3 ms·

There are always going to be outlying cases, whatever strategy you use. I suppose I could fix this one by making the threshold depend on either average comment

by pg 17y ago

There are always going to be outlying cases, whatever strategy you use. I suppose I could fix this one by making the threshold depend on either average comment karma or total karma. But as I said, my inclination now is just to stop displaying points on comment threads.

jacquesm 17y ago
But the issue is not one of displaying or not displaying, the issue is one of functionality, of votes not being counted. If you do not display the votes but you do pretend that you're counting them you have not solved the problem at all. On an 'average' forum that sort of trick might work but HN is populated by some of the smartest people I have run in to in the last 20 years or so and it will not take them much work at all to find out whether or not their votes are counted. I can already think of two ways right of the bat.
- pg 17y ago
  As I also said, if I stop displaying points on comment threads, I can also get rid of the thresholds on which votes count.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    Ok. That would help a lot. It will at least make people that have been here for a long time have the same privileges as an account that is less than 5 minutes old. I'd hate to be in your shoes on this one, it's one of those 'damned if you do/damned if you don't' kind of things. From the sidelines it is easy enough to criticize but I've run enough websites to know that a users point of view is not always the same as the point of view of the person that tries to maintain the atmosphere. I'm all for dropping the points, in fact, as far as I'm concerned you can drop the leaderboard as well. If someone is interested in the karma of a user they can always go and look at the profile. At least like that we get rid of stupid comments like 'I made it my mission to be in the top 100'.
    - Freebytes 17y ago
      The leaderboard does not really seem like it is that impressive anyway. It seems to me that a well formulated bot could easily surpass the highest ranked listings at this point.
      - jacquesm 17y ago
        Think of the leaderboard as an odometer, it basically logs how much time you spend on HN. If I had to put a number on it I'd say 1 karma point today equates anywhere from 1 to 5 minutes of work on HN. If you were to express that in money, given the kind of expertise that walks around here anybody on the leaderboard has spent upwards of several thousand $ worth of their time, which gives you an idea of how much they get back out of it.
  - snprbob86 17y ago
    I suggested this before, but I think it was well after you stopped reading the threads. Let me try again: Why not show a percentile for comments? Before there are 10 or 20 or so comments on a page, don't show any score of any kind (except maybe gray out really bad comments). Then, when the number of comments is high enough, display a percentile compared to all the other positively ranked comments. You can still use points internally, but you display a much fuzzier number to users. It is useful to quickly pick out the best comments to read, but once a comment becomes one of the best in the thread, no one will have to keep voting it up (and similar for down). People will just cast votes to say "this comment is over (or under) valued" not to say "This comment deserves another (or one less) karma point". I'd really love to see you run that experiment for a day or two :-) What do you say?
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      That's a really nice idea actually.
    - abstractbill 17y ago
      I would love to see this - I think it's a very promising idea.
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
    - pg 17y ago
      Good idea; I'll consider it.
    - omaranto 17y ago
      Hope this suggestion catches on, it sounds good.
tptacek 17y ago
These aren't outlier cases. If I wanted to boost my comment score average, I would very deliberately formulate even more bogus opinions about popular "controversies". Oh, I sure would come up with a lot of crap to say about Zynga, the Apple Tablet, and Websprockets. It would work, because haunting the less popular topics has been a surefire way to get my average to drop.
- pg 17y ago
  Good point about the orphan threads. I should somehow normalize for that.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    That would take care of the Ask HN threads as well, especially since these suffer from the additional burden of being identified as 'self posts' so they are hardly ever on the top of the homepage.
  - byrneseyeview 17y ago
    Dividing comment votes by article votes (or comment votes by parent votes) would be a start.
adrianwaj 17y ago
I'd just cap comment scores at 50 (or less). Scores give a way for people skim read a thread. You're already capping at -10. edit: On plastic.com, they stopped displaying user scores at 50 when it became a competition. -- you could do that too: remove the ego from karma.

by pg 17y ago

jacquesm 17y ago

But the issue is not one of displaying or not displaying, the issue is one of functionality, of votes not being counted. If you do not display the votes but you do pretend that you're counting them you have not solved the problem at all. On an 'average' forum that sort of trick might work but HN is populated by some of the smartest people I have run in to in the last 20 years or so and it will not take them much work at all to find out whether or not their votes are counted. I can already think of two ways right of the bat.

pg 17y ago
As I also said, if I stop displaying points on comment threads, I can also get rid of the thresholds on which votes count.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  Ok. That would help a lot. It will at least make people that have been here for a long time have the same privileges as an account that is less than 5 minutes old. I'd hate to be in your shoes on this one, it's one of those 'damned if you do/damned if you don't' kind of things. From the sidelines it is easy enough to criticize but I've run enough websites to know that a users point of view is not always the same as the point of view of the person that tries to maintain the atmosphere. I'm all for dropping the points, in fact, as far as I'm concerned you can drop the leaderboard as well. If someone is interested in the karma of a user they can always go and look at the profile. At least like that we get rid of stupid comments like 'I made it my mission to be in the top 100'.
  - Freebytes 17y ago
    The leaderboard does not really seem like it is that impressive anyway. It seems to me that a well formulated bot could easily surpass the highest ranked listings at this point.
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      Think of the leaderboard as an odometer, it basically logs how much time you spend on HN. If I had to put a number on it I'd say 1 karma point today equates anywhere from 1 to 5 minutes of work on HN. If you were to express that in money, given the kind of expertise that walks around here anybody on the leaderboard has spent upwards of several thousand $ worth of their time, which gives you an idea of how much they get back out of it.
- snprbob86 17y ago
  I suggested this before, but I think it was well after you stopped reading the threads. Let me try again: Why not show a percentile for comments? Before there are 10 or 20 or so comments on a page, don't show any score of any kind (except maybe gray out really bad comments). Then, when the number of comments is high enough, display a percentile compared to all the other positively ranked comments. You can still use points internally, but you display a much fuzzier number to users. It is useful to quickly pick out the best comments to read, but once a comment becomes one of the best in the thread, no one will have to keep voting it up (and similar for down). People will just cast votes to say "this comment is over (or under) valued" not to say "This comment deserves another (or one less) karma point". I'd really love to see you run that experiment for a day or two :-) What do you say?
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    That's a really nice idea actually.
  - abstractbill 17y ago
    I would love to see this - I think it's a very promising idea.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - pg 17y ago
    Good idea; I'll consider it.
  - omaranto 17y ago
    Hope this suggestion catches on, it sounds good.

tptacek 17y ago

These aren't outlier cases. If I wanted to boost my comment score average, I would very deliberately formulate even more bogus opinions about popular "controversies". Oh, I sure would come up with a lot of crap to say about Zynga, the Apple Tablet, and Websprockets. It would work, because haunting the less popular topics has been a surefire way to get my average to drop.

pg 17y ago
Good point about the orphan threads. I should somehow normalize for that.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  That would take care of the Ask HN threads as well, especially since these suffer from the additional burden of being identified as 'self posts' so they are hardly ever on the top of the homepage.
- byrneseyeview 17y ago
  Dividing comment votes by article votes (or comment votes by parent votes) would be a start.

adrianwaj 17y ago

I'd just cap comment scores at 50 (or less). Scores give a way for people skim read a thread. You're already capping at -10. edit: On plastic.com, they stopped displaying user scores at 50 when it became a competition. -- you could do that too: remove the ego from karma.