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Personally I'm really missing seeing the karma on comments. Fundamentally, removing them has changed the balance of what karma is all about. Karma previously h

Personally I'm really missing seeing the karma on comments. Fundamentally, removing them has changed the balance of what karma is all about. Karma previously had a function for the reader. It highlighted and bubbled up the good. It showed where there were good counter points. Now...well it's just for the account owner. It feels just like it's there for your own rpg-levelling style dopamine hit. It feels pointless. I really feel this is a mistake. Comment karma had a function for readers, not just for account owner's inner satisfaction. This role has now been lost. It's making browsing comments - especially for very popular topics with lots of comments - much harder. I'm skimming a lot more or actually skipping the comments altogether because I don't want to read them all to find the goodness. It also means people can't learn from others what is or is not a valued contribution. So I really hope this will be reversed or at the least make a better way (more than just what is the top comment) to make karma benefit the community not just the individual.

euroclydon 15y ago
For me, I missed karma scores most in indented threads, because good comments didn't naturally sort to the top the way they do at the root level. Also, I was reading the nginx 1.0 post where I saw some short but technical observations, and I had no idea if the community deemed them valid or informational. At first I though this was bad, but upon further reflection, and after reading some technical comments with more beef, I'm now on the fence. The beefier comments brought along their own credence, so if removing karma scores prompts folks to write longer more explanatory comments, that might be better.
angrycoder 15y ago
I don't miss the karma at all. If you don't have time to read the comments and evaluate for yourself which ones are good or bad, why are you even here?
- taphangum 15y ago
  What are you even talking about? The point of sites like HN is curation.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - nolanw 15y ago
    Do you ask museum curators what point value they assigned the paintings in their exhibits? The curation still happens without numbers attached.
    - taphangum 15y ago
      You don't need to. It's there, therefore it has value. Not at all like HN comments.
- mattmillr 15y ago
  Sometimes, I do have time to read all the comments and evaluate for myself which are good and bad. That's great. Other times, I don't have that much time and simply want to glean from the best comments on a post. And then there are the posts in subject areas that are outside or on the edge of my expertise, where I have no business evaluating the comments. I can still benefit from reading them though, and the karma helps me give weight to the good ones and disregard the bad.
- simonsquiff 15y ago
  It's like removing karma on articles, and saying 'if you don't have time to read the articles and evaluate for yourself which ones are good or bad why are you even here'? For me there are a number of answers to your question: - I love HN because I get to learn about lots of stuff I know very little about. For example I'm a business guy not a progammer, but I love to learn more about the non-business things. I genuinely can't judge the 'good or bad' on my own on some of this stuff. The karma gives me a quick and simple way of the community - this wonderful, intelligent community - pointing me in the right direction. - It also shows where my comments might be off base - not because my comments karma is high or low (which I still see) but because I can see if the counter arguments are rated highly. For example I can't see if your comment is highly regarded or not. If was +40, compared to +1, I'd be more likely to think 'hmm, maybe I'm wrong on this after all'. Sometime is not just the power of the argument that changes minds, it's the weight behind it. I can't see that weight now. -sometimes I quickly browse HN with some minutes of down time. Sometimes I read in depth. I now feel I'm being forced all the time to read in depth. Whilst that sounds good, in practise for me it isn't. Instead of more in depth reading I'm just cutting out the browsing, so I feel ultimately I'm getting less out of HN.
  - fluidcruft 15y ago
    As a PhD and researcher that occasionally sees articles on HN in my field, I can tell you that correctness of a comment's content can be independent of comment karma. I have seen 100% correct posts downvoted to oblivion with highly rated 100% incorrect responses by users playing some sort of formal debate game nonsense. In my pre-HN-bankruptcy account, I used engage and try to correct these discussions, but really it's just not worth it and once I see it starting I just skip the thread. Since that's how it works for posts related to my field, I have to assume the same holds for others that are not my field.
    - klochner 15y ago
      The score doesn't have to be perfect to be helpful.
- geoffw8 15y ago
  @angrycoder - your shitting me right? Because I don't have time to read EVERY comment I shouldn't be here?
vaporstun 15y ago
Correct me if I am wrong, but it appears the good is still bubbling to the top, simply the metric has been removed. I find that I often instinctively head to upvote a comment that has hit its critical mass in terms of karma votes regardless of its content. I have to take a second, back off from my instinctual action, and evaluate. Often I end up upvoting it anyway upon reading it, but at least then I have taken the time to evaluate it myself. Not having the points present makes this problem go away because there is no implicit "lots of people like this, I probably will to" reaction. The jury is still out on whether or not I think things are ultimately helped or hurt by the move but I believe it is worthwhile for the sake of experiment if nothing else.
- mcav 15y ago
  With no indication of number of upvotes, though, there is no distinction between a 200-point comment on top versus a 2-point comment that happens to be on top. Sometimes it was easier to skip parts of a thread knowing approximately how many upvotes each post received.
  - bane 15y ago
    It should be the content of the posts that matter not the point total.
    - amichail 15y ago
      Why not show the comment score after you vote on the comment?
      - klochner 15y ago
        That misses the point - the comment score helps you decide which comments to read given time constraints.
        amichail 15y ago
        You could make it so that as comments get more votes, the time that they were written becomes less important in ranking them. What I recommended would encourage more voting, so you could just read the most highly ranked comments with some confidence about quality -- poor comments would probably be downvoted quickly.
erydo 15y ago
I've noticed that I'm actually getting more out of the hidden-karma comments because I am not able to skim as easily. I'm also not forming preconceived notions of a comment's quality before I read it, which is activating the critical-thinking bits of my brain more than usual. Yet because the comments are still sorted somewhat intelligently, I'm not really being drowned in the cruft like one would expect.
Terretta 15y ago
Hat tip on saying comments with karma removed are point-less. ;-) My experience is the opposite of yours. I find karma as it has become here recently is not a reflection of good counterpoints. I feel it has become a reflection of the popular points. Well argued counter points, if unpopular, are "voted down". Assuming the thread sorts by karma, you can still read in order, and get what you're looking for, and maybe you'll read things that are less popular, not just the majority-upvoted comments. Another comment here talked about score, a gaming term. I don't like the term "score". Like you, I value thoughtfulness and interestingness, whichever side of a point it comes from. In user profiles, karma can work as a gaming feedback mechanism to encourage desired behavior, while in a comment thread, it can work to surface insightful discussion and bury non-contributory content. A display of "score" isn't needed for the second mechanism, just good sorting. However, it seems that a refinement of seeing your own 'score' on your own comments could be valuable towards the first mechanism: "How was my comment received?" That dopamine hit is valuable to foster recurring contribution.
WiseWeasel 15y ago
I totally understand why the karma is kept hidden, to avoid herding votes, but I also really miss the access to the HN community barometer. I placed great value in the information contained in those vote tallies, and it hurts to have that taken away completely. A good compromise would be to have a button at the bottom of the page that says, "OK, I'm done voting now, please show me the tallies", and the voting buttons would disappear, and tallies would appear in their place.
- WiseWeasel 15y ago
  A more thoroughly thought-out (easy to implement) architecture would be for voting to be disabled on all threads after x days, with vote tallies being displayed at that point. If you guys want to fancy it up, you could implement the feature where users could indicate they're done voting on the thread and see the tallies early, and you'd only have to keep track of x days worth of user thread status flags before you can purge the data.
  - tomlin 15y ago
    Or invisible until you up/down vote.
yesimahuman 15y ago
I agree. I've kind of stopped reading comments and voting because I don't have the time to filter through them all. There are always comments that get downvoted to hell due to complete inaccuracies and I don't want to waste my time on them.
michaelochurch 15y ago
I would like to see the karma after (a) voting or (b) 24 hours. I understand wanting to cloak it on a hot thread, at least until a person makes up his or her mind, but I think it should become visible eventually.

