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I don't learn anything on HN anymore, bring back the upvote count

1136 points by wdewind 16y ago

I know 1500 people have said this before, but today I guess I'm the one who hit the boiling point. The value of HN, from the perspective of simply learning, has been destroyed for me since upvotes were hidden. When I first started reading HN I learned a TON very quickly and everyday about completely new stuff, and was able to do so because I could easily sort through the legitimacy of opinions based on their upvotes. Yes, the upvote system wasn't perfect, but it's a piece of information I can take with a grain of salt. Especially as an engineer who knows little about business, it was extremely helpful to get a community perspective on the startup stuff. Now, unless I know a lot about the subject (in which case I get limited value from the community), this is just a forum with no easy way for readers to differentiate the noise except for: a) the location on the page, which is useless when comparing a parent to a child reply, and b) the overall confidence and aggressiveness of the poster, which is the exact thing we are trying to avoid judging legitimacy on. I feel like I just come back here everyday because of inertia and habit. That wont last much longer because I don't feel like I learn anything here: it's just watching people argue now. I expect massive downvoting but hopefully I'm not the only one...

spencerfry 16y ago
I completely agree. I don't have time to read every comment. I miss being able to skim to crowd-sourced, high up-voted comments.
- huhtenberg 16y ago
  These high up-voted comments are still exactly where they were before - at the top of the thread.
  - Malcx 16y ago
    Not always, that is only used to sort comments at the same level. Often a root comment may have had 2 or 3 points and a counter argument contained some useful insight and would be upvoted to 30+ Skim reading would allow me to spot this comment contains something worth reading...
mmaunder 16y ago
You need to ween yourself off your social proof addiction. The problem with vote counts is that two downvotes can start a cascade of reflex downvotes. Or at best, it won't get upvoted. When vote counts where active, this effect caused many instances where an excellent comment was found greyed out at the bottom of the page until a few smart HN folks with high karma voted it back up.
- wdewind 16y ago
  That is absolutely a fault in any social proof system. As I mentioned, upvotes need to be taken with a grain of salt. I still hold they are far superior to nothing. Edit: case in point: I'd REALLY like to know how many people upvoted mmaunders original comment.
  - StavrosK 16y ago
    I must agree with this, I find this feature one of the most missed. It doesn't even have to show the number of upvotes, just anything that will tell me which of the posts is more highly upvoted in a relative manner (e.g. normalise all comments based on the highest ones on the page and use a 5-number/color/whatever scale).
    - mortuus 16y ago
      Having the information normalized as you suggest would be great. Breaking it up into a ~5 point scale (especially if it took advantage of visual cues) would save some mental effort. Perhaps relative font sizes?
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
  - Alex3917 16y ago
    "I still hold they are far superior to nothing." I disagree. Since the new system was implemented the signal:noise ratio seems to have gone up. The fact that HN is more difficult to read now is a good thing; it forces people to think for themselves, and improves the overall level of discussion. I do agree that the voting should be shown after a few days, but for right now the changes seem to be making things better.
cglee 16y ago
I like not seeing vote count, but agree with you that it's a handy metric to sift through the cruft. How about a color scheme to show popularity instead of the specific vote count?
- wdewind 16y ago
  Sure - to be clear I'm not tied to upvotes as a number specifically, and I doubt anyone else is. But give us SOMETHING.
  - adharmad 16y ago
    How about sorting comments in any subtree by the number of votes? That way hierarchy indicates the comments with the highest number of votes, while hiding the actual number itself.
    - dwolfson20 16y ago
      That's the easiest and most effective solution, I think. But we could also do with an optional visual cue, since a lot of people want it.
pluies 16y ago
Yes please. Also, the poll at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2445039 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2445039 showed that most people agree.
- Terretta 16y ago
  And yet, an astonishing number prefer without. I'd argue that as the particular problem being worked on is increasing group think, this would be a perfect example of herd mentality or popularity contest leading us in the wrong direction. Throughout threads such as these, the general reason for votes is to avoid reading or to be told without thinking what to think, while the general reason given for preferring them gone is an elevation in discussion. The second was the stated goal for hiding them in the first place, and the first is the problem to combat -- glib votes.
sosuke 16y ago
The highly voted comments still float to the top of the page don't they? When I was only reading the highly voted commetns I started to feel like I was only getting the popular opinion, especially so when it came to touchy topics. If HN does decide to turn the count back on I'd love an option to turn it back off in my own profile.
- wdewind 16y ago
  The issue with this is we have no way to compare replies. I don't actually care how nodes on the same level of the tree compare to each other, I only care about how they compare to their children replies (ie: counter arguments).
- hrktb 16y ago
  Highly voted comments don't always stand up when the discussion gets into deep threads. I remember seeing a few threads with 20+ comments and one really insightful response in the middle changing the flow of the discussion. I feel it is now difficult to have an idea of this kind of "flow" at a glance. I'd love an option too show or hide the count. Or perhaps show the count when hovering or touching a link for a few seconds.
- jasonlotito 16y ago
  > The highly voted comments still float to the top of the page don't they? Highly voted parent comments. Child comments remain children of a parent.
masterzora 16y ago
I know I'm not really supposed to have an opinion on these things, being a recently-created account and all, but I must respectfully disagree. If you really want to learn, using upvotes as proxy for correctness is a suboptimal way to do so, especially regarding topics without any clear cut answers. Being new to this site, I've actually spent roughly equal amounts of time with and without vote counts an I've noticed a pretty big difference in my own habits. In particular, rather than acting like HN is an omniscient font of knowledge, I treat it much more like wikipedia: a springboard for further exploration of topics.
sebkomianos 16y ago
Having it as an option for everyone to choose if he/she wants it enabled or disabled could as well be a "solution"?
- kmfrk 16y ago
  That would completely defeat the purpose.
AgentConundrum 16y ago
I've noticed the same thing. I'll see a debate which is basically a thread of two people replying to each other with no other contributors. In this circumstance, it's impossible to distinguish between a situation where one person gets 10 upvotes and holds a well-agreed opinion and the other person gets 1 or 2 upvotes and is arguing his opinion just well enough to avoid being downvoted. I understand that we're supposed to form our own opinions as to who we agree with, but sometimes its just not reasonable to take the time to do enough research. Sometimes, you want to learn from someone that actually knows what they're talking about. Without some sort of vote indicator, it's hard to tell who has the most accurate opinion, except often in subjects like law, security, and seo where there are known experts that often chime in (e.g. grellas, tptacek, patio11). I'd suggest that a form of "fuzzy vote counts" be implemented. Something to indicate either a relative score ("this comment is substantially higher voted than its parent") or just an approximate value ("unvoted", "few votes", "many votes") without a specific score.
- neild 16y ago
  Without some sort of vote indicator, it's hard to tell who has the most accurate opinion, except often in subjects like law, security, and seo where there are known experts that often chime in (e.g. grellas, tptacek, patio11). You assume that votes are a good indicator of who holds the most accurate opinion. My experience says that they are merely an indicator of who holds the most popular opinion, or who argues their point in the most convincing fashion. The latter is a particularly insidious case, since accurate information does not always go hand in hand with good debating skills.
  - ghshephard 16y ago
