Why not hide the usernames as well then and let the comments be judged purely based on their content ?
I bet that would lead a lot of people to start using signatures. No thanks.
Experiment: No Comment Scores
81–90 of 327 posts
Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Knowing who wrote a comment often provides very useful context (especially when there is back-and-forth discussion going on).
pvg said -> "It would be a little difficult to have an exchange with someone if you can't tell who is who." cperciva said "Knowing who wrote a comment often provides very useful context" You are both completely right. My suggestion doesn't make sense. It was just a "spur of the moment" suggestion to provoke thought (de Bono's PO mental operator). I dind't think it through at all.
You could give everyone a unique identifier per thread.
Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores
#83Odd sort of "improvement" Hacker News -- now with less information? I would imagine that the more readers become engaged with the site the more information about the site they would want to consume, no?
What matters is the quality of the information, not the amount. One of my goals has always been to decrease the amount of stupid information flowing through the system. That's why there are no downvotes on submissions: my observations of Reddit suggested that downvotes were more often reflexive than upvotes.
Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores
#84Odd sort of "improvement" Hacker News -- now with less information? I would imagine that the more readers become engaged with the site the more information about the site they would want to consume, no?
"Odd sort of "improvement" "
I don't see this as odd at all.
Greater amounts of Information widely dispersed == "good/better" and less/restricted information == "bad/worse" is a very dominant underlying assumption - sometimes so embedded in our intuition that we see restricting information as counter-intuitive.
If this experiment succeeds, then it might show that in some situations, the opposite is true?
As a thought experiment, suppose you could know the exact moment of your death. This is more information than you have today. Is this good or bad? (I can see arguments for both sides)
Suppose everyone knew. Would this be good or bad? (I can see arguments for both sides here too)
Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores
#85I'd try out rounded percentage scores.
Out of the total comment Karma alloted to all comments for an item, what proportion of this amount is contained within each comment?
The issue here is that upon voting, you couldn't change all displayed comment percentages at once, it'd have to change on page reload.
Also, it could be a rounded 1-10 scale.
-- edit: would be good to reveal any comment score upon voting: gives an incentive to vote and remain critical. It's also like a marker as to what comments interest you for future recall -- that's something new.
Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores
#86About a year ago, I mentioned the problem of "bandwagon upvoting"
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=217822
So I'm really glad to see this and hopeful it works out. I think hiding the votes is better than a hard upper vote limit, as it is more organic. I'm really curious to know after the experiment how this affects the voting behavior (more votes, less votes, more for lead, less, etc)
Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores
#87But don't votes also give feedback to the commentor? I have used this to learn what works within this community and what doesn't. Now, I only know by approximation to my total karma, or if i am bad, that I turn gray.
You can still see the votes on your comments by looking at your comments history.
Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores
#88Odd sort of "improvement" Hacker News -- now with less information? I would imagine that the more readers become engaged with the site the more information about the site they would want to consume, no?
What matters is the quality of the information, not the amount. One of my goals has always been to decrease the amount of stupid information flowing through the system. That's why there are no downvotes on submissions: my observations of Reddit suggested that downvotes were more often reflexive than upvotes.
I'm with you on your motives, and it'll be interesting to see how the site reacts.
It just clashes with the idea that sites should be very simple to use, but engaging in detail over time -- that as users spend more time on a site they become interested in more details, whatever those details are. I think you see this in the number of HN mining apps posted. People who are engaged want more stuff from what they're engaged in.
I'm definitely not for information for information's sake, just find your tweaking counter-intuitive. Seems like shooting all of the animals to prevent them from escaping the barn.
I look forward to somebody telling us how the experiment went.
Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores
#89Odd sort of "improvement" Hacker News -- now with less information? I would imagine that the more readers become engaged with the site the more information about the site they would want to consume, no?
"Odd sort of "improvement" " I don't see this as odd at all. Greater amounts of Information widely dispersed == "good/better" and less/restricted information == "bad/worse" is a very dominant underlying assumption - sometimes so embedded in our intuition that we see restricting information as counter-intuitive. If this experiment succeeds, then it might show that in some situations, the opposite is true? As a thought…
If this experiment succeeds, then it might show that in some situations, the opposite is true?
Yes -- it's a very interesting experiment and I'm really curious as to how it will play out. There's obviously a bit of mob rule mentality on HN and something should be done about it. Perhaps this is it?
I've always thought that in making a web site you make it completely intuitive and engaging -- then you incrementally add more detail and complexity to satisfy power users. Sort of like the qualities of a good game where it's easy to learn but hard to master.
But I'm probably off-base. As you said, there are a lot of underlying assumptions here -- on both sides. The beauty of experimenting is that you can move from talking about things to actually seeing what works.
Re: Experiment: No Comment Scores
#90This is good -- I really want to read threads without scores. If the experiment ends at some point, I would like to see it as an option checkbox.
I often read comments with highest scores first while often there are good comments forgotten and sandwiched between a few übercomments. Or the übercomment is so conclusive that there's nowhere to take the discussion to. Hiding scores allows me to approach the discussion more objectively.