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Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

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Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#841

Post by touristtam »

I think that your comment and submission system is imperfect to begin with.

Submission:

How many time do you see a new submission that is basically a repost from another one. This is quite high in fact, specially with topic that some user feel really strongly about. It is diluting the potential for meaningful discussion.

But you have as well the issue of submission that don't match PST timezone which means in turn that the submission, although it would match the interest of the HN population and the type of topics that one would expect to find on HN, take a huge dive in the list of upvoted topics, and once again no meaningful discussion comes out of it.

Comments:

The current upvote system shows very little information. And more than often, user can comments to just thank the author, instead of just upvoting. It might be because there isn't any visual cues of what the current points a comment has gathered or who has upvoted that. One could argue more transparency could lead to a clan issue where some user might want to consciously upvote a sumbission / comment as a group for their own visibility as a group.

There is also the issue of duplication of opinions in the comments, and discussion that take a tangent from the original topic. Both that are mentioned and addressed through the pending comments, but a simple collapsing of child node in the comment tree would have more welcome than this highly debatable feature.

Thanks,

Tam

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#842

Post by GhotiFish »

gruseom wrote: post #793
jessriedel wrote: post #785

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is very little value in knowing that some people disagree with a comment, but there is tremendous value in learning other ideas. This is a bad policy.

That's a good point. But let me ask you: do you think HN actually has this problem, i.e. of ideas being suppressed because people disagree? If so, I'd be curious to see examples. Most of the downvoted stuff I see has some other readily available explanation; usually some form of rudeness.

I see it a lot. What's worse is up and down votes are a corrective mechanism.

If you get downvoted, that kinda feels bad, if you get upvoted, that kinda feels good. It shapes your discussion and teaches you the rules of what the community finds acceptable/unacceptable.

What is the honest to god pragmatic result of this policy?

You're training people not to say something others disagree with.

Even if you don't agree with that, downvote to disagree causes pragmatic problems outside of training! Consider a discussion where someone starts off with an unpopular view, and then an interesting discussion happens back and forth between two parties discussing that position. Downvote to disagree hides that discussion.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#843

Post by diskerror »

I don't like the idea of curated comments. People aren't perfect and have biases. You may have set guidelines for what to endorse, but I guarantee endorsements are not going to be completely objective. Filtering comments and karma systems often become a popularity contest and not a discussion.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#844

Post by pbhjpbhj »

gruseom wrote: post #837
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #834

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of those links ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117118 [actually 117171 for the pg comment], https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658683 ) appear to be simply pg saying people do downvote when they disagree rather than him endorsing that activity. Indeed the first link says in part: >" I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. " Which reads to me as having an implicit "also to exp…

Those two comments are far from the only data points, though. But now I really am too lazy to look any more up. My memory is simply that PG always said downvoting for disagreement was fine and many users have always thought he made the wrong call. Still, it's his site, so his call to make. The interesting thing to me is how confident these users are that they're quoting the site rules, when really they're contradicti…

>Still, it's his site, so his call to make. //

It's not his. He certainly has a lot of control over it though. Debate/Culture isn't owned by those who facilitate it. I find the idea that this is solely pg's plaything to be damaging.

>quoting the site rules //

De facto standards don't necessarily have documented support. Down-voting for disagreement seems fundamentally wrong [to me] on any site intended to be more than an echo chamber - unless there is a parallel means to promote quality - combined with the established [it seems amongst many long term users] and upheld viewpoint of voting for quality causes me to promulgate that position.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#845

Post by 3minus1 »

AaronFriel wrote: post #362

This is a poorly thought out, reactionary response to allegations of dreadful comment quality. 1. It doesn't solve any problems of group think, because if pg and the Y Combinator folks think the system is already tilted toward a certain group and set of beliefs - this now empowers them all as citizen moderators. 2. It further empowers this group by giving them the ability to remove other members of the group's abilit…

> this now empowers them all as citizen moderators

I prefer to think of them as the high priests; only they get to decide what constitutes divinely ordained Truth.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#847

Post by gruseom »

GhotiFish wrote: post #842
gruseom wrote: post #793

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point. But let me ask you: do you think HN actually has this problem, i.e. of ideas being suppressed because people disagree? If so, I'd be curious to see examples. Most of the downvoted stuff I see has some other readily available explanation; usually some form of rudeness.

I see it a lot. What's worse is up and down votes are a corrective mechanism. If you get downvoted, that kinda feels bad, if you get upvoted, that kinda feels good. It shapes your discussion and teaches you the rules of what the community finds acceptable/unacceptable. What is the honest to god pragmatic result of this policy? You're training people not to say something others disagree with. Even if you don't agree w…

> I see it a lot

If so, you should be able to find three examples. Can I please see them? Specifically, three comments that aren't in any way rude, downvoted for expressing an unpopular view?

The reason I'm curious is that I try to watch out for that, yet have only seen one comment recently which seemed to me downvoted purely for expressing an unpopular opinion, and even it was somewhat borderline.

> You're training people not to say something others disagree with.

That's not true if most such comments get more upvotes than downvotes.

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#848

Post by [deleted] »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #844
gruseom wrote: post #837

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those two comments are far from the only data points, though. But now I really am too lazy to look any more up. My memory is simply that PG always said downvoting for disagreement was fine and many users have always thought he made the wrong call. Still, it's his site, so his call to make. The interesting thing to me is how confident these users are that they're quoting the site rules, when really they're contradicti…

> Still, it's his site, so his call to make. // It's not his. He certainly has a lot of control over it though. Debate/Culture isn't owned by those who facilitate it. I find the idea that this is solely pg's plaything to be damaging. > quoting the site rules // De facto standards don't necessarily have documented support. Down-voting for disagreement seems fundamentally wrong [to me] on any site intended to be more t…

[deleted]

Re: Coming Soon to Hacker News: Pending Comments

#850

Post by dllthomas »

brownbat wrote: post #326
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…

If endorsing comments too hastily risks the loss of that privilege, but endorsing comments correctly has only a social benefit... I'll try to do my part, but I worry about the tragedy of the commons here. The current incentives may actively discourage endorsements.

But endorsing not at all guarantees loss of that privilege, in that you're never actually exercising it. If the penalty doesn't extend further, I'm not sure the cost will discourage terribly much.
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