    I would agree with you. Most topics don't even really have a clear measurement of objective accuracy. And, even when they do, it's rare that votes reflect expert's analysis of accuracy. Rather, votes on HN typically reflect one of the following: O How well known is the individual - I'm even guilty of mindlessly clicking on a grellas comment when it has to do with Law, Security with tptacek, or patio11 on all sorts of things (Japan, Startups, SEO). O How popular is their opinion - once again, I sometimes do this myself - when I want an endorphine rush, or my day is slow, I'll go create a comment that I know adheres to HN Philiosophy, just to enjoy racking up 40 or 50 points. Juvenile, I know, but it _feels_ good. O How effective are they presenting - this is a bit of a mixed bag, and I'm happy to see that frequently very well argued positions are downvoted into oblivion because they are nonsense. :-) But, with that said - the first approach actually isn't too bad - grellas/tptacek/patio11 actually _are_ worth reading, and their opinions really do count for more than a random individual - so maybe the "this personis well known and has a good track record" vote does have merit.
famousactress 16y ago
I miss them also. Was a weighted voting discussed as an alternative? One where the up/down vote is weighted against the karma of the voter? Seems like that would help elevate big-karma users to sort of meta-moderators and might help soften the concerns about reflexive voting? And yeah, maybe for display the numbers aren't the best option.. just some sort of watered down "+" "++" "+++" type scheme...
kuroir 16y ago
The point you make is totally valid; and now that I think about it, when I was able to see the upvotes I could at a glance identify the answers with one or more of the following: 1. Correct Answer (real, like a founder answering about his app). 2. Popular Answer (comedy, something people "lol" to). Identifying the difference between those two is done with only common sense; but supposing you still lack of that, you can still feel what the community liked by looking at the numbers. "50 upvoted this" that must mean something vs "3 upvoted this"...
kuroir 16y ago
The point you make is totally valid; and now that I think about it, when I was able to see the upvotes I could at a glance identify the answers with one or more of the following: 1. Correct Answer (real, like a founder answering about his app). 2. Popular Answer (comedy, something people "lol" to). Identifying the difference between those two is done with only common sense; but supposing you still lack of that, you can still feel what the community liked by looking at the numbers. "50 upvoted this" that must mean something vs "3 upvoted this"...
tolmasky 16y ago
What I found weird is that the points went away but the greying effect stayed. The truth is that that goes a lot further in making sure I don't ready unpopular views (with my eyes I often have to copy paste it to a text editor before I can read it comfortably). I would much prefer all comments be the same font color and being able to see the score so I can make my own decision as to whether to read it or not.
- stretchwithme 16y ago
  The fact that a comment is grayed out makes me want to read it.
  - tolmasky 16y ago
    But seeing it say -10 wouldn't accomplish the same thing? Or are you implying that this is literally a swimming upstream situation for you and the shear physical difficulty of the task makes it appealing?
moxiemk1 16y ago
I feel the opposite - I'm learning more, because if I'm spending the time to read something, I have to think critically about it and do research sometimes in order to have a good interpretation. It takes more time, but it's real learning, instead of echo-chamber reading.
- mike_h 16y ago
  It's like it's gone from a cherry-picking exercise to an actual reading exercise. It requires more of a commitment, and it seems to keep the dialog on a more contemplative level. We're all speaking about "seems" and "feels" here, so it's coming down to impressions (not to mention taste differences), but some ideas for measuring the effect: - change in the "story point count"-to-"comment count" ratio - change in average current (and future?) karma of the people who do comment - change in average comment length None of these is an objective measure of quality, but they do indicate "change" which might help Paul or whoever make a decision about whether that change was desirable.
adaml_623 16y ago
I think you either need an upvote count or the ability to collapse comment threads.
gamble 16y ago
I've been trying to give it a chance, but so far it doesn't seem like hiding the vote counts has done anything to improve the quality of comments on HN. Honestly, I think it's had the opposite effect. The number of in-depth comments seems to have plummeted.
- alex_c 16y ago
  It's pretty hard to quantify quality of comments, and I've seen at least one other comment in this thread saying the quality of comments has gone up (personally, I'm undecided). I wonder how much one's perception of the change in comment quality is colored by their initial opinion about hidden comment scores.
- allwein 16y ago
  I've noticed that the people who seem to think that comment quality has gone down are the same people who used to skim and only read the high-voted comments. It seems like the people who used to read all of the comments regardless of vote, seem to think that comment quality has gone up. It's possible that the former groups impression of comment quality might be attributable to the fact that they are now reading lower quality comments that were always there, but which they weren't exposed to given their reading style.
runjake 16y ago
Or at least shove it in a div or span and hide it by default, so those of us who want it back can style it unhidden.
- kmfrk 16y ago
  That would completely defeat the purpose.
  - runjake 16y ago
    because...?
besvinick 16y ago
I feel like all the articles that get posted on HN are ones that I come across through a variety of other sources (SAI, TechCrunch, etc.) on Twitter. I find HN to be much more useful for discussions that are started based off the aforementioned articles from other sites.
turar 16y ago
Will setting downvote display limit to 0 instead of -4 help?
teyc 16y ago
I disagree. It is forcing you to think for yourself. What do you want to learn here? What most HNers believe to be true, or do you want to learn to be independent?
- blhack 16y ago
  By "Be independent", do you mean "go and learn what people who have written books believe to be true"? Or do you mean "go and learn what people who have written forum posts believe to be true"?
grandalf 16y ago
Suggestion: Try getting dopamine from reading the comments instead of from game mechanics layered imperfectly on top of the forum.
stretchwithme 16y ago
Maybe there should be 2 modes. One for those just wanting to read and learn where they can see the votes but where the user is not allowed to vote. And one for those wishing to vote where they can't see and be influenced by the votes of others.
zwieback 16y ago
I'm not a heavy user of social networks so I don't know if this exists somewhere but why can't I have a customized view where posters I like are weighted more than others. Then I can do this: - The poster's weighting would show up as a color (good,better,best) - The product of the poster's weight and the popularity of the comment determines the order on the page Now I can look at the top of the page where very popular comments show up and then scroll toward the bottom and quickly identify any posters I really like I realize this wouldn't be too hard to do by scraping the comment page and maintaining my own database of favorite commenters.
merloen 16y ago
There are so much more possibilities than just "show vote counts" and "hide vote counts": different sort orders based on more than just votes, collapsing threads, marking people as friends, or adding them to a kill-file. Giving votes different weights based on karma, or average comment score. Tagging of articles, and filtering or sorting based on that. And so on, and so on. I understand that pg hasn't got the time to do all kinds of experiments, but this is HN, where more than half of us are great programmers. Give us a simple API and let us do our own experiments. That's all I want.
albertsun 16y ago
Why not have a (high) karma threshold, above which you can choose whether or not you want to see vote counts? I think respected, established members of the community would know themselves well enough to decide for themselves whether it's good or bad to personally have vote counts. FWIW: Below the threshold I think it's better to not have counts.
jshen 16y ago
"because I could easily sort through the legitimacy of opinions based on their upvotes. " This is a mistake. People frequently vote down things that are right because they don't understand the material as well as they think they do.
- jasonlotito 16y ago
  Except the mechanic for voting down (dimming out the comment) remains. Also, my experience is that the down votes are usually countered. Good comments get a good number of points. By removing points from comments, you've made points worthless for determining comment value. In that way, having them is pointless.
JabavuAdams 16y ago
Wow. I never realized that people paid attention to upvotes. This explains a lot... > Especially as an engineer who knows little about business, it was extremely helpful to get a community perspective on the startup stuff. It's not a community perspective. It's a positive feedback loop. > The value of HN, from the perspective of simply learning, has been destroyed for me since upvotes were hidden. Now, you're learning.
yosho 16y ago
Can we at least maybe have a star rating or color rating or something that lets us differentiate high voted comments from mediocre comments? It really does simply take too long to scan and read all the comments. Most of the time I'm just looking for interesting snippets of information, I simply don't have the time to read everything. Please bring something back, I find myself never reading the comments now.
knite 16y ago
