Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments • Hacker News Board

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#581

Post by orthecreedence » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 4:05 AM UTC

booruguru wrote: post #560

thaumaturgy wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Y'all really need to get over yourselves and your belief that, "my dribble deserves to be heard, no matter how inane it is." I don't have delicate sensibilities, I just don't care for you pissing in the metaphorical swimming pool, and unfortunately, people like you have made this moderation policy worth trying out. This'll be my last reply to ya.

Inane dribble? I thought I was the angry one?

HOW DARE YOU BRING UP VALID POINTS. WE NEED A PENDING COMMENTS SYSTEM SO I COULD NOT APPROVE THIS COMMENT!

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#582

Post by eevee » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 4:05 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #28

cperciva wrote: post #19

Someone who has a pending comment will have to wait till it goes live to post another. We're hoping that good comments will get endorsed so quickly that there won't be a noticeable delay. Is there some timeout? If not, commenting on a several-day-old thread will guarantee that you can never post another comment, since once threads drop off the front page it's not likely that many 1000+ karma users will even see those…

Hmm, trust cperciva to find the thing I'd overlooked. I'll add a pending page that collects pending comments. Maybe that will solve the problem.

I'll admit I'm slightly alarmed that "you can't ever post another comment until other people do X" didn't set off some klaxons for you.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#583

Post by spitfire » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 4:06 AM UTC

The concern to me is this might cause a chilling effect on people's comments.

This sort silence by default will stop a lot of good contributors from taking their first few steps to joining the conversation.

It may make people who might take opposite views to the general consensus think twice about posting, even if they might have more information than most on the subject.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#584

Post by tptacek » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 4:07 AM UTC

tedsanders wrote: post #395

pg wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. It should be possible to endorse something without agreeing with it.

Isn't that already the (desired) standard for upvotes, though? To promote high quality content, regardless of whether we agree with it nor not? I'm still not quite sure of the intended difference between them.

No, that's not the HN standard. HN overtly endorses downvoting disagreements (I don't like that, but it is what it is).

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#585

Post by doesnt_know » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 4:07 AM UTC

Sounds good in theory, the best communities are almost always those that are strictly moderated or have their rules heavily enforced.

It will probably make HN worse though. HN already suffers from being too much of a "rich, startup boys club". This will only get worse as those that have been around longer and made comments that "fit" within that viewpoint get karma and get to decide what comments are shown.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#586

Post by e12e » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 4:08 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #291

rabino wrote: post #186

> Someone who has a pending comment will have to wait till it goes live to post another. This is kinda crazy. You can't expect 100% of our comments to be brilliant. There needs to be some timeout or something, if not, people will start creating new accounts every day.

Comments don't have to be brilliant. All they have to be is not stupid or mean.

Wait, does this mean that the motivation for filtering all comments is to combat comments that should already be flagged?

I'm getting a stronger and stronger feeling that there is plenty of room for focusing the stated goal of this change, and then perhaps redesign the solution.

Please see references at my other comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7447122

(quoted to avoid readers having to click through):

[the following] seem relevant to this discussion:

Randy Farmer (I think this is what I remember) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn7e0J9m6rE

Bryce Glass (similar topic/similar takeaways) http://www.slideshare.net/soldierant/designing-your-reputati...

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#587

Post by cpwright » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 4:09 AM UTC

mbreese wrote: post #475

cclogg wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I like this idea quite a bit. I don't know how many users there are with >1000 karma, but will they be motivated to keep endorsing everyone else's pending posts? Sometimes good discussions do happen on quieter threads, or way down the list that the 1000+ users might not see. Well, I guess it really comes down to just how much (proper) endorsing ends up happening. One thing I like about HN is that it's open an…

Well, hopefully new users can hit the 1000+ mark quick enough to not have it affect them too much. But, I wonder how the lack of visible scores on comments has affected the overall comment scoring rate. For the average new user today, how long do they have to wait to get to 1000 karma? How long was it a few years ago? These would be interesting questions to answer.

I'm not sure it is a worthwhile endeavor to hope that new users hit 1000 karma. I think the discourse would be better served by having a wide variety of people saying something worthwhile occasionally rather than trying to say something popular more often to play a karma game.

The best idea I've heard so far is a timeout, such that even if no one endorses your comment is to let you comment again anyway after a day.

I'm still not sure what the benefit of adding endorsements is compared to using a generic upvote as the endorsement.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#588

Post by obituary_latte » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 4:10 AM UTC

mintone wrote: post #492

beloch wrote: post #274

My may concern with this system: Sledgehammer meets tack. The comments on HN aren't perfect, but they're far from bad when compared to other sites of this nature. There has been a downwards trend most probably due to the increasing popularity of HN. A response is warranted. However, this system has the potential to silence a lot of high quality comments on any threads that aren't on the front-page for an extended per…

I'm not sure that I qualify to contribute a reply (and that may be a problem here) - I've read HN for 4+ years and have only started actively contributing very recently on this account - I have neither karma nor history of posting in my favour. One of the most powerful things about HN is that it is currently not like reddit - we don't end up with 400+ comments that sit at the bottom of the page gathering dust and dow…

Interesting proposals all around.

Perhaps the best idea might not involve trying to determine the best path to take. At least we're asking, right?

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#589

Post by jayvanguard » Sat, Mar 22, 2014, 4:11 AM UTC

booruguru wrote: post #529

thaumaturgy wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 estima…

> 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. Do you seriously not understand the point that I was making? You're basically saying that my comment is unworthy of an audience...not because it was nonsensical or rude or offtopic or abusive...but merely because I wrote in an angry tone. My tone offended your deli…