4 ms·

You could almost make a rule that any comment that had a high profile user's name in (including pg) should get some kind of karma deduction. Don't get me wrong

You could almost make a rule that any comment that had a high profile user's name in (including pg) should get some kind of karma deduction. Don't get me wrong, some of these comments are very good, but way too many people vote up celebrity instead of content.

j_baker 16y ago
I agree that there's a problem, but I don't think that celebrity is it. If you took away the comments' scores and removed the names, I could probably still tell if they were made by high-karma members. I think the problem is that the way they think and post is more in line with the majority of users on here. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with that. I think the problem is that we (like any other group of people) tend to focus more on "I agree with that comment" and less on "That comment is insightful and brings a fresh perspective on the issue whether I agree with it or not". I wish I could say that I'm innocent of this, but I'm just as guilty of supporting my own point of view as anyone else is.
DanielBMarkham 16y ago
Sounds like you meant that in some kind of snarky way, but absolutely yes. A thousand times yes. I could care less about brand, whether from commenters or famous people in titles. Just give me good content. I don't come here to join some kind of fan club, either for authors or commenters. And of course the reverse is true. We have folks purposely downvoting based on authors or commenters. Which is just as whacked.
- logicalmind 16y ago
  No snarkiness was intended. I was agreeing and expanding your comment. Nothing irks me more than seeing a very insightful discussion between "high profile member" and "regular user" and seeing a drastic difference in the point total of the comments when they are equally interesting. People should upvote content and not commenter.
  - DanielBMarkham 16y ago
    Amazing how people project their own mood onto internet comments. Sorry about that. Thanks for the explanation. Yep, I'd much rather read a dozen guys that nobody knows that help me out in life and help me make terrific changes than become pen-pals and an expert on the top 17 people in the tech industry or on HN. This herd mentality stuff drives me nuts at times. You know, I also feel that people should own their comments, but something as simple as hiding the name until the mouse hovers over the pseudonym would prevent a lot of abuse. It's not like we all have to become anonymous. I think the board just needs to take steps to prevent automatic up or down voting. There are lots of solutions to choose from.
    - rorymarinich 16y ago
      The problem with celebrity in this field is that very frequently celebrities are known more for their personality than they are for the things they say. You have the Asshole, the Motivator, the Snarky Sassplant... etc. They become famous not because they're intelligent or say smart things — let's face it, almost every person in this community is bright and most of them are well-spoken, yet plenty of them still struggle for recognition — but because they adapt a certain tone that's instantly and comfortably recognizable, so that when we see their name we can sink ourselves into whatever's expected of their writing without having to put in too much effort. The celebrity writers always have a certain personality. Whether it's John Gruber or Paul Graham or Dave Winer, they've established exactly what sorts of things they're gonna talk about and how they're gonna talk about it. When we see their names, we know what to expect. Whether it's a good post or a shit post (and everybody has some of each), we still feel like we got our click's worth and are satisfied with that. If I had a choice to see a new DaringFireball essay or another essay, completely unknown, completely at random, I'll probably go with the DF one. It sells me a certain level of quality, a topic that I usually am interested in, a writing style that I very much enjoy. The unknown essay might be more valuable or relevant, but I'm not as instantly willing to give it a chance. ...unless, of course, the author makes an effort to grab me, by titling his essay provocatively or writing in an entertaining style. But then once he finds success with that method, he's not going to want to drop the shtick and risk becoming unknown again. He'll continue with it. At a certain point he'll become a celebrity poster. Then we're back to dealing with the same old shit as we did before. Part of the problem is that HN displays us both POINT VALUE and USER NAME before it even gives us the essay. There is no way to read a comment without seeing the author and the point value before hand. So we're unavoidably biased before we see a word.
sdrinf 16y ago
Celebrity, or meritocracy? With comments, that's the ultimate question. See, when Joel writes a small piece of advice for B2B sales ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1987223 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1987223 ), knowing the background he's coming from, that advice get a disproportionately higher weight both in my mind, and my upvoting-finger, than Random J Commenter. And Yes, I am implying here, that Random J Commenter doesn't know shit about B2B sales. With his advice, the most action I can take is careful, small-scale controlled experiments, 2 times out of 3 blowing right to my head. Because Random J Commenter's infosource is not the real world, but rather techcrunch, or, more likely, other Random J Blogger. The other aspect of this, is user-based browsing, which I tend to do a lot (following 10+change HNers, and looking where they comment -as opposed to the stories on frontpage / askHN). This also gives them point leverage -after all, this way I see only the things they care to comment about. The single most important observation I take from the above two, is that neither of these are the kind of shallow things PG is remarking in his articles -both are meritocratic worth of value provided by these "celebrities". It just happens, that business knowledge is distributed disproportionately.
- brlewis 16y ago
  I also do user-based browsing. It's a dumb heuristic for finding good comments, I know. But I don't have a better algorithm that won't waste much time.
  - rcfox 16y ago
    http://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments http://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments
    - RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
      It used to be that that found good comments. It still sometimes does, but now it finds highly voted comments, which although correlated positively, is not the same thing.
- logicalmind 16y ago

j_baker 16y ago

I agree that there's a problem, but I don't think that celebrity is it. If you took away the comments' scores and removed the names, I could probably still tell if they were made by high-karma members. I think the problem is that the way they think and post is more in line with the majority of users on here. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with that. I think the problem is that we (like any other group of people) tend to focus more on "I agree with that comment" and less on "That comment is insightful and brings a fresh perspective on the issue whether I agree with it or not". I wish I could say that I'm innocent of this, but I'm just as guilty of supporting my own point of view as anyone else is.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

