6 ms·
People can be wrong about things, and comment scores are useful information that helps us know if they are. "that is not how mysql works" with 2 Points And "t
by blhack 15y ago
People can be wrong about things, and comment scores are useful information that helps us know if they are.
"that is not how mysql works" with 2 Points
And
"that is not how mysql works" with 102 points
Are not the same piece of info.
I don't see any benefit to hiding this from people. It also helps newbies understand the customs here (they can get feedback on other people's comments)
edit now that I'm not on my phone:
When you google things, you probably skip over results like daniweb, about.com, or expertsexchange.com, and hope for a stackexchange page.
The little URL at the bottom of the description tells you "hey, this is from $foo source" and you're a smart human being that can put this information to good use.
Of course, you could make a case that this is bad, because you should read each one of the results and judge it based on its merits. Maybe we should even strip all of the identifying information away from the page, and just let it stand on its own (this would be a neat experiment, actually [and that's the experiment that I think we're performing here]).
The point counts on the comments act just like the URL does on google results. It's not saying "this is definitely 100% accurate", but it is useful piece of information that we can put to good use. Depriving us of this information doesn't break the comments, but I have certainly found myself reading comments a bit less lately as a result of it (instead of actually reading comments, I'm usually just skimming them now). With comment scores, things seem to have a bit of order to them, without, it just feels like a lot of people shouting at one another.
(Maybe this was the point?)
Naturally, I'm never going to stop reading HN; it is by far my favorite website on the internet. Complaining about the lack of comment points here is like complaining that my favorite bar switched to a new, very slightly different glass. I can see the difference, but it's not really going to change my habits.
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- lwhi 15y agoYou can see how agreeable a comment is by how far up the page it is. I think having the scores hidden is a good decision. It means that we concentrate on content rather than a 'karma game'. ""that is not how mysql works" with 2 Points And "that is not how mysql works" with 102 points Are not the same piece of info." In my opinion, both of those comments are bad comments unless they further qualify the statement. I don't think karma should be used to infer whether a statement is correct.
- tuhin 15y agoDoes not work that way if a reply has 100 upvotes, does it? Also I love the discussion in this post since, when with Georgify (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2410195 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2410195) I had tried first to seperate the upvotes with points of a comment, everyone (and yes a blanket term) had said it was a wrong thing to the extent that I had to make changes. Of course it is not my site to make decisions for the users of the site, but still almost a dual reaction when the same decision was taken on HN by two different people in a very nearby time span, one being me (for Georgify) and the other being PG himself (for HN).
- alanfalcon 15y agoHis opinion is that such a bad comment would never reach +100 upvotes since, the post being devoid of additional information, people like him might downvote if they saw the numbers getting "too high".
- tuhin 15y agoBut a really good reply to the bad comment could get 100 upvotes yet be down, right? This is my interpretation of the rules here, not sure if they are correct.
- vinhboy 15y agolol... ok.. then it is agreed.. we should bring back comment score because the top comment is ----- "bring back comment score"... =)
- tolmasky 15y agoJust expand the example: pretend it was "that is not the way mysql works blah blah explanation". I agree that I don't want to read this if it has 2 points but I do if it has 100.
- alain94040 15y agoSince we don't see points anymore, instead of upvotting you because I agree with you, I just have to add a comment saying "I agree". Is that what people want?
- ignifero 15y agoStart with the assumption all comments are wrong; after all there's no absolute truth. The scores are a measure of popularity, which is often right and sometimes wrong. Plus everyone is entitled to an opinion. I don't think scores help anything, it's a measure of someones self-righteousness that i 'd rather not have. It's enough that unpopular opinions float to the bottom, where they belong. If anything i'd suggest that comment scores should also have minimal impact in karma, except for questions, where an answer is a valuable contribution. Otherwise, everyone's entitled to an opinion.
- munchhausen 15y agoStarting with an assumption that all comments are wrong is a prudent approach, which also considerably lowers the utility of HN for certain types of usage. I read HN primarily for the informative comments, not the opinion pieces. A high comment score on an informative comment that contains a factual statement is a relatively good way how to easily tell that the information has been validated by the community and is likely to be correct.
- bruce511 15y ago>> It's enough that unpopular opinions float to the bottom, where they belong. Unpopular opinions are exactly what make the conversation interesting. While not every unpopular opinion is necessarily valid, it's fair to say that on many occasions the "unpopular" viewpoint is both valid, and often correct. But regardless of the correctness of the opinion, it is the unpopular viewpoint which makes us stop, think about, and then articulate our own viewpoint. Now wouldn't it be ironical if this very comment is deemed unpopular?
