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My guesses: Voting was used to set a comment to the "correct" level. Now no one can see where they're at, so good comments probably get more than they used to
by staunch 16y ago
My guesses:
Voting was used to set a comment to the "correct" level. Now no one can see where they're at, so good comments probably get more than they used to (depth).
Overall people don't think about points as much, so overall commenting is down (breadth).
- nandemo 16y agoI doubt that good commands get more upvoted than before. Visible, high points serve as a signal that the comment is worth a read. Also, I believe that other things being equal people tend to upvote high-point comments more. In other words, if you did an A/B test that would (resp.) add/subtract 20 points to the displayed points of an already well upvoted comment, people seeing the high-point version would upvote it more.
- jamesbritt 16y agoVoting was used to set a comment to the "correct" level. Now no one can see where they're at, so good comments probably get more than they used to (depth). That sums up my behavior. While I might up or down vote a comment simply based on its intrinsic value I tended to also consider "correcting" vote tallies. For example, if it looks like a comment is getting high up votes simply because of "me-too-ism" rather than because it is offering a striking observation I might down-vote (since I want to discourage generally trite but popular opinion comments). The lack of feedback, the inability to see the results of my voting, and the inability to see how others are appraising comments detracts from the site and make me less inclined to vote at all.