6 ms·

Cap the score that is displayed with a comment e.g., past 10 points, just display "10+". Don't display karma and average scores of users, again, past a certain

by strlen 16y ago

Cap the score that is displayed with a comment e.g., past 10 points, just display "10+". Don't display karma and average scores of users, again, past a certain point: this prevents (subconscious) game incentives which lead to e.g., posting comments that say something stupid or mean but which tend to agree with general tendencies of the site. For example, I can post a comment decrying Blub with a snide remark (e.g., "You wrote a 1,000 line Blub program? Was it 500 getters and 500 setters?" in a thread discussing software projects) that is both information free and mean (perhaps Blub wasn't the author's preferred choice, but chosen for him or required in order to build an application for the iBlubber). People on this site generally dislike Blub, so the comment will get upvotes without adding any value to the discussion (an example of adding value would be saying you were able to do this in 100 lines of Flub using its cool new hygienic macros with a link to a paper on hygienic macros in Flub). That's not to say all comment score data should be gone. Comment scores can still be kept and comments could be displayed on stories in the other in which they're displayed now (a mix of comment score and how recently it was posted). Generally, what I've found is that comments showing up _first_ tend to be of higher quality i.e., overall algorithm works more often than not. [NB: I work at LinkedIn and we do this for connection counts-- we want users to network with each other, but we don't want to make it a "who has the most connections" game, that's why when you have over 500 connections (which is perfectly legitimate and allowed), only "500+" is displayed as the count on your profile]

