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I agree, I think this basically disincentivizes commenting when you know you're going to end up "below the fold". I went into the feature request thread to see

I agree, I think this basically disincentivizes commenting when you know you're going to end up "below the fold". I went into the feature request thread to see if anyone had requested the ability to turn this off, but gave up on looking after rapid-fire clicking "More" 25+ times. Content more than a page or two back might as well not exist.

jedsmith 16y ago
The Reddit community actually speaks of this phenomenon in threads addressed to new members ("things you should know about Reddit", etc). They say that once there's several long threads with a lot of upvotes, you're better off not commenting as your comment will most likely languish without any attention whatsoever. I'd say that's partially due to scrolling, but you're correct - that More button is so non-obvious that I didn't even see it until I read this thread. Those comments below More might as well not even exist. The most common retort to that viewpoint that I saw was "well, so you won't get karma. Bummer. Your opinion is out there anyway," which is missing the point, I think. It's not about the karma, it's about contributing to the conversation. Now, contributing to the conversation is a competition based on time and popularity. This change will probably do two things: hide a lot of good comments below page flips, and cause people to quickly comment on stories to fill above the fold.
- drivebyacct2 16y ago
  Funny, I find that I can reply to a comment, even when it's childrens' comments number in the hundreds, and it still gets attention.
  - dauphin 16y ago
    Naab it's because of shitty posts like yours than HN is slow! New users should not be able to post. Abusing the system is a problem.
    - jedsmith 16y ago
      [Edit: The comment I replied to here originally had very different content about threading and scoring. I don't know what it is now, so I've removed the reply.]
      - zbanks 16y ago
        I don't know how reddit works exactly, but I notice that they generally have a few "hidden" comments in the tree. I assume this is to prevent this phenomenon. If your comment is significantly worse than the rest of an active thread, it shouldn't be prominently displayed.
        jedsmith 16y ago
        The 'hidden' comments are based on a per-user threshold. My brief Reddit experience improved significantly when I raised said threshold.
        repsilat 16y ago
        I agree that there's a lot of fluff on Reddit, but I don't think I agree with your solution. I find a lot of good, technical comments end up quite a way down the page in more detailed discussions between users who are more interested in the subject matter than having a conversation (or having their joke voted up the page.) Really, I wish Reddit had something closer to Slashdot's moderation categorisation to filter on. Filtering out "funny" comments would be nice. Ignoring votes cast by people who just want to register their agreement or disagreement would be an incredible, impossible goal.
      - drivebyacct2 16y ago
        Well, jed has removed it, but his original comment here implied that links|comments are ordered solely on the score via voting... While that is a larger driver in the "topics" that get posted, it certainly is NOT the algorithm used for determining comment ordering. I noted more in my later comment responding to your (in my opinion) naive cheapshot on reddit, but the "best" algorithm, that is the default, does not simply rank by the number of votes. And even then, the nature of subreddits and people opting to subscribe to that which they're interested in goes a long way to putting their "upvotes" or "downvotes" into the context of the users in that subreddit.
- nostrademons 16y ago
  On the plus side - this encourages people to check out the New page and upvote stories they find interesting there, so that they can get in on the comment threads before they've become hot.
- silentbicycle 16y ago
  It could be counterbalanced by some sort of notification (on the Threads page, especially) for replies. I don't care if it's fallen off the front page, if somebody is carrying an interesting discussion in a thread in which I've commented, I may still like to know. Even if there are several days between each comment. The site's incentives to only comment on the hot threads are probably detrimental.
  - JeremyBanks 16y ago
    You can get reply notifications (email or mobile) using Notifo (YC W10)[1]. I think it's only for replies to your comments, not for all activity in a thread. [1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1720763
- riledhel 16y ago
  Maybe we need something like twitter implemented... when you scroll below certain number of comments they load n comments more automagically.
  - regularfry 16y ago
    That kills the scrollbar. A better way to do it would be to show far fewer comments per page, so that you get approximately a screenful at a time, then make the "next" and "previous" links huge and blindingly obvious. I think you should scroll or navigate, not both.
- flatline 16y ago
  The more link has the rel="nofollow" attribute, so anything but the top comments will (in theory) not be indexed by search engines either. Given that some functions of the site are based on karma, I hope it's just a stopgap measure.
  - nostrademons 16y ago
    I believe rel=nofollow only means that the link carries no weight for PageRank and other signals that may affect the target URLs ranking, not that it won't be indexed. To block indexing, you need a <meta name=robots content=noindex> tag on the target page itself.
- bendtheblock 16y ago
  If performance is an issue, some sort of lazy load would be better, so just before you reach the bottom of the page more comments are loaded.
thecoffman 16y ago
I feel like it would be more tolerable if it loaded the new comments inline a la reddit: at least you wouldn't lose the context/continuity of the conversation that way. Unfortunately it appears that its actually spreading the comments across multiple pages so that when you click "more" you lose everything you were just looking at.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
Flenser 16y ago
I think this basically disincentivizes commenting when you know you're going to end up "below the fold". And incentivises replying to comments above the fold.
RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
Ironic that PG's definitive reply is now below the fold: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2118936 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2118936
- ghurlman 16y ago
  Double ironic that his post is below the fold - but this one isn't.
  - RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
    That's deliberate gaming of the system by me, as discussed here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2119549 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2119549
blahedo 16y ago
Perhaps more importantly, it seriously skews the karma that accrues to responses---those that are above the fold will continue to get upvotes while those below the fold get none, so the disparity grows. I've seen this effect on other sites; one gaming site[0] shows two views of the comment list, "recent" and "top-voted" (both with a "more" button that few people seem to click)---the "recent" comments rarely get more than two or three votes before scrolling off, while the difference between the lowest upvote count in the "top-voted" count and the next-highest comment can be in the hundreds or thousands once a game has been up for more than a day or two. [0]Kongregate.com, if anyone's curious.