I don't need to know a comment's score, just the score's magnitude provides a lot of utility. In the same way that a grayed-out comment signifies a poor reply, find a way to show me whether a comment is neutral, slightly positive, very positive, or stupendously positive.
FreshCode 16y ago
Hacker News needs a Meta HN.
- tokenadult 16y ago
  Hacker News has long had a rather rarely used Meta HN, the Feature Requests thread linked to from the bottom of most of the main pages on HN, such as the home page. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363
rriepe 16y ago
I could see this change working for other sites, but HN actually does have a sort of collective wisdom. I've also stopped looking at comments entirely. Before, I would sometimes click through to just read the comments. There was value there. It's not necessarily gone now, but it is much harder to find.
pnathan 16y ago
Agreed, votes are a good way to filter out the most of noise from the signal.
dengzhi 16y ago
i can't even post anymore
ssing 16y ago
Nowdays I just don't read beyond the first few comments. Request to please bring back the upvote count.
jimrandomh 16y ago
I don't use upvotes to decide what I agree with, I use them to decide what to read in the first place. Hiding the votes means I can no longer skim through a thread to pick out the comments that are gems; I'd have to read all the bad comments too. And this means that reading comments here is no longer worth my time, so I don't do it. This is definitely not the desired effect.
- dmpatierno 16y ago
  This is exactly how I feel. It's no longer an efficient use of my time.
zyfo 16y ago
Good comments are still put at the top. Mentally filter out the recent comments, and you should be able to see quite easily how "good" a comment is. I honestly don't see the big difference.
lupatus 16y ago
Lately, I've been reading the "new" headlines as opposed to the "top" headlines to find those hidden gems that _I_ think are interesting.
twodayslate 16y ago
I did not even notice they removed the vote count. It doesn't bother me. I don't know how to downvote either though
jsdalton 16y ago
I guess only pg can answer this, but I'm wondering how the change has impacted voting behavior. Have there been more or less votes per comment? Has the proportion of upvotes to downvotes changed? I get the sense that my comments have received more rather than less votes since the change. Previously, when a decent comment of mine had say 10 upvotes, I felt like people concluded "good enough" and didn't bother upvoting. Now without the score feedback, I actually feel like some of my mediocre comments have gotten more upvotes than they deserved. Some behavior data would go a long way toward confirming or denying hypotheses like these.
- vinhboy 16y ago
  why can't we just have a setting -- those who don't want it can turn it off...
eande 16y ago
every time someone posts this I add my 2 cents and say the same, please bring back the karma most useful.
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ddkrone 16y ago
Nonsense, upvotes are meaningless. You're just too lazy to filter the content yourself.
blhack 16y ago
I've said this in some of the other threads on this topic, but I'll say it again: The huge (and incorrect) assumption that people are making about upvotes is that everybody reading the comments is stupid. We're not using the upvote count as a 100% perfect indicator of if somebody is correct or not, we're using it as an indicator of how many upvotes the comment has gotten. It's just one of several things that we can use to judge a comment's merit. This information is useful, and I cannot fathom a benefit to withholding it.
- abecedarius 16y ago
  On stackoverflow the criteria for voting are considerably more concrete, yet it's clear that voting there is strongly biased by vote counts. HN might have more rational voters (though look who's saying so), but they're still human, and the fuzzier criteria, shorter active lives of posts, and volume of comments to scan through probably more than make up for this. (I could've made this same reply to other comments here.)
kleevr 16y ago
I kind of like hiding the points for active threads, maybe after 24 hours it could show the points. This would be helpful when
97s 16y ago
i agree. i miss being able to skim faster and determine what the community judges as a good reply, I know many others who feel the same way.
ANH 16y ago
I prefer not seeing the number of votes, and think lukifer's idea of a "view count or vote" model is great. A visible score attached to each comment seems to me somehow demeaning. But I've never been much for grades... And has been stated multiple times, the highly upvoted comments filter to the top already.
kedi_xed 16y ago
I did see that as '..bring back the upvote c*unt'. Thought it was a little harsh.
ronaldj 16y ago
I miss the voting. I don't even bother reading comments anymore.
mixmax 16y ago
I absolutely agree - and since it's impossible to know whether a top comment in a thread is there because it was just posted or because it has a lot of upvotes the sorting of the comments doesn't really give me any information. This begs the question: If I can't see the votes and have no easy way of knowing which comments are highly rated why have a voting system at all? What is the purpose if not to serve as a guideline for the users?
evo_9 16y ago
Thanks for posting this. This is exactly how I feel about it. The one upside to this change I guess is I'm spending much less time on H-N now.
espeed 16y ago
So have two types of browsers -- those who choose to see vote counts, and those that don't. And discount the votes of those that do.
Goladus 16y ago
Learn to read critically and think critically. You don't need prior knowledge on a subject to evaluate a comment. Look for sound logic. Identify and evaluate the assertions and any hidden assumptions. Vote counts are won't ever reliably reveal truth.
BoppreH 16y ago
Can we get a user preference, as the case with show_dead and topcolor? I don't see that could be bad for anyone. "Show score on posts: (yes/no)"
larsberg 16y ago
I hate to be "that guy," but I don't see why the count display isn't an option in our account panel. In the previous polls, people seemed to be split 50/50-ish. Unless pg, as HN Overlord, feels that either removing counts has a performance or pedagogical purpose, this option seems like a perfect candidate for an account setting.
- xnxn 16y ago
  You've hit upon the answer yourself: it can't be a preference because hiding the vote count is intended to have a corrective effect on the voting and commenting behavior of the community at large. If anyone could switch their vote count on, the majority would -- including myself -- to the detriment of us all.
blantonl 16y ago
Although I learn a lot from the comments on submissions, I tend to learn a lot more from the submissions themselves. Maybe the Hacker News team is trying to place more emphasis on submissions instead of comments?
dmak 16y ago
I, literally, stopped reading comments and even started to stop reading hacker news because I didn't feel like spending extra time to read through and filter out the informational comments.
b3b0p 16y ago
Maybe make the up / down votes on a comment a reward for participating on that thread. That is, if you up vote / down vote a comment and make a comment on that comment you can view that comments vote count. Does that make sense or did it come out sounding bad? Just a thought. I think I like it without knowing the vote count. Edit: Clarification.
raquo 16y ago
Hm, this post is only 2 hours old and is already 14th on the front page despite having 600+ points. Do all local posts disappear so fast from the front page, or is this one treated specially? Or maybe its upvote/downvote ratio is low?
bandushrew 16y ago
I am very sorry, but that is just wrong. Votes are not a reliable indication of whether or not a post is correct. They are a reliable indication of whether or not a post is popular. It does sometimes happen that a post is both correct and popular, but that is not something it is ever safe to rely on. 'Social Proof' is a fantasy that does not exist.
grellas 16y ago
Since HNers are so divided on this issue (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2445039 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2445039), why not do one month on, one month off for a time to do a sort of A/B testing over a sustained period while keeping everyone at least semi-happy half the time? This would have the added benefit of letting cumulative totals get updated on searchyc from time to time.
6ren 16y ago
Comment age is also a factor: an older comment has more points than a similarly ordered newer comment. So, when scanning downwards, score is inversely proportional to age.
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- mattdeboard 16y ago
  I have never. Ever. EVER. witnessed the top comment on an active HN thread be something "witty remarks that a lot of people found funny." Granted, I've only been here a year or so, but comment threads here do come very close to being a true meritocracy, where merit is a function is insight, relevance, wit and brevity. HN only feels like Reddit comment threads to me on these introspective topics. I avoid them for the most part but your comment in particular stood out to me.
JabavuAdams 16y ago
One issue I'd like to see explored more deeply is the path-dependence of a comment's final score. There's this often unstated assumption that "good" comments will rise to the top. What about this: 1) Display all comment scores, all the time 2) A new comment is posted 3) Segment the readership somehow, so that the comment has a (possibly different) score for each segment. E.g. Allow a comment to have 4 different scores. 4) Start the comment off with a random score in the range [-2, +2], but one that's different for each viewer segment 5) track (but hide) the number of upvotes and downvotes for each score 6) display just init + upvotes - downvotes to each segment