jeromec 16y ago
Many people are suggesting replacing numeric point totals. That could help, but let me throw out another idea. Why would someone write "You wrote a 1,000 line Blub program? Was it 500 getters and 500 setters?" Simple, they seek to build community reputation/acclaim by coming across as clever, even if it means being mean. But it's easy to take that incentive away. I propose leaving everything the way it is, except two changes: hide all usernames (make visible upon hover/click) and reset visible karma points daily. Truly interesting/insightful comments would still rise up, but with even more clarity as people would be reading for content before casting their vote, and incentive to be "clever" while adding no value would be gone. Edit: I like my later thoughts on this better (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2404267 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2404267)
tptacek 16y ago
The blub setter/getter comment really is the archetypical "dumb comment", isn't it? Nicely done. Users should live or die by their votes on that comment. If you vote up the blub comment, you should personally get the downvotes for it too. Upvotes should expose you to the karmic downside of superficial comments. Especially because the really good comments, the ones most deserving of upvotes, don't seem to get a lot of downvotes; watch the scores on a 'patio11 comment closely sometime to see an example.
- nyellin 16y ago
  My initial reaction was to disagree with your suggestion: Your method would train people to predict how well a comment is going to be received and to vote based on that. I disagreed, because I don't want to read comments rated by the hive mind, in order to please the hive mind. However, at a second glance, your idea could work. If people see diverse and insightful comments being voted up, perhaps the hive could learn to encourage creative and interesting comments. Then again, this would incentivize upvoting comments with an existing positive score, and vice versa. Perhaps the solution is to not display comment scores at all until you vote on a comment. (But order comments the same way they are ordered now.)
  - ElbertF 16y ago
    Reddit does this pretty well, they often feature a submission with a dot instead of the number of votes. Perhaps HN could randomly put a thread at the top without showing votes.
    - cmontgomeryb 16y ago
      I believe Reddit does this for the first X hours of a submissions life - to discourage bandwagons, and so that newer submissions that may otherwise be overlooked (due to having less initial upvotes) will get a chance. I agree that it's a good idea and something that may work well on HN's new page.
- strlen 16y ago
  > The blub setter/getter comment really is the archetypical "dumb comment", isn't it? Nicely done. It's actually based on a real comment I saw: the discussion was about migrating a 10 MLOC (iirc) enterprise Java system to git. One comment said that this system must have been "5MM getters, 5MM setters". That struck me as particularly mean and below the belt strike against the programmers who worked on this system: it's very likely there is a good reason why it had to be in Java in the first place (and other JVM languages may not have been available when it was created) and even so, it didn't mean the programmers working on it would have chosen Java as the language themselves (but they were not there when the architectural decision was made). Further more, it added nothing to discussion. This is not unlike poking fun of somebody for wearing the wrong kind of clothes on the school yard: cheap way to score social points with the plurality of others present, mean and ignorant (may be they can't afford the right kind of clothes, may be they are going hiking right after class). An insightful comment would have been something like "That's great that you were able to get this into Git, changing a VCS is a painful task. Have you considered using Scala in some of the modules? Functional objects, case classes and implicits could help you model your business domain better, write thread safe code, and get rid of much of the boiler plate."
Tycho 16y ago
Actually, you just gave me a great idea (I think). The problem is mainly snide remarks, right? So make it impossible to make snide remakrs. How? Minimum comment length of ~50 words. This would A) get rid of casual snideyness, as those sorts of people wouldn't put in the effort to formulate a longer post; B) discourage crowd-pleasing one liners, which while enjoyable have a long term negative effect; C) still allow jokes, they'd just have to be asides to actual substance; D) encourage longer, better thought-out posts in general, and backing up of claims.
- jnovek 16y ago
  This reminds me of the Slashdot lameness filter, which IIRC just caused (causes? I haven't been there in a while) lots of posts ending in, "La la la la, adding some content to get past the lameness filter." and the like.
  - jeromec 16y ago
    And we could make it policy to immediately downvote such cases.
    - gridspy 16y ago
      Sorry, your comment is too short (as is mine)
      - gridspy 16y ago
        It's telling that this comment got more upvotes than any of my other (much more constructive) comments in this thread
        spin 16y ago
        I think that gridspy's comment is worthy of some upvotes. He made a valid point, and in a meta-joke kind of way. I'm perfectly happy with flippant posts, so long as they're not mean, and they add something to the discussion (be it humor or insight or both).
mixmax 16y ago
You, and other users both in this thread and in similar ones before it, are only looking at one side of the equation. The problem is only partially too many bad comments, it's also too few good comments. Your proposal is targeted at lowering the amount of bad comments, but it might do so at the expense of the good ones. Most of the users that have a high karma count have so because they always have something insightful to say (mechanical_fish (http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mechanical_fish http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mechanical_fish) is a good example), and their incentive for posting interesting stuff is marginalized by this. Almost all people, whethere they'll admit it or not, are incentivized by other peoples approval, eg. karma, and downplaying their contributions will make them more prone to not submitting great comments.
- bvi 16y ago
  One way around this could be through badges (a la Stack Overflow). You could automatically get badges based on average comment karma and so on, instead of tying your contributions to the HN community to a mere number. That way, you're rewarded when you contribute meaningful, valuable comments, plus from a reader's point of view, your comment will still have 10+ votes.
  - mixmax 16y ago
    That's actually a great idea!
  - noahc 16y ago
    I like this idea as well and I think it supports how a digital community actually works. For example, some people are great at finding awesome, relevant, high quality articles to submit. They should be encouraged to do so by earning a particular badge. Others are better at commenting, and maybe there are even different classifications of commenting or different badges. You would be able to incentivize behavior (commenting) and then narrow it down to a particular type of commenting. One interesting badge might be the efficiency badge, and that would be generating the most points or badges per minute on the site.
  - pg 16y ago
_delirium 16y ago
The Kuro5hin solution of displaying averages plus number of ratings might give information in that direction, factoring out into two different numbers the average quality people thought the comment had, from the number of people who rated it. Not quite the same as a threshhold maximum, but it produces an asymptotic maximum instead. It's also, imo, useful to have them as two separate numbers, because they convey semantically different information.
- strlen 16y ago
  I like this idea. As another commenter pointed out, we seek out external validation (whether we like it or not). However, there's good and bad kinds of external validation: looking for popularity (total number of upvotes) vs. more direct feedback from people you respect (Kuro5hin model: a score with a name attached to it) works better. The fact that a comment would be rated rather than voted on Kuro5hin (with a maximum rating) also has the capping effect.
- crasshopper 16y ago
  Trimean or winsorized mean could be useful in this case.
crasshopper 16y ago
That's not to say all comment score data should be gone. I already like what HN does with the colour of posts. What if HN switched to colour only? Displaying points * encourages "karma whoring" by posters or just makes people care about how well their comment was received * biases the decision to upvote/not by subsequent readers. Subconscious, conscious, contrarian, consensus-seeking, whatever -- shouldn't people make up their own minds as to whether a comment was good or not, on its merits rather than on what the rest of the community thought? The information filtering function would still be accomplished by colour and order only.

by strlen 16y ago

jeromec 16y ago

Many people are suggesting replacing numeric point totals. That could help, but let me throw out another idea. Why would someone write "You wrote a 1,000 line Blub program? Was it 500 getters and 500 setters?" Simple, they seek to build community reputation/acclaim by coming across as clever, even if it means being mean. But it's easy to take that incentive away. I propose leaving everything the way it is, except two changes: hide all usernames (make visible upon hover/click) and reset visible karma points daily. Truly interesting/insightful comments would still rise up, but with even more clarity as people would be reading for content before casting their vote, and incentive to be "clever" while adding no value would be gone. Edit: I like my later thoughts on this better (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2404267 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2404267)

tptacek 16y ago

The blub setter/getter comment really is the archetypical "dumb comment", isn't it? Nicely done. Users should live or die by their votes on that comment. If you vote up the blub comment, you should personally get the downvotes for it too. Upvotes should expose you to the karmic downside of superficial comments. Especially because the really good comments, the ones most deserving of upvotes, don't seem to get a lot of downvotes; watch the scores on a 'patio11 comment closely sometime to see an example.

nyellin 16y ago
My initial reaction was to disagree with your suggestion: Your method would train people to predict how well a comment is going to be received and to vote based on that. I disagreed, because I don't want to read comments rated by the hive mind, in order to please the hive mind. However, at a second glance, your idea could work. If people see diverse and insightful comments being voted up, perhaps the hive could learn to encourage creative and interesting comments. Then again, this would incentivize upvoting comments with an existing positive score, and vice versa. Perhaps the solution is to not display comment scores at all until you vote on a comment. (But order comments the same way they are ordered now.)
- ElbertF 16y ago
  Reddit does this pretty well, they often feature a submission with a dot instead of the number of votes. Perhaps HN could randomly put a thread at the top without showing votes.
  - cmontgomeryb 16y ago
    I believe Reddit does this for the first X hours of a submissions life - to discourage bandwagons, and so that newer submissions that may otherwise be overlooked (due to having less initial upvotes) will get a chance. I agree that it's a good idea and something that may work well on HN's new page.
strlen 16y ago
> The blub setter/getter comment really is the archetypical "dumb comment", isn't it? Nicely done. It's actually based on a real comment I saw: the discussion was about migrating a 10 MLOC (iirc) enterprise Java system to git. One comment said that this system must have been "5MM getters, 5MM setters". That struck me as particularly mean and below the belt strike against the programmers who worked on this system: it's very likely there is a good reason why it had to be in Java in the first place (and other JVM languages may not have been available when it was created) and even so, it didn't mean the programmers working on it would have chosen Java as the language themselves (but they were not there when the architectural decision was made). Further more, it added nothing to discussion. This is not unlike poking fun of somebody for wearing the wrong kind of clothes on the school yard: cheap way to score social points with the plurality of others present, mean and ignorant (may be they can't afford the right kind of clothes, may be they are going hiking right after class). An insightful comment would have been something like "That's great that you were able to get this into Git, changing a VCS is a painful task. Have you considered using Scala in some of the modules? Functional objects, case classes and implicits could help you model your business domain better, write thread safe code, and get rid of much of the boiler plate."

Tycho 16y ago

Actually, you just gave me a great idea (I think). The problem is mainly snide remarks, right? So make it impossible to make snide remakrs. How? Minimum comment length of ~50 words. This would A) get rid of casual snideyness, as those sorts of people wouldn't put in the effort to formulate a longer post; B) discourage crowd-pleasing one liners, which while enjoyable have a long term negative effect; C) still allow jokes, they'd just have to be asides to actual substance; D) encourage longer, better thought-out posts in general, and backing up of claims.

jnovek 16y ago
This reminds me of the Slashdot lameness filter, which IIRC just caused (causes? I haven't been there in a while) lots of posts ending in, "La la la la, adding some content to get past the lameness filter." and the like.
- jeromec 16y ago
  And we could make it policy to immediately downvote such cases.
  - gridspy 16y ago
    Sorry, your comment is too short (as is mine)
    - gridspy 16y ago
      It's telling that this comment got more upvotes than any of my other (much more constructive) comments in this thread
      - spin 16y ago
        I think that gridspy's comment is worthy of some upvotes. He made a valid point, and in a meta-joke kind of way. I'm perfectly happy with flippant posts, so long as they're not mean, and they add something to the discussion (be it humor or insight or both).

mixmax 16y ago

You, and other users both in this thread and in similar ones before it, are only looking at one side of the equation. The problem is only partially too many bad comments, it's also too few good comments. Your proposal is targeted at lowering the amount of bad comments, but it might do so at the expense of the good ones. Most of the users that have a high karma count have so because they always have something insightful to say (mechanical_fish (http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mechanical_fish http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mechanical_fish) is a good example), and their incentive for posting interesting stuff is marginalized by this. Almost all people, whethere they'll admit it or not, are incentivized by other peoples approval, eg. karma, and downplaying their contributions will make them more prone to not submitting great comments.

bvi 16y ago
One way around this could be through badges (a la Stack Overflow). You could automatically get badges based on average comment karma and so on, instead of tying your contributions to the HN community to a mere number. That way, you're rewarded when you contribute meaningful, valuable comments, plus from a reader's point of view, your comment will still have 10+ votes.
- mixmax 16y ago
  That's actually a great idea!
- noahc 16y ago
  I like this idea as well and I think it supports how a digital community actually works. For example, some people are great at finding awesome, relevant, high quality articles to submit. They should be encouraged to do so by earning a particular badge. Others are better at commenting, and maybe there are even different classifications of commenting or different badges. You would be able to incentivize behavior (commenting) and then narrow it down to a particular type of commenting. One interesting badge might be the efficiency badge, and that would be generating the most points or badges per minute on the site.
- pg 16y ago

_delirium 16y ago

The Kuro5hin solution of displaying averages plus number of ratings might give information in that direction, factoring out into two different numbers the average quality people thought the comment had, from the number of people who rated it. Not quite the same as a threshhold maximum, but it produces an asymptotic maximum instead. It's also, imo, useful to have them as two separate numbers, because they convey semantically different information.

strlen 16y ago
I like this idea. As another commenter pointed out, we seek out external validation (whether we like it or not). However, there's good and bad kinds of external validation: looking for popularity (total number of upvotes) vs. more direct feedback from people you respect (Kuro5hin model: a score with a name attached to it) works better. The fact that a comment would be rated rather than voted on Kuro5hin (with a maximum rating) also has the capping effect.
crasshopper 16y ago
Trimean or winsorized mean could be useful in this case.

crasshopper 16y ago

That's not to say all comment score data should be gone. I already like what HN does with the colour of posts. What if HN switched to colour only? Displaying points * encourages "karma whoring" by posters or just makes people care about how well their comment was received * biases the decision to upvote/not by subsequent readers. Subconscious, conscious, contrarian, consensus-seeking, whatever -- shouldn't people make up their own minds as to whether a comment was good or not, on its merits rather than on what the rest of the community thought? The information filtering function would still be accomplished by colour and order only.