Sounds like you meant that in some kind of snarky way, but absolutely yes. A thousand times yes. I could care less about brand, whether from commenters or famous people in titles. Just give me good content. I don't come here to join some kind of fan club, either for authors or commenters. And of course the reverse is true. We have folks purposely downvoting based on authors or commenters. Which is just as whacked.

logicalmind 16y ago
No snarkiness was intended. I was agreeing and expanding your comment. Nothing irks me more than seeing a very insightful discussion between "high profile member" and "regular user" and seeing a drastic difference in the point total of the comments when they are equally interesting. People should upvote content and not commenter.
- DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  Amazing how people project their own mood onto internet comments. Sorry about that. Thanks for the explanation. Yep, I'd much rather read a dozen guys that nobody knows that help me out in life and help me make terrific changes than become pen-pals and an expert on the top 17 people in the tech industry or on HN. This herd mentality stuff drives me nuts at times. You know, I also feel that people should own their comments, but something as simple as hiding the name until the mouse hovers over the pseudonym would prevent a lot of abuse. It's not like we all have to become anonymous. I think the board just needs to take steps to prevent automatic up or down voting. There are lots of solutions to choose from.
  - rorymarinich 16y ago
    The problem with celebrity in this field is that very frequently celebrities are known more for their personality than they are for the things they say. You have the Asshole, the Motivator, the Snarky Sassplant... etc. They become famous not because they're intelligent or say smart things — let's face it, almost every person in this community is bright and most of them are well-spoken, yet plenty of them still struggle for recognition — but because they adapt a certain tone that's instantly and comfortably recognizable, so that when we see their name we can sink ourselves into whatever's expected of their writing without having to put in too much effort. The celebrity writers always have a certain personality. Whether it's John Gruber or Paul Graham or Dave Winer, they've established exactly what sorts of things they're gonna talk about and how they're gonna talk about it. When we see their names, we know what to expect. Whether it's a good post or a shit post (and everybody has some of each), we still feel like we got our click's worth and are satisfied with that. If I had a choice to see a new DaringFireball essay or another essay, completely unknown, completely at random, I'll probably go with the DF one. It sells me a certain level of quality, a topic that I usually am interested in, a writing style that I very much enjoy. The unknown essay might be more valuable or relevant, but I'm not as instantly willing to give it a chance. ...unless, of course, the author makes an effort to grab me, by titling his essay provocatively or writing in an entertaining style. But then once he finds success with that method, he's not going to want to drop the shtick and risk becoming unknown again. He'll continue with it. At a certain point he'll become a celebrity poster. Then we're back to dealing with the same old shit as we did before. Part of the problem is that HN displays us both POINT VALUE and USER NAME before it even gives us the essay. There is no way to read a comment without seeing the author and the point value before hand. So we're unavoidably biased before we see a word.

sdrinf 16y ago

Celebrity, or meritocracy? With comments, that's the ultimate question. See, when Joel writes a small piece of advice for B2B sales ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1987223 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1987223 ), knowing the background he's coming from, that advice get a disproportionately higher weight both in my mind, and my upvoting-finger, than Random J Commenter. And Yes, I am implying here, that Random J Commenter doesn't know shit about B2B sales. With his advice, the most action I can take is careful, small-scale controlled experiments, 2 times out of 3 blowing right to my head. Because Random J Commenter's infosource is not the real world, but rather techcrunch, or, more likely, other Random J Blogger. The other aspect of this, is user-based browsing, which I tend to do a lot (following 10+change HNers, and looking where they comment -as opposed to the stories on frontpage / askHN). This also gives them point leverage -after all, this way I see only the things they care to comment about. The single most important observation I take from the above two, is that neither of these are the kind of shallow things PG is remarking in his articles -both are meritocratic worth of value provided by these "celebrities". It just happens, that business knowledge is distributed disproportionately.

brlewis 16y ago
I also do user-based browsing. It's a dumb heuristic for finding good comments, I know. But I don't have a better algorithm that won't waste much time.
- rcfox 16y ago
  http://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments http://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments
  - RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
    It used to be that that found good comments. It still sometimes does, but now it finds highly voted comments, which although correlated positively, is not the same thing.
logicalmind 16y ago