starpilot 16y ago
To new HN readers, the comments appear to be sorted randomly. There's no explanation for why some posts are at the top or bottom. That's a definite flaw of hiding the votecounts and could dissuade newcomers.
- billswift 16y ago
  It is also annoying when you post a reply and the comments have shifted order. I guess PG expects you to start reading the thread from the top again.
solid 16y ago
How about the Slashdot system? +1/5 Insightful/Funny/etc?
tokenadult 16y ago
When I first started reading HN I learned a TON very quickly and everyday about completely new stuff, and was able to do so because I could easily sort through the legitimacy of opinions based on their upvotes. And yet the founder of HN said 25 days ago that there is a problem with HN, "the decreasing quality of comment threads on HN." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696 He summed up the problem by saying "The problem has several components: comments that are (a) mean and/or (b) dumb that (c) get massively upvoted." If pg observed a situation like that, isn't it a bad idea to "sort through the legitimacy of opinions based on their upvotes"? A link and comment in another recent metadiscussion thread largely sums up the back-and-forth about visible comment scores as a signal on comments in active threads: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465357 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465357 >> Please bring back the comment scores. It helps a lot in parsing the comments and assigning a proportional weight to each when reading them. > I had to think about this a bit, and I disagree so far. I'm finding that I'm not pre-judging comments as much. It's nice to be able to read someone's comment without knowing first that 70 or 80 or 3 other people thought it was worthwhile. Once I had thought about that a bit, I reached the second conclusion. Readers on HN are gaining more quality comments as readers look at comments according to their inherent value and not upvoting or downvoting based on the crowd appeal of what someone else has already voted. Cognitive scientists have done a lot of research on what is called anchoring bias, http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/a/anchoring.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/a/anchoring.htm and I get the impression, after 892 days as a registered user of HN, that comment upvotes and downvotes for the last year or so have not been based on the same careful consideration of comment quality as they were in the early days of HN, but rather have been based too much on what net karma score is already displayed as people vote. I like the new comment score system of not displaying net comment scores on OTHER people's posts (of course I can still see my own comment scores) better than the previous system. In the spirit of pg's statement, I try to help the quality of HN by actively upvoting thoughtful, helpful comments, and being on the lookout for mean comments (which pg hopes will not be upvoted by anyone) and dumb comments (which surely don't help any users relying on comment scores to learn new facts) for downvoting those. A comment that is both mean and dumb ought to be downvoted, not upvoted. We can all do our part to help the quality of the community. In his thread, pg mentioned comments that are mean or dumb "that (c) get massively upvoted." With that condition of HN less than a month ago in mind, how do the highest-voted comments visible in the bestcomments list http://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments http://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments look to all of you recently? Are there fewer mean comments than before? Are there fewer dumb comments than before? Are the comments that are "massively upvoted" since the experiment began mostly comments that are reasonably kind and well-informed, helpful comments on the whole? In most of the treads you visit, do helpful, thoughtful comments seem to rise to a position of prominence, while mean or dumb comments gray out? Remember, pg's claim is that recently HN has not been a place where there is an "easy way for readers to differentiate the noise," but rather a place where the noise has had an attached badge of being signal rather than noise. That isn't good for anyone reading HN. As you correctly point out, we STILL have "the location on the page," which is useful at least for comparing multiple comments at the same reply level as a comment thread develops, and the actual sources and reasoning used by one or another user in supporting points made in comments. People who LOOK UP what the facts are can find out a lot about who is taking care to do good research and who is just making stuff up. And that's always the safest path to learning, to check the sources to verify other people's factual claims.
deleted 16y ago
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rexreed 16y ago
I don't understand this. I have no problem discerning good quality content and comments from bad quality. I just read stuff. It sounds intellectually lazy and quite possibly self-defeating to rely on the trivialities of other people's votes to determine what is important to YOU. After all, what is important to ME or not important to ME has nothing to do with what's important to YOU. The fact that you have stopped learning anything on HN, as you put it, has to do with YOU and not ME. So, don't blame the lack of votes. I wonder how you can get along in this world where you have to evaluate things at face value. In the "real world", there aren't point values and upvote/downvote nonsense on things. I hope HN gets rid of the point system altogether. I'm sure I'm in the minority.
bane 16y ago
Perhaps pg should set a point where the points are revealed, but additional voting is locked out (but not comments)? Perhaps 24-48 hours after an article is submitted? Then provide a link to those articles as they decay into that group for people who really need point confirmation to catch up on what the rest of the community thought?
_sh 16y ago
Here's a thought: maybe it's time to close HN. That's right, close it down. PG said all along HN was a production experiment for Arc, so maybe it's time to evaluate the hypothesis and conclude the experiment. All this hand-wringing about 'the community' and signal/noise indicates the membership has outmanoeuvred any means of wrangling it into some pre-conceived notion of 'quality'. For better or for worse, the thundering hoards of the internet have arrived and are drowning out the elitist clique. If that is bad for everybody, then it's time to shut up shop.
blhack 16y ago
To the people who think that comment points should not be visible: How do you go about choosing which books to read? Do you read all of them, are you exclusive to specific authors, or do you depend on your peers to make suggestions?
lhnn 16y ago
Could we have a hybrid? We don't need to see the exact number... what if massively upvoted (100+ points) got a green highlight on the "link" URL, and massively downvoted (-10 or more) get shaded, like they already do? This keeps the content from being so quickly judged, but eventually shows strong content that has been upvoted by hundreds without bias.
gsivil 16y ago
How come this post is not in the first page after 8 hours while the following post for example still is? Joel Spolsky: Lunch (joelonsoftware.com) 275 points by alexlmiller 12 hours ago | flag | 175 comments
- pluies 16y ago
  "Ask HN"-types posts (i.e. without a link) are heavily disadvantaged. They take more upvotes to get to the front page, and fall down faster.
  - gsivil 16y ago
    is there an explanation for that?
ilitirit 16y ago
I think the best solution would be for everyone to just start posting "better" commentary (and submissions), and revert back to the old ways of downvoting things that add no value to the discussion. The "old" HN was a lot drier (for lack of a better word), but the discussions were generally much more informative and/or insightful. I remember people complaining about getting downvoted for a comment that would have probably gotten many upvotes on other sites, and I was always pleased to that these in turn were downvoted as well. This doesn't seem to happen any more though, which is a shame IMO.
known 16y ago
What are the incentives for up/down voting?
fleitz 16y ago
The only thing you're no longer learning is groupthink. Be glad you aren't learning it. It's easy to learn in person, just parrot what everyone else is saying. You don't need HN to learn it. You realize that people game the upvote system right? Writing karma whore comments is so easy when you know the votes. If you really want to know the votes, just reverse engineer the algorithm, it will show you the relative votes.
fuckoff 16y ago
here here!
mattreading 16y ago
Karma is a form of currency. It's influence should be exploited not suffocated! There are ways to use it that would benefit the community.
c00p3r 16y ago
Jumping by upvotes from newbies and fanboys is very wrong approach to learning. ^_^
hkon 16y ago
Take any site like this, they all suffer from this problem when the number of users reach a certain point. I like the slashdot way of organizing stuff. Mods who actively moderate and categorize comments. It's more work, but the end result will be of higher quality.

