4 ms·

Even more so when it's a major topic with hundreds of upvotes and comments. Often the top comment of big big big stories on HN tends to be responsible for aroun

Even more so when it's a major topic with hundreds of upvotes and comments. Often the top comment of big big big stories on HN tends to be responsible for around 25% of total thread comments, if not more. Niche stories with less attention tend to have a more rounded discussion with a larger number of parent comments relative to replies.

greenmountin 10y ago
How do you beat the "tyranny of the reply"? Automatic karma deductions for 3rd tier replies? Detachment + quoting after the 2nd tier? Positioning based on the cumulative karma of the whole tree? Automatic collapse of higher tiers (a la reddit...) Super-powered collapse buttons, for when people get tired mid-tree I wish something were done, but I bet it will be an addon, not HN, first.
- stonith 10y ago
  Maybe some per-user jitter in the ordering so that different people are seeing very slightly different things at the upper end, giving those posts the chance to be seen?
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  I like the comment collapse idea but i think it would be worth having a sorter so you can see the top comment thread but also newest first and most up-and-coming threads.
- pjc50 10y ago
  Take the natural logarithm of the comment karma, and then use as the weight in a weighted shuffle algorithm? Higher-voted comments will then be more likely to move up, but not guaranteed. (You might want to consider putting a thumb on the scale to distinguish between comments which are low voted because they're uninteresting, and comments which contain flame-bait words etc.)
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singham 10y ago
Can some kind of summary/NLP analysis help to avoid this? Some kind of color coding of the comment threads. Like which comment threads are sticking to single topic. Which are changing/adding new topics to discussion. A visual tool that can help navigate the jungle of different discussions.
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greenmountin 10y ago

How do you beat the "tyranny of the reply"? Automatic karma deductions for 3rd tier replies? Detachment + quoting after the 2nd tier? Positioning based on the cumulative karma of the whole tree? Automatic collapse of higher tiers (a la reddit...) Super-powered collapse buttons, for when people get tired mid-tree I wish something were done, but I bet it will be an addon, not HN, first.

stonith 10y ago
Maybe some per-user jitter in the ordering so that different people are seeing very slightly different things at the upper end, giving those posts the chance to be seen?
rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
I like the comment collapse idea but i think it would be worth having a sorter so you can see the top comment thread but also newest first and most up-and-coming threads.
pjc50 10y ago
Take the natural logarithm of the comment karma, and then use as the weight in a weighted shuffle algorithm? Higher-voted comments will then be more likely to move up, but not guaranteed. (You might want to consider putting a thumb on the scale to distinguish between comments which are low voted because they're uninteresting, and comments which contain flame-bait words etc.)

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

singham 10y ago

Can some kind of summary/NLP analysis help to avoid this? Some kind of color coding of the comment threads. Like which comment threads are sticking to single topic. Which are changing/adding new topics to discussion. A visual tool that can help navigate the jungle of different discussions.

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