euroclydon 15y ago

For me, I missed karma scores most in indented threads, because good comments didn't naturally sort to the top the way they do at the root level. Also, I was reading the nginx 1.0 post where I saw some short but technical observations, and I had no idea if the community deemed them valid or informational. At first I though this was bad, but upon further reflection, and after reading some technical comments with more beef, I'm now on the fence. The beefier comments brought along their own credence, so if removing karma scores prompts folks to write longer more explanatory comments, that might be better.

angrycoder 15y ago

I don't miss the karma at all. If you don't have time to read the comments and evaluate for yourself which ones are good or bad, why are you even here?

taphangum 15y ago
What are you even talking about? The point of sites like HN is curation.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- nolanw 15y ago
  Do you ask museum curators what point value they assigned the paintings in their exhibits? The curation still happens without numbers attached.
  - taphangum 15y ago
    You don't need to. It's there, therefore it has value. Not at all like HN comments.
mattmillr 15y ago
Sometimes, I do have time to read all the comments and evaluate for myself which are good and bad. That's great. Other times, I don't have that much time and simply want to glean from the best comments on a post. And then there are the posts in subject areas that are outside or on the edge of my expertise, where I have no business evaluating the comments. I can still benefit from reading them though, and the karma helps me give weight to the good ones and disregard the bad.
simonsquiff 15y ago
It's like removing karma on articles, and saying 'if you don't have time to read the articles and evaluate for yourself which ones are good or bad why are you even here'? For me there are a number of answers to your question: - I love HN because I get to learn about lots of stuff I know very little about. For example I'm a business guy not a progammer, but I love to learn more about the non-business things. I genuinely can't judge the 'good or bad' on my own on some of this stuff. The karma gives me a quick and simple way of the community - this wonderful, intelligent community - pointing me in the right direction. - It also shows where my comments might be off base - not because my comments karma is high or low (which I still see) but because I can see if the counter arguments are rated highly. For example I can't see if your comment is highly regarded or not. If was +40, compared to +1, I'd be more likely to think 'hmm, maybe I'm wrong on this after all'. Sometime is not just the power of the argument that changes minds, it's the weight behind it. I can't see that weight now. -sometimes I quickly browse HN with some minutes of down time. Sometimes I read in depth. I now feel I'm being forced all the time to read in depth. Whilst that sounds good, in practise for me it isn't. Instead of more in depth reading I'm just cutting out the browsing, so I feel ultimately I'm getting less out of HN.
- fluidcruft 15y ago
  As a PhD and researcher that occasionally sees articles on HN in my field, I can tell you that correctness of a comment's content can be independent of comment karma. I have seen 100% correct posts downvoted to oblivion with highly rated 100% incorrect responses by users playing some sort of formal debate game nonsense. In my pre-HN-bankruptcy account, I used engage and try to correct these discussions, but really it's just not worth it and once I see it starting I just skip the thread. Since that's how it works for posts related to my field, I have to assume the same holds for others that are not my field.
  - klochner 15y ago
    The score doesn't have to be perfect to be helpful.
geoffw8 15y ago
@angrycoder - your shitting me right? Because I don't have time to read EVERY comment I shouldn't be here?

