5 ms·
Those of us who've been here long enough will remember HN used to show the points for each comment next to the author's name. It would be interesting to know if
by agurk 7y ago
Those of us who've been here long enough will remember HN used to show the points for each comment next to the author's name. It would be interesting to know if anyone had collected any metrics relating to this and how it affected the experience.
Personally I remember just after the change was first made I kept automatically looking for the score, as I had been using it for some hueristic for how much I should value the contents of the comment. Removing it made me a lot more critical and also open to potentially less popular ideas.
I do know that greyed out comments still make me automatically think less of them, and I try and make a point of upvoting comments that are downvoted because people disagree with them (rather than troll/spam/bad faith comments).
- scarface74 7y agoWell, to see how it use to look.... http://tenyearsago.io/news.ycombinator.com http://tenyearsago.io/news.ycombinator.com Wow and as luck would have it. The top story on HN 10 years ago (well actually it’s not updated daily). “Experiment: No comment score” http://tenyearsago.io/news.ycombinator.com http://tenyearsago.io/news.ycombinator.com
- whatshisface 7y agoIn my own experience, about half of my greyed out comments are due to saying something against the culture, and the other half are when I say something factually wrong. That's really good compared to most places (lots of subreddits for example) where saying something that doesn't fit the culture is necessary and sufficient for a points penalty.
- scarface74 7y agoWell, there are occasional third and fourth categories -- when I got overly political, I was upvoted but still (correctly) got flagged or once or twice that looking back, I was being an asshole.
- dang 7y agoI seem to recall that pg first posted a poll asking users whether they wanted to keep comment scores. Most said yes, and then he got rid of them anyway. That sticks in my mind because (a) I voted yes and (b) it was a striking example of following something other than immediate user feedback.