Experiment: No Comment Scores • Hacker News Board

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#311

Post by joez » Sun, Sep 27, 2009, 3:42 AM UTC

It seems that the dots were implemented rather quickly after removing scores due to user feedback.

I am wondering was there actually conclusive data (other than negative feedback, which might have been enough?) during when the score was removed and before the dot was implemented. As in, without a way to see the high scoring comments, did the quality of child comments go down? And if so what? Voting behavior changed?

Or was it an issue of being able to easily see popular comments? (And if it was the later, then maybe there are other solutions of visualizing highly ranked comments although likely more complicated, like a sort)

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#312

Post by nkurz » Sun, Sep 27, 2009, 3:46 AM UTC

No, unfortunately it's really bad. I appreciate it as an example of how far afield you are willing to search for a solution, but it's visually distracting and difficult to interpret.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#313

Post by kingnothing » Sun, Sep 27, 2009, 3:49 AM UTC

I think you're implicitly part of the community once you sign up.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#314

Post by wvenable » Sun, Sep 27, 2009, 3:57 AM UTC

I'm surprised nobody suggested adding a mouse over to the orange dots. The first thing I did was mouse-over to look for a tooltip to explain the dot and got nothing.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#315

Post by jhancock » Sun, Sep 27, 2009, 3:59 AM UTC

Tossing the vote count is an interesting experiment. The orange dot, hard to say. It was confusing to me and I'm not really sure it adds value. It may skew data out of the experiment of eliminating vote count.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#316

Post by tptacek » Sun, Sep 27, 2009, 4:13 AM UTC

Leave the numbers all visible, or only show me the number on my own comment, but otherwise, stop messing around. This is distracting. I know there's a mob-voting mentality, but I actually read the comments, not the votes. Stop clubbing me over the head about the votes.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#317

Post by prakash » Sun, Sep 27, 2009, 4:41 AM UTC

It's distracting. Can't the experiment not have any threshold indicators, run it like that for a couple of weeks, get some idea about how the comments are, and then add/subtract features?

People can check Lists, for interesting stories/comments. http://news.ycombinator.com/lists

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#318

Post by dkokelley » Sun, Sep 27, 2009, 5:20 AM UTC

The purpose of upvotes here is what? Is it to decide where in a thread which comments will go? If that's the case, I see no reason for any visual cue as to number of upvotes. Their position means I will see them first. (Comments about weighted averages of comment threads used to determine position also work well.) If it's a tool to reward people for their insightfulness, why not let them show it off? Perhaps the problem is that the comment system is designed to do both, and one function is conflicting with the other.

Personally, I like seeing my karma go up when I submit useful comments or stories, so they work as a reward for me (and possibly everyone else here). However, I think the more important function of up/downvotes is bringing the 'best' discussions to the top and burying the garbage.

My dictatorial solution would be to hide comment count (and all visual indicators other than thread position), from everyone but the user they belong to. I would still get my 'reward', the mob-voting influence would be diminished, and comment quality would go up.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#319

Post by jurjenh » Sun, Sep 27, 2009, 5:31 AM UTC

To clarify my "how hard" sentiment - I had in mind that the normal sort function becomes a "function selector" that grabs the user's chosen sort function from their profile, then applies that to the comments.

The difficulty in all this would be policing the kind of code that can be written - perhaps a small DSL that compiles into arc code, or possibly direct arc code that gets vetted by a/some moderators.

The actual sort function seems to be (from arc3.tar, but may well have been changed here... nothing is safe from a REPL!) EDIT: indeed! see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=845932

  (def display-subcomments (c user whence (o indent 0))
    (each k (sort (compare > frontpage-rank:item) c!kids)
      (display-comment-tree (item k) user whence indent)))

so that in itself should not be too hard to modify, and provided it is not that much more complex, I can't see it putting that much more strain on the server. The sort function gets called for each page view, the user's profile (username / logout / threads) gets accessed for each view, so the only thing that needs to be resolved is the specific sort function.

The conversation threading could indeed become a bit fragmented, but then again, each time you look at a story on HN the comments will be in a different order due to the weighting and voting.

Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores

#320

Post by xenophanes » Sun, Sep 27, 2009, 6:02 AM UTC

But he choose to highlight the profanity, not the remarks you point out. He told us which remark offended him, and it was an impersonal one.