fundamental problem with the voting model. As it stands, the process of voting is meant to re-balance the discussion tree to make it more interesting to an average reader.

IMO what makes more sense is to use votes to determine the preferences of an individual specific reader. If I keep voting up posts by a user X, then in all likelihood I will be more interesting in X's posts in the future. The same goes for downvotes. Additionally if X votes up Y's posts, then I may also be interested in Y's posts as well.

Lastly, the up/down voting score for a specific post is going to be equivalent to the score under existing model, and that can be used to sort posts for anonymous or uninitiated users.

PS. This is not a trivial change and it is a lot of work. I realize that.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#306

Post by shimon »

huhtenberg wrote: post #305
pg wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, comments over a threshold (currently 5) now have a red dot prepended to them. Is that better?

> Is that better? No, it's about the same. It's not a problem with hiding/showing scores/hints, it is a fundamental problem with the voting model. As it stands, the process of voting is meant to re-balance the discussion tree to make it more interesting to an average reader. IMO what makes more sense is to use votes to determine the preferences of an individual specific reader. If I keep voting up posts by a user X,…

Reinforcing the average makes good sense if your goal is to keep the community aligned, rather than simply please the widest array of readers.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#307

Post by andrewljohnson »

jwecker wrote: post #304
jparise wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd stay away from red and green and go with orange, to match the header color. These dots shouldn't map to any specific connotation; they're just visual indicators.

It's not every day you get a genuine "what color to paint the bike-shed" discussion :)

It's more common than you might think. It comes up every time you design a website, brochure, and many other products created everyday.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#308

Post by indiejade »

pg wrote: post #256
njl wrote: post #244

This change might improve voting, but it decreases the value of that voting. I'll stipulate that the voting might be more "fair", if that is a goal. I'm not sure it should be. It might make the "game" of getting high karma more fair, but I'm not bothering with or bothered by that game anyway. On the other hand, I can no longer use the results of this voting to help me skim a conversation. I want to know what everyone…

Ok, comments over a threshold (currently 5) now have a red dot prepended to them. Is that better?

The dot actually kind of hurts the eyes. . . among all that gray, those little dots are almost distracting. Something a little less loud perhaps that could blend into the overall visual scheme? Smaller dot; gray or silver?

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#309

Post by bcl »

indiejade wrote: post #308
pg wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, comments over a threshold (currently 5) now have a red dot prepended to them. Is that better?

The dot actually kind of hurts the eyes. . . among all that gray, those little dots are almost distracting. Something a little less loud perhaps that could blend into the overall visual scheme? Smaller dot; gray or silver?

How about none?

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#310

Post by yannis »

pg wrote: post #256
njl wrote: post #244

This change might improve voting, but it decreases the value of that voting. I'll stipulate that the voting might be more "fair", if that is a goal. I'm not sure it should be. It might make the "game" of getting high karma more fair, but I'm not bothering with or bothered by that game anyway. On the other hand, I can no longer use the results of this voting to help me skim a conversation. I want to know what everyone…

Ok, comments over a threshold (currently 5) now have a red dot prepended to them. Is that better?

Is that better? No and please let us not get two dots for tens lest we start re-discovering variants of Chinese counting rods.
Post reply on HN