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> Downvoted comments (i.e. with a score < 1) reduce their placement on the comment thread and will appear desaturated to other users deemphasize them. This des
by Crinus 7y ago
> Downvoted comments (i.e. with a score < 1) reduce their placement on the comment thread and will appear desaturated to other users deemphasize them.
This desaturation is the most annoying misfeature of Hacker News IMO, it makes reading comments very hard and negates the "bandwagoning prevention" that not showing a visible score has (which is a good idea). I'd rather judge for myself a comment's worth than have it faded out for me.
(yes there are workarounds, like using Stylus to override the CSS, but my comment is against the misfeature not trying to find a workaround)
On a similar note, i see a lot of dead comments which i guess are marked as dead by getting flagged too much - essentially using the flag as a super-downvote and driving whoever is flagged out of discussion, not just because of faded out text (which can be worked around) but because you cannot reply to dead comments. The idea is only goon on a surface level (stomp out the bad commenters) but in practice it often backfires since if someone is spreading misinformation and their comment is killed, you cannot reply to it with the correct information so all what people will see is the misinformation.
- ComodoHacker 7y ago>I'd rather judge for myself a comment's worth than have it faded out for me. It's not for you, it's a feedback for the commenter. And making your comment unpleasant for others adds an emotional component into the feedback, which is quite effective.
- charlieegan3 7y agoI don't believe it is for the commenter, they can see the number score of their comment.
- Crinus 7y agoBut it also affects "me" and anyone who tries to follow a discussion by making the text harder to read. The commenter already has a feedback on the visible-to-them score. Why not make negative scores visible to everyone instead (even make the score red or whatever to point out this is a negative comment)? After all at the moment you introduce this visual change you do not care about the bandwagoning aspect anymore.
- dang 7y agoYou can always read the comment by clicking on its timestamp to go to its page. The comment shouldn't be faded when you do that.
- dang 7y agoI don't disagree, but other factors are dispositive. There need to be visual signals that the community doesn't support a post. Fading downvoted comments and displaying [flagged] provide such signals. Internally, this is important because it gives the community feedback about what kind of posts are wanted here. Feedback is the best way to regulate a complex system. Externally, it provides a check against people passing around links to dreck that showed up on HN and claiming that it represents the community. (For example, people sometimes do this on a popular twittering site that shall remain nameless.) With these visual signals, visitors to such links can see when the community immune system has rejected the comment. Do these mechanisms get mis-applied to some comments that are unpopular but don't break the site guidelines? Yes they do. We do a pretty good job of undoing that in the case of flagging, but there are still some comments that end up getting downvoted and faded undeservedly. I don't know what to do about that, other than urge HN users to give such comments corrective a.k.a. compensatory upvotes. I don't believe that it would be good to reduce the power of downvotes, e.g. by not fading the comments. The bottom of the internet barrel gets ugly. We need those white blood cells. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314
- marktangotango 7y agocompensatory upvotes I’ve been doing this, but didn’t have a name for it. Often times I’ll see reasonable comments greyed and give it an up vote. I think others are doing this to because just as often the comment will be black after some time. I suppose it’s easy for subjects in which I don’t have a side.
- DoreenMichele 7y agoSome people call them corrective upvotes.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]