vaporstun 15y ago

Correct me if I am wrong, but it appears the good is still bubbling to the top, simply the metric has been removed. I find that I often instinctively head to upvote a comment that has hit its critical mass in terms of karma votes regardless of its content. I have to take a second, back off from my instinctual action, and evaluate. Often I end up upvoting it anyway upon reading it, but at least then I have taken the time to evaluate it myself. Not having the points present makes this problem go away because there is no implicit "lots of people like this, I probably will to" reaction. The jury is still out on whether or not I think things are ultimately helped or hurt by the move but I believe it is worthwhile for the sake of experiment if nothing else.

mcav 15y ago
With no indication of number of upvotes, though, there is no distinction between a 200-point comment on top versus a 2-point comment that happens to be on top. Sometimes it was easier to skip parts of a thread knowing approximately how many upvotes each post received.
- bane 15y ago
  It should be the content of the posts that matter not the point total.
  - amichail 15y ago
    Why not show the comment score after you vote on the comment?
    - klochner 15y ago
      That misses the point - the comment score helps you decide which comments to read given time constraints.
      - amichail 15y ago
        You could make it so that as comments get more votes, the time that they were written becomes less important in ranking them. What I recommended would encourage more voting, so you could just read the most highly ranked comments with some confidence about quality -- poor comments would probably be downvoted quickly.

erydo 15y ago

I've noticed that I'm actually getting more out of the hidden-karma comments because I am not able to skim as easily. I'm also not forming preconceived notions of a comment's quality before I read it, which is activating the critical-thinking bits of my brain more than usual. Yet because the comments are still sorted somewhat intelligently, I'm not really being drowned in the cruft like one would expect.

Terretta 15y ago

Hat tip on saying comments with karma removed are point-less. ;-) My experience is the opposite of yours. I find karma as it has become here recently is not a reflection of good counterpoints. I feel it has become a reflection of the popular points. Well argued counter points, if unpopular, are "voted down". Assuming the thread sorts by karma, you can still read in order, and get what you're looking for, and maybe you'll read things that are less popular, not just the majority-upvoted comments. Another comment here talked about score, a gaming term. I don't like the term "score". Like you, I value thoughtfulness and interestingness, whichever side of a point it comes from. In user profiles, karma can work as a gaming feedback mechanism to encourage desired behavior, while in a comment thread, it can work to surface insightful discussion and bury non-contributory content. A display of "score" isn't needed for the second mechanism, just good sorting. However, it seems that a refinement of seeing your own 'score' on your own comments could be valuable towards the first mechanism: "How was my comment received?" That dopamine hit is valuable to foster recurring contribution.

WiseWeasel 15y ago

I totally understand why the karma is kept hidden, to avoid herding votes, but I also really miss the access to the HN community barometer. I placed great value in the information contained in those vote tallies, and it hurts to have that taken away completely. A good compromise would be to have a button at the bottom of the page that says, "OK, I'm done voting now, please show me the tallies", and the voting buttons would disappear, and tallies would appear in their place.

WiseWeasel 15y ago
A more thoroughly thought-out (easy to implement) architecture would be for voting to be disabled on all threads after x days, with vote tallies being displayed at that point. If you guys want to fancy it up, you could implement the feature where users could indicate they're done voting on the thread and see the tallies early, and you'd only have to keep track of x days worth of user thread status flags before you can purge the data.
- tomlin 15y ago
  Or invisible until you up/down vote.

yesimahuman 15y ago

I agree. I've kind of stopped reading comments and voting because I don't have the time to filter through them all. There are always comments that get downvoted to hell due to complete inaccuracies and I don't want to waste my time on them.

michaelochurch 15y ago

I would like to see the karma after (a) voting or (b) 24 hours. I understand wanting to cloak it on a hot thread, at least until a person makes up his or her mind, but I think it should become visible eventually.