jedsmith 16y ago

The Reddit community actually speaks of this phenomenon in threads addressed to new members ("things you should know about Reddit", etc). They say that once there's several long threads with a lot of upvotes, you're better off not commenting as your comment will most likely languish without any attention whatsoever. I'd say that's partially due to scrolling, but you're correct - that More button is so non-obvious that I didn't even see it until I read this thread. Those comments below More might as well not even exist. The most common retort to that viewpoint that I saw was "well, so you won't get karma. Bummer. Your opinion is out there anyway," which is missing the point, I think. It's not about the karma, it's about contributing to the conversation. Now, contributing to the conversation is a competition based on time and popularity. This change will probably do two things: hide a lot of good comments below page flips, and cause people to quickly comment on stories to fill above the fold.

drivebyacct2 16y ago
Funny, I find that I can reply to a comment, even when it's childrens' comments number in the hundreds, and it still gets attention.
- dauphin 16y ago
  Naab it's because of shitty posts like yours than HN is slow! New users should not be able to post. Abusing the system is a problem.
  - jedsmith 16y ago
    [Edit: The comment I replied to here originally had very different content about threading and scoring. I don't know what it is now, so I've removed the reply.]
    - zbanks 16y ago
      I don't know how reddit works exactly, but I notice that they generally have a few "hidden" comments in the tree. I assume this is to prevent this phenomenon. If your comment is significantly worse than the rest of an active thread, it shouldn't be prominently displayed.
      - jedsmith 16y ago
        The 'hidden' comments are based on a per-user threshold. My brief Reddit experience improved significantly when I raised said threshold.
        repsilat 16y ago
        I agree that there's a lot of fluff on Reddit, but I don't think I agree with your solution. I find a lot of good, technical comments end up quite a way down the page in more detailed discussions between users who are more interested in the subject matter than having a conversation (or having their joke voted up the page.) Really, I wish Reddit had something closer to Slashdot's moderation categorisation to filter on. Filtering out "funny" comments would be nice. Ignoring votes cast by people who just want to register their agreement or disagreement would be an incredible, impossible goal.
    - drivebyacct2 16y ago
      Well, jed has removed it, but his original comment here implied that links|comments are ordered solely on the score via voting... While that is a larger driver in the "topics" that get posted, it certainly is NOT the algorithm used for determining comment ordering. I noted more in my later comment responding to your (in my opinion) naive cheapshot on reddit, but the "best" algorithm, that is the default, does not simply rank by the number of votes. And even then, the nature of subreddits and people opting to subscribe to that which they're interested in goes a long way to putting their "upvotes" or "downvotes" into the context of the users in that subreddit.
nostrademons 16y ago
On the plus side - this encourages people to check out the New page and upvote stories they find interesting there, so that they can get in on the comment threads before they've become hot.
silentbicycle 16y ago
It could be counterbalanced by some sort of notification (on the Threads page, especially) for replies. I don't care if it's fallen off the front page, if somebody is carrying an interesting discussion in a thread in which I've commented, I may still like to know. Even if there are several days between each comment. The site's incentives to only comment on the hot threads are probably detrimental.
- JeremyBanks 16y ago
  You can get reply notifications (email or mobile) using Notifo (YC W10)[1]. I think it's only for replies to your comments, not for all activity in a thread. [1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1720763
riledhel 16y ago
Maybe we need something like twitter implemented... when you scroll below certain number of comments they load n comments more automagically.
- regularfry 16y ago
  That kills the scrollbar. A better way to do it would be to show far fewer comments per page, so that you get approximately a screenful at a time, then make the "next" and "previous" links huge and blindingly obvious. I think you should scroll or navigate, not both.
flatline 16y ago
The more link has the rel="nofollow" attribute, so anything but the top comments will (in theory) not be indexed by search engines either. Given that some functions of the site are based on karma, I hope it's just a stopgap measure.
- nostrademons 16y ago
  I believe rel=nofollow only means that the link carries no weight for PageRank and other signals that may affect the target URLs ranking, not that it won't be indexed. To block indexing, you need a <meta name=robots content=noindex> tag on the target page itself.
bendtheblock 16y ago
If performance is an issue, some sort of lazy load would be better, so just before you reach the bottom of the page more comments are loaded.

thecoffman 16y ago

I feel like it would be more tolerable if it loaded the new comments inline a la reddit: at least you wouldn't lose the context/continuity of the conversation that way. Unfortunately it appears that its actually spreading the comments across multiple pages so that when you click "more" you lose everything you were just looking at.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

Flenser 16y ago

I think this basically disincentivizes commenting when you know you're going to end up "below the fold". And incentivises replying to comments above the fold.

RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago

Ironic that PG's definitive reply is now below the fold: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2118936 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2118936

ghurlman 16y ago
Double ironic that his post is below the fold - but this one isn't.
- RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
  That's deliberate gaming of the system by me, as discussed here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2119549 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2119549

blahedo 16y ago

Perhaps more importantly, it seriously skews the karma that accrues to responses---those that are above the fold will continue to get upvotes while those below the fold get none, so the disparity grows. I've seen this effect on other sites; one gaming site[0] shows two views of the comment list, "recent" and "top-voted" (both with a "more" button that few people seem to click)---the "recent" comments rarely get more than two or three votes before scrolling off, while the difference between the lowest upvote count in the "top-voted" count and the next-highest comment can be in the hundreds or thousands once a game has been up for more than a day or two. [0]Kongregate.com, if anyone's curious.