5 ms·

I really like seeing the number of points next to comments. When I come to a discussion late, it's the best weapon I have to skim through lower replies to catch

by thorax 17y ago

I really like seeing the number of points next to comments. When I come to a discussion late, it's the best weapon I have to skim through lower replies to catch the "theme" of the discussion. It's especially important on nested replies that may be attached to a highly voted root comment. If you decide to hide comment points, perhaps consider at least showing the points after you vote. I'm not sure if that would encourage voting, though, in a case where people would have skipped voting before. I know I would vote more often in that case.

pg 17y ago
Yeah, that was why I brought back points the last time I tried removing them. Without points it was harder to read comment threads. But I have some other ideas about how to solve that problem. For example, I could distinguish comments by users whose recent comments are over a certain average. That approaches the score of a specific comment as the window size decreases. If I didn't discard outliers, as I currently do when calculating comment averages, I could probably even catch the case of the high scoring comment made by a user with an otherwise low average. I may also try letting users specify other users whose comments they're interested in, and distinguish those in the display of the thread. I don't know whether these will work, but I want to try them and see what happens. If anyone has other suggestions for things to try I'd be glad to hear them.
- radu_floricica 17y ago
  I found reading comments without scores very refreshing. The biggest problem I'd have guessed would be the lack of self-limiting when voting. Without scores people would keep voting a good comment, so I'd imagine karma would be counted a bit differently. Averaging comment karma sounds like a terrible idea. Some of the best posts are made in intelligent, long conversations several levels down the comment tree, which are almost never upvoted. Wouldn't it discourage such conversations?
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    > Wouldn't it discourage such conversations? Absolutely. You can expect a complete change in atmosphere due to this.
  - Freebytes 17y ago
    I agree that removing the points may cause the issue where someone is upvoted tremendously without merit. After all, I often decide whether to upvote a comment based on its current score. If I see someone with a score of 20 for a reasonable comment yet someone with a score of 1 for a brilliant comment, I would be more likely to upvote the lower score. I think this would cause a bit of Karma inflation if the points were not visible.
    - radu_floricica 17y ago
      Well, pg knows how the numbers look in this case from the last brief experiment, so he probably could try to adjust with a logarithmic scale of some sort. Would it work?
- plinkplonk 17y ago
  "I may also try letting users specify other users whose comments they're interested in, and distinguish those in the display of the thread." This would be awesome.
- po 17y ago
  I think one of the flaws with the points system is this: A comment that has been down-voted 50 times and up-voted 55 times is not the same as a comment that has been up-voted 5 times. Up-vote and down-vote are not opposites. They are just two flavors of passion; the opposite of up-vote and down-vote is indifference. If a comment is only getting up or down votes, it's a pretty good chance that the person is saying something insightful or everyone likes or there's something wrong with their delivery, or it's a universally unpopular idea. Also, some people say you shouldn't use points to censor an unpopular idea, but not everyone is doing that. It only takes a few people going around doing that to make the community start to suck. Here's a rage-quit by a guy feeling that he was being censored: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1054044 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1054044 There should be a way for that guy to see that nobody agrees with him without feeling like he's losing something personal. And people do take their points personally. The ideas of "I agree" and "I disagree" are conflated with the idea of "I think this is a good discussion". Perhaps if you have a back and forth going on, you can show people's votes without affecting karma. The discussion itself might be interesting even if one person is playing devils advocate.

by thorax 17y ago

pg 17y ago

Yeah, that was why I brought back points the last time I tried removing them. Without points it was harder to read comment threads. But I have some other ideas about how to solve that problem. For example, I could distinguish comments by users whose recent comments are over a certain average. That approaches the score of a specific comment as the window size decreases. If I didn't discard outliers, as I currently do when calculating comment averages, I could probably even catch the case of the high scoring comment made by a user with an otherwise low average. I may also try letting users specify other users whose comments they're interested in, and distinguish those in the display of the thread. I don't know whether these will work, but I want to try them and see what happens. If anyone has other suggestions for things to try I'd be glad to hear them.

radu_floricica 17y ago
I found reading comments without scores very refreshing. The biggest problem I'd have guessed would be the lack of self-limiting when voting. Without scores people would keep voting a good comment, so I'd imagine karma would be counted a bit differently. Averaging comment karma sounds like a terrible idea. Some of the best posts are made in intelligent, long conversations several levels down the comment tree, which are almost never upvoted. Wouldn't it discourage such conversations?
- jacquesm 17y ago
  > Wouldn't it discourage such conversations? Absolutely. You can expect a complete change in atmosphere due to this.
- Freebytes 17y ago
  I agree that removing the points may cause the issue where someone is upvoted tremendously without merit. After all, I often decide whether to upvote a comment based on its current score. If I see someone with a score of 20 for a reasonable comment yet someone with a score of 1 for a brilliant comment, I would be more likely to upvote the lower score. I think this would cause a bit of Karma inflation if the points were not visible.
  - radu_floricica 17y ago
    Well, pg knows how the numbers look in this case from the last brief experiment, so he probably could try to adjust with a logarithmic scale of some sort. Would it work?
plinkplonk 17y ago
"I may also try letting users specify other users whose comments they're interested in, and distinguish those in the display of the thread." This would be awesome.
po 17y ago
I think one of the flaws with the points system is this: A comment that has been down-voted 50 times and up-voted 55 times is not the same as a comment that has been up-voted 5 times. Up-vote and down-vote are not opposites. They are just two flavors of passion; the opposite of up-vote and down-vote is indifference. If a comment is only getting up or down votes, it's a pretty good chance that the person is saying something insightful or everyone likes or there's something wrong with their delivery, or it's a universally unpopular idea. Also, some people say you shouldn't use points to censor an unpopular idea, but not everyone is doing that. It only takes a few people going around doing that to make the community start to suck. Here's a rage-quit by a guy feeling that he was being censored: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1054044 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1054044 There should be a way for that guy to see that nobody agrees with him without feeling like he's losing something personal. And people do take their points personally. The ideas of "I agree" and "I disagree" are conflated with the idea of "I think this is a good discussion". Perhaps if you have a back and forth going on, you can show people's votes without affecting karma. The discussion itself might be interesting even if one person is playing devils advocate.