4 ms·

Respectfully disagree on more votes == better. Visible score systems often lead to groupthink, and commenters aiming for the lowest common denominator in the f

Respectfully disagree on more votes == better. Visible score systems often lead to groupthink, and commenters aiming for the lowest common denominator in the form of karma whoring. While HN has some measures to reduce hivemind voting, it's quite rampant on the default subreddits.

nl 9y ago
While this can be true, Usenet was so much worse in every way.
hexane360 9y ago
It seems to me like HN still has a long way to go. I find my detailed, careful, well researched comments typically get an order of magnitude less votes than my one sentence inanities.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  I doubt it's fixable - it's just humans being humans. If you write a short one-liner, anyone can quickly evaluate it and decide whether they like it or not. When you write a long essay in a comment, a lot of people won't upvote it because they won't even bother to read it, and others may find that they disagree with one of your many points but don't have time for a thorough response, hence they just won't upvote and move on.
  - exikyut 9y ago
    Yes. Upvoting and downvoting are the brokenness; users are just interacting with the UI model they're presented with. Better low-effort, high-reward consensus systems are needed. I've actually changed the topcolor to #222222 in my settings so I don't see what my account's karma is. It completely ruins the ability to see the "new" "threads" etc links without a truly irritating amount of eyestrain but it's worth it - I recently asked genuine question about something I wanted clarification on and the comment ended up being downvoted to -4. Now I can't see my karma score I don't care about this, whereas before when my karma was shown on almost every single page throughout the site I'd obsess over making my comments universally good.
  - lmm 9y ago
    One simple improvement that would apply both here and on reddit is to move the up/downvote arrows to the end of the comment rather than the start. At the moment it's disproportionately easy to upvote a short comment because you're still at the right place for the arrow.
jhiska 9y ago
Voting is gamed by corporations and governments -- easy with a few thousand IP addresses. Comments are manipulated by teams of paid "trolls", including in English, and including Hacker News (when the article is of interest to a particular corp or gov -- like the Tesla mass firing article on Hacker News recently, just to give an example I know of).

nl 9y ago

While this can be true, Usenet was so much worse in every way.

hexane360 9y ago

It seems to me like HN still has a long way to go. I find my detailed, careful, well researched comments typically get an order of magnitude less votes than my one sentence inanities.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
I doubt it's fixable - it's just humans being humans. If you write a short one-liner, anyone can quickly evaluate it and decide whether they like it or not. When you write a long essay in a comment, a lot of people won't upvote it because they won't even bother to read it, and others may find that they disagree with one of your many points but don't have time for a thorough response, hence they just won't upvote and move on.
- exikyut 9y ago
  Yes. Upvoting and downvoting are the brokenness; users are just interacting with the UI model they're presented with. Better low-effort, high-reward consensus systems are needed. I've actually changed the topcolor to #222222 in my settings so I don't see what my account's karma is. It completely ruins the ability to see the "new" "threads" etc links without a truly irritating amount of eyestrain but it's worth it - I recently asked genuine question about something I wanted clarification on and the comment ended up being downvoted to -4. Now I can't see my karma score I don't care about this, whereas before when my karma was shown on almost every single page throughout the site I'd obsess over making my comments universally good.
- lmm 9y ago
  One simple improvement that would apply both here and on reddit is to move the up/downvote arrows to the end of the comment rather than the start. At the moment it's disproportionately easy to upvote a short comment because you're still at the right place for the arrow.

jhiska 9y ago

Voting is gamed by corporations and governments -- easy with a few thousand IP addresses. Comments are manipulated by teams of paid "trolls", including in English, and including Hacker News (when the article is of interest to a particular corp or gov -- like the Tesla mass firing article on Hacker News recently, just to give an example I know of).