- ignifero 15y agoUnpopular opinions more often than not are valid and uncomfortable truths, so they're likely to attract trolls and personal attacks. It's best to keep them down there, for those who are interested enough to browse all the threads.
- abeppu 15y agoBut two comments with equal points given at different times on the same thread are likely not equally informative; the newer one had fewer impressions but receiving the same points has a higher points to views ratio. Part of the problem with points is that people try to use them like you are -- to gauge agreement for correctness, or who 'won' a discussion or whatever -- but points are a really crappy indicator of that. Points should be normed by impressions, and then smoothed (or given credibility intervals or something).
- munchhausen 15y ago> Points should be normed by impressions, and then smoothed (or given credibility intervals or something). I agree that this might work better for determining correctness of informative comments than just plain point scores, however point scores work better than nothing at all.
- lwhi 15y agoIf someone states something that's incorrect, reply to the comment and explain why! ;)
- moe 15y agoBut often there are multiple replies with opposing opinions. Without the points we don't know which opinion HN agrees with.
- lwhi 15y agoHN isn't an entity - and you can't rely on aggregation to form an opinion. You still need to think and form your own opinions.
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- drzaiusapelord 15y agoWhy aren't they the same piece of info? Scores just reflect popularity, not expert analysis. I find scoring systems like at reddit or slashdot just promote, usually wrong, group think (ZOMG OBAMA IS A COMMIE KENYAN!!) or whatever group values the majority accepts (GAYS SHOULDNT GET MARRIED!!). There's a lot of faith in the wisdom of crowds with these systems and that's not a faith I find particularly convincing. The lowest common denominator shouldn't be encouraged. These systems are good for getting rid of trolls and other cruft, but not magical quality or truth machines.
- newmediaclay 15y agoI don't think you've been a member of the community long enough, then. On YC, I certainly find a correlation between the points for a certain comment and the thoughtfulness put into that comment. This isn't true on other systems (reddit, etc) where clever noise is preferred to depth, but I generally find the most helpful comments getting voted up here.
- edw 15y agoI agree. I've almost forgotten how disappointed I am that sites like HN, Reddit, and so forth don't use my up votes as signals for a collaborative filter and suggest which comments and stories I might find interesting. (And by "interesting," I mean interesting, not something I agree with, a distinction too many people on HN don't seem to understand.)
- drzaiusapelord 15y agoThat's a great idea. I could see a simple implementation that'll could work out. If I like comment 4954 and you like comment 4954 and later I like comment 5004 then it should recommend it to you.
- estel 15y agoSurely that's no different to what we have now: the most "popular" comments / submissions are, with the application of some secret sauce, the most visible and promoted to the top of the thread. The fact that we can't see the underlying numbers makes no difference.
- jrwoodruff 15y agoI agree. I actually often find myself only reading the top one or two comments on a thread now, whereas before I would scan down the list of comments for high point values. This is especially true of replies-in-replies, where the sort order is less indicative of agreement/value. I miss the community-provided context of comment points.
- macrael 15y agoAll comment scores do is reveal the inner workings of the site. HN already has an algorithm to turn vote count and time since posting into relevance, that's how we order posts now. Perhaps that could be a bit more fine grained, so that you can know more easily to skip barely upvoted leaf nodes, but all seeing the vote score does is let you replace that algorithm with your own internal one. You are absolutely right though about source links on Google. They give us context for Google's ordering. While Google has done the work to return the best ordering of results possible, which might be the best results in the average case (though maybe not) site have earned a personal reputation for us. Personally, I know that I don't want to check the expertsexchange.com sites, so I skip over them. I think that what HN would benefit greatly from is a more codified personal reputation system. Right now, the only way we have that is by learning to recognize the names of HN posters which, for me, has only happened with a precious few of the most prolific and respected. If HN would only give me some indication that I had up (or down) voted this commenter n number of times in the past, that would be far more useful than displaying the current vote count. It would allow me to discover whose voices I like, and who I might ignore. I recognize that not having this is part of the design of HN. Instead we are encouraged to consider every comment fresh, without any context. It's a meritocracy of comments. I don't have much answer to that, other than to say that I would really like to see people be able to earn a good reputation. It would make the community feel a bit smaller and closer.
- enobrev 15y agoI'd venture in the opposite direction as an experiment. Make all posts temporarily anonymous until the thread is closed or less popular. Allow the discussion to exist ONLY according to the merits of the content. Then maybe after a thread is closed or enough time has passed, show the usernames and maybe the points as well.