1136 points by wdewind 16y ago

spencerfry 16y ago

I completely agree. I don't have time to read every comment. I miss being able to skim to crowd-sourced, high up-voted comments.

huhtenberg 16y ago
These high up-voted comments are still exactly where they were before - at the top of the thread.
- Malcx 16y ago
  Not always, that is only used to sort comments at the same level. Often a root comment may have had 2 or 3 points and a counter argument contained some useful insight and would be upvoted to 30+ Skim reading would allow me to spot this comment contains something worth reading...

mmaunder 16y ago

You need to ween yourself off your social proof addiction. The problem with vote counts is that two downvotes can start a cascade of reflex downvotes. Or at best, it won't get upvoted. When vote counts where active, this effect caused many instances where an excellent comment was found greyed out at the bottom of the page until a few smart HN folks with high karma voted it back up.

wdewind 16y ago
That is absolutely a fault in any social proof system. As I mentioned, upvotes need to be taken with a grain of salt. I still hold they are far superior to nothing. Edit: case in point: I'd REALLY like to know how many people upvoted mmaunders original comment.
- StavrosK 16y ago
  I must agree with this, I find this feature one of the most missed. It doesn't even have to show the number of upvotes, just anything that will tell me which of the posts is more highly upvoted in a relative manner (e.g. normalise all comments based on the highest ones on the page and use a 5-number/color/whatever scale).
  - mortuus 16y ago
    Having the information normalized as you suggest would be great. Breaking it up into a ~5 point scale (especially if it took advantage of visual cues) would save some mental effort. Perhaps relative font sizes?
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- Alex3917 16y ago
  "I still hold they are far superior to nothing." I disagree. Since the new system was implemented the signal:noise ratio seems to have gone up. The fact that HN is more difficult to read now is a good thing; it forces people to think for themselves, and improves the overall level of discussion. I do agree that the voting should be shown after a few days, but for right now the changes seem to be making things better.

cglee 16y ago

I like not seeing vote count, but agree with you that it's a handy metric to sift through the cruft. How about a color scheme to show popularity instead of the specific vote count?

wdewind 16y ago
Sure - to be clear I'm not tied to upvotes as a number specifically, and I doubt anyone else is. But give us SOMETHING.
- adharmad 16y ago
  How about sorting comments in any subtree by the number of votes? That way hierarchy indicates the comments with the highest number of votes, while hiding the actual number itself.
  - dwolfson20 16y ago
    That's the easiest and most effective solution, I think. But we could also do with an optional visual cue, since a lot of people want it.

pluies 16y ago

Yes please. Also, the poll at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2445039 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2445039 showed that most people agree.

Terretta 16y ago
And yet, an astonishing number prefer without. I'd argue that as the particular problem being worked on is increasing group think, this would be a perfect example of herd mentality or popularity contest leading us in the wrong direction. Throughout threads such as these, the general reason for votes is to avoid reading or to be told without thinking what to think, while the general reason given for preferring them gone is an elevation in discussion. The second was the stated goal for hiding them in the first place, and the first is the problem to combat -- glib votes.

sosuke 16y ago

The highly voted comments still float to the top of the page don't they? When I was only reading the highly voted commetns I started to feel like I was only getting the popular opinion, especially so when it came to touchy topics. If HN does decide to turn the count back on I'd love an option to turn it back off in my own profile.

wdewind 16y ago
The issue with this is we have no way to compare replies. I don't actually care how nodes on the same level of the tree compare to each other, I only care about how they compare to their children replies (ie: counter arguments).
hrktb 16y ago
Highly voted comments don't always stand up when the discussion gets into deep threads. I remember seeing a few threads with 20+ comments and one really insightful response in the middle changing the flow of the discussion. I feel it is now difficult to have an idea of this kind of "flow" at a glance. I'd love an option too show or hide the count. Or perhaps show the count when hovering or touching a link for a few seconds.
jasonlotito 16y ago
> The highly voted comments still float to the top of the page don't they? Highly voted parent comments. Child comments remain children of a parent.

masterzora 16y ago

I know I'm not really supposed to have an opinion on these things, being a recently-created account and all, but I must respectfully disagree. If you really want to learn, using upvotes as proxy for correctness is a suboptimal way to do so, especially regarding topics without any clear cut answers. Being new to this site, I've actually spent roughly equal amounts of time with and without vote counts an I've noticed a pretty big difference in my own habits. In particular, rather than acting like HN is an omniscient font of knowledge, I treat it much more like wikipedia: a springboard for further exploration of topics.

sebkomianos 16y ago

Having it as an option for everyone to choose if he/she wants it enabled or disabled could as well be a "solution"?

kmfrk 16y ago
That would completely defeat the purpose.

AgentConundrum 16y ago

I've noticed the same thing. I'll see a debate which is basically a thread of two people replying to each other with no other contributors. In this circumstance, it's impossible to distinguish between a situation where one person gets 10 upvotes and holds a well-agreed opinion and the other person gets 1 or 2 upvotes and is arguing his opinion just well enough to avoid being downvoted. I understand that we're supposed to form our own opinions as to who we agree with, but sometimes its just not reasonable to take the time to do enough research. Sometimes, you want to learn from someone that actually knows what they're talking about. Without some sort of vote indicator, it's hard to tell who has the most accurate opinion, except often in subjects like law, security, and seo where there are known experts that often chime in (e.g. grellas, tptacek, patio11). I'd suggest that a form of "fuzzy vote counts" be implemented. Something to indicate either a relative score ("this comment is substantially higher voted than its parent") or just an approximate value ("unvoted", "few votes", "many votes") without a specific score.

neild 16y ago
Without some sort of vote indicator, it's hard to tell who has the most accurate opinion, except often in subjects like law, security, and seo where there are known experts that often chime in (e.g. grellas, tptacek, patio11). You assume that votes are a good indicator of who holds the most accurate opinion. My experience says that they are merely an indicator of who holds the most popular opinion, or who argues their point in the most convincing fashion. The latter is a particularly insidious case, since accurate information does not always go hand in hand with good debating skills.
- ghshephard 16y ago
  I would agree with you. Most topics don't even really have a clear measurement of objective accuracy. And, even when they do, it's rare that votes reflect expert's analysis of accuracy. Rather, votes on HN typically reflect one of the following: O How well known is the individual - I'm even guilty of mindlessly clicking on a grellas comment when it has to do with Law, Security with tptacek, or patio11 on all sorts of things (Japan, Startups, SEO). O How popular is their opinion - once again, I sometimes do this myself - when I want an endorphine rush, or my day is slow, I'll go create a comment that I know adheres to HN Philiosophy, just to enjoy racking up 40 or 50 points. Juvenile, I know, but it _feels_ good. O How effective are they presenting - this is a bit of a mixed bag, and I'm happy to see that frequently very well argued positions are downvoted into oblivion because they are nonsense. :-) But, with that said - the first approach actually isn't too bad - grellas/tptacek/patio11 actually _are_ worth reading, and their opinions really do count for more than a random individual - so maybe the "this personis well known and has a good track record" vote does have merit.

famousactress 16y ago

I miss them also. Was a weighted voting discussed as an alternative? One where the up/down vote is weighted against the karma of the voter? Seems like that would help elevate big-karma users to sort of meta-moderators and might help soften the concerns about reflexive voting? And yeah, maybe for display the numbers aren't the best option.. just some sort of watered down "+" "++" "+++" type scheme...

kuroir 16y ago

The point you make is totally valid; and now that I think about it, when I was able to see the upvotes I could at a glance identify the answers with one or more of the following: 1. Correct Answer (real, like a founder answering about his app). 2. Popular Answer (comedy, something people "lol" to). Identifying the difference between those two is done with only common sense; but supposing you still lack of that, you can still feel what the community liked by looking at the numbers. "50 upvoted this" that must mean something vs "3 upvoted this"...

kuroir 16y ago

tolmasky 16y ago

What I found weird is that the points went away but the greying effect stayed. The truth is that that goes a lot further in making sure I don't ready unpopular views (with my eyes I often have to copy paste it to a text editor before I can read it comfortably). I would much prefer all comments be the same font color and being able to see the score so I can make my own decision as to whether to read it or not.

stretchwithme 16y ago
The fact that a comment is grayed out makes me want to read it.
- tolmasky 16y ago
  But seeing it say -10 wouldn't accomplish the same thing? Or are you implying that this is literally a swimming upstream situation for you and the shear physical difficulty of the task makes it appealing?

moxiemk1 16y ago

I feel the opposite - I'm learning more, because if I'm spending the time to read something, I have to think critically about it and do research sometimes in order to have a good interpretation. It takes more time, but it's real learning, instead of echo-chamber reading.

mike_h 16y ago
It's like it's gone from a cherry-picking exercise to an actual reading exercise. It requires more of a commitment, and it seems to keep the dialog on a more contemplative level. We're all speaking about "seems" and "feels" here, so it's coming down to impressions (not to mention taste differences), but some ideas for measuring the effect: - change in the "story point count"-to-"comment count" ratio - change in average current (and future?) karma of the people who do comment - change in average comment length None of these is an objective measure of quality, but they do indicate "change" which might help Paul or whoever make a decision about whether that change was desirable.

adaml_623 16y ago

I think you either need an upvote count or the ability to collapse comment threads.

gamble 16y ago

I've been trying to give it a chance, but so far it doesn't seem like hiding the vote counts has done anything to improve the quality of comments on HN. Honestly, I think it's had the opposite effect. The number of in-depth comments seems to have plummeted.

alex_c 16y ago
It's pretty hard to quantify quality of comments, and I've seen at least one other comment in this thread saying the quality of comments has gone up (personally, I'm undecided). I wonder how much one's perception of the change in comment quality is colored by their initial opinion about hidden comment scores.
allwein 16y ago
I've noticed that the people who seem to think that comment quality has gone down are the same people who used to skim and only read the high-voted comments. It seems like the people who used to read all of the comments regardless of vote, seem to think that comment quality has gone up. It's possible that the former groups impression of comment quality might be attributable to the fact that they are now reading lower quality comments that were always there, but which they weren't exposed to given their reading style.

runjake 16y ago

Or at least shove it in a div or span and hide it by default, so those of us who want it back can style it unhidden.

kmfrk 16y ago
That would completely defeat the purpose.
- runjake 16y ago
  because...?

besvinick 16y ago

I feel like all the articles that get posted on HN are ones that I come across through a variety of other sources (SAI, TechCrunch, etc.) on Twitter. I find HN to be much more useful for discussions that are started based off the aforementioned articles from other sites.

turar 16y ago

Will setting downvote display limit to 0 instead of -4 help?

teyc 16y ago

I disagree. It is forcing you to think for yourself. What do you want to learn here? What most HNers believe to be true, or do you want to learn to be independent?

blhack 16y ago
By "Be independent", do you mean "go and learn what people who have written books believe to be true"? Or do you mean "go and learn what people who have written forum posts believe to be true"?

grandalf 16y ago

Suggestion: Try getting dopamine from reading the comments instead of from game mechanics layered imperfectly on top of the forum.

stretchwithme 16y ago

Maybe there should be 2 modes. One for those just wanting to read and learn where they can see the votes but where the user is not allowed to vote. And one for those wishing to vote where they can't see and be influenced by the votes of others.

zwieback 16y ago

I'm not a heavy user of social networks so I don't know if this exists somewhere but why can't I have a customized view where posters I like are weighted more than others. Then I can do this: - The poster's weighting would show up as a color (good,better,best) - The product of the poster's weight and the popularity of the comment determines the order on the page Now I can look at the top of the page where very popular comments show up and then scroll toward the bottom and quickly identify any posters I really like I realize this wouldn't be too hard to do by scraping the comment page and maintaining my own database of favorite commenters.

merloen 16y ago

There are so much more possibilities than just "show vote counts" and "hide vote counts": different sort orders based on more than just votes, collapsing threads, marking people as friends, or adding them to a kill-file. Giving votes different weights based on karma, or average comment score. Tagging of articles, and filtering or sorting based on that. And so on, and so on. I understand that pg hasn't got the time to do all kinds of experiments, but this is HN, where more than half of us are great programmers. Give us a simple API and let us do our own experiments. That's all I want.

albertsun 16y ago

Why not have a (high) karma threshold, above which you can choose whether or not you want to see vote counts? I think respected, established members of the community would know themselves well enough to decide for themselves whether it's good or bad to personally have vote counts. FWIW: Below the threshold I think it's better to not have counts.

jshen 16y ago

"because I could easily sort through the legitimacy of opinions based on their upvotes. " This is a mistake. People frequently vote down things that are right because they don't understand the material as well as they think they do.

jasonlotito 16y ago
Except the mechanic for voting down (dimming out the comment) remains. Also, my experience is that the down votes are usually countered. Good comments get a good number of points. By removing points from comments, you've made points worthless for determining comment value. In that way, having them is pointless.

JabavuAdams 16y ago

Wow. I never realized that people paid attention to upvotes. This explains a lot... > Especially as an engineer who knows little about business, it was extremely helpful to get a community perspective on the startup stuff. It's not a community perspective. It's a positive feedback loop. > The value of HN, from the perspective of simply learning, has been destroyed for me since upvotes were hidden. Now, you're learning.

yosho 16y ago

Can we at least maybe have a star rating or color rating or something that lets us differentiate high voted comments from mediocre comments? It really does simply take too long to scan and read all the comments. Most of the time I'm just looking for interesting snippets of information, I simply don't have the time to read everything. Please bring something back, I find myself never reading the comments now.

knite 16y ago

I don't need to know a comment's score, just the score's magnitude provides a lot of utility. In the same way that a grayed-out comment signifies a poor reply, find a way to show me whether a comment is neutral, slightly positive, very positive, or stupendously positive.

FreshCode 16y ago

Hacker News needs a Meta HN.

tokenadult 16y ago
Hacker News has long had a rather rarely used Meta HN, the Feature Requests thread linked to from the bottom of most of the main pages on HN, such as the home page. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363

rriepe 16y ago

I could see this change working for other sites, but HN actually does have a sort of collective wisdom. I've also stopped looking at comments entirely. Before, I would sometimes click through to just read the comments. There was value there. It's not necessarily gone now, but it is much harder to find.

pnathan 16y ago

Agreed, votes are a good way to filter out the most of noise from the signal.

dengzhi 16y ago

i can't even post anymore

ssing 16y ago

Nowdays I just don't read beyond the first few comments. Request to please bring back the upvote count.

jimrandomh 16y ago

I don't use upvotes to decide what I agree with, I use them to decide what to read in the first place. Hiding the votes means I can no longer skim through a thread to pick out the comments that are gems; I'd have to read all the bad comments too. And this means that reading comments here is no longer worth my time, so I don't do it. This is definitely not the desired effect.

dmpatierno 16y ago
This is exactly how I feel. It's no longer an efficient use of my time.

zyfo 16y ago

Good comments are still put at the top. Mentally filter out the recent comments, and you should be able to see quite easily how "good" a comment is. I honestly don't see the big difference.

lupatus 16y ago

Lately, I've been reading the "new" headlines as opposed to the "top" headlines to find those hidden gems that _I_ think are interesting.

twodayslate 16y ago

I did not even notice they removed the vote count. It doesn't bother me. I don't know how to downvote either though

jsdalton 16y ago

I guess only pg can answer this, but I'm wondering how the change has impacted voting behavior. Have there been more or less votes per comment? Has the proportion of upvotes to downvotes changed? I get the sense that my comments have received more rather than less votes since the change. Previously, when a decent comment of mine had say 10 upvotes, I felt like people concluded "good enough" and didn't bother upvoting. Now without the score feedback, I actually feel like some of my mediocre comments have gotten more upvotes than they deserved. Some behavior data would go a long way toward confirming or denying hypotheses like these.

vinhboy 16y ago
why can't we just have a setting -- those who don't want it can turn it off...

eande 16y ago

every time someone posts this I add my 2 cents and say the same, please bring back the karma most useful.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

ddkrone 16y ago

Nonsense, upvotes are meaningless. You're just too lazy to filter the content yourself.

blhack 16y ago

I've said this in some of the other threads on this topic, but I'll say it again: The huge (and incorrect) assumption that people are making about upvotes is that everybody reading the comments is stupid. We're not using the upvote count as a 100% perfect indicator of if somebody is correct or not, we're using it as an indicator of how many upvotes the comment has gotten. It's just one of several things that we can use to judge a comment's merit. This information is useful, and I cannot fathom a benefit to withholding it.

abecedarius 16y ago
On stackoverflow the criteria for voting are considerably more concrete, yet it's clear that voting there is strongly biased by vote counts. HN might have more rational voters (though look who's saying so), but they're still human, and the fuzzier criteria, shorter active lives of posts, and volume of comments to scan through probably more than make up for this. (I could've made this same reply to other comments here.)

kleevr 16y ago

I kind of like hiding the points for active threads, maybe after 24 hours it could show the points. This would be helpful when

97s 16y ago

i agree. i miss being able to skim faster and determine what the community judges as a good reply, I know many others who feel the same way.

ANH 16y ago

I prefer not seeing the number of votes, and think lukifer's idea of a "view count or vote" model is great. A visible score attached to each comment seems to me somehow demeaning. But I've never been much for grades... And has been stated multiple times, the highly upvoted comments filter to the top already.

kedi_xed 16y ago

I did see that as '..bring back the upvote c*unt'. Thought it was a little harsh.

ronaldj 16y ago

I miss the voting. I don't even bother reading comments anymore.

mixmax 16y ago

I absolutely agree - and since it's impossible to know whether a top comment in a thread is there because it was just posted or because it has a lot of upvotes the sorting of the comments doesn't really give me any information. This begs the question: If I can't see the votes and have no easy way of knowing which comments are highly rated why have a voting system at all? What is the purpose if not to serve as a guideline for the users?

evo_9 16y ago

Thanks for posting this. This is exactly how I feel about it. The one upside to this change I guess is I'm spending much less time on H-N now.

espeed 16y ago

So have two types of browsers -- those who choose to see vote counts, and those that don't. And discount the votes of those that do.

Goladus 16y ago

Learn to read critically and think critically. You don't need prior knowledge on a subject to evaluate a comment. Look for sound logic. Identify and evaluate the assertions and any hidden assumptions. Vote counts are won't ever reliably reveal truth.

BoppreH 16y ago

Can we get a user preference, as the case with show_dead and topcolor? I don't see that could be bad for anyone. "Show score on posts: (yes/no)"

larsberg 16y ago

I hate to be "that guy," but I don't see why the count display isn't an option in our account panel. In the previous polls, people seemed to be split 50/50-ish. Unless pg, as HN Overlord, feels that either removing counts has a performance or pedagogical purpose, this option seems like a perfect candidate for an account setting.

xnxn 16y ago
You've hit upon the answer yourself: it can't be a preference because hiding the vote count is intended to have a corrective effect on the voting and commenting behavior of the community at large. If anyone could switch their vote count on, the majority would -- including myself -- to the detriment of us all.

blantonl 16y ago

Although I learn a lot from the comments on submissions, I tend to learn a lot more from the submissions themselves. Maybe the Hacker News team is trying to place more emphasis on submissions instead of comments?

dmak 16y ago

I, literally, stopped reading comments and even started to stop reading hacker news because I didn't feel like spending extra time to read through and filter out the informational comments.

b3b0p 16y ago

Maybe make the up / down votes on a comment a reward for participating on that thread. That is, if you up vote / down vote a comment and make a comment on that comment you can view that comments vote count. Does that make sense or did it come out sounding bad? Just a thought. I think I like it without knowing the vote count. Edit: Clarification.

raquo 16y ago

Hm, this post is only 2 hours old and is already 14th on the front page despite having 600+ points. Do all local posts disappear so fast from the front page, or is this one treated specially? Or maybe its upvote/downvote ratio is low?

bandushrew 16y ago

I am very sorry, but that is just wrong. Votes are not a reliable indication of whether or not a post is correct. They are a reliable indication of whether or not a post is popular. It does sometimes happen that a post is both correct and popular, but that is not something it is ever safe to rely on. 'Social Proof' is a fantasy that does not exist.

grellas 16y ago

Since HNers are so divided on this issue (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2445039 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2445039), why not do one month on, one month off for a time to do a sort of A/B testing over a sustained period while keeping everyone at least semi-happy half the time? This would have the added benefit of letting cumulative totals get updated on searchyc from time to time.

6ren 16y ago

Comment age is also a factor: an older comment has more points than a similarly ordered newer comment. So, when scanning downwards, score is inversely proportional to age.

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mattdeboard 16y ago
I have never. Ever. EVER. witnessed the top comment on an active HN thread be something "witty remarks that a lot of people found funny." Granted, I've only been here a year or so, but comment threads here do come very close to being a true meritocracy, where merit is a function is insight, relevance, wit and brevity. HN only feels like Reddit comment threads to me on these introspective topics. I avoid them for the most part but your comment in particular stood out to me.

JabavuAdams 16y ago

One issue I'd like to see explored more deeply is the path-dependence of a comment's final score. There's this often unstated assumption that "good" comments will rise to the top. What about this: 1) Display all comment scores, all the time 2) A new comment is posted 3) Segment the readership somehow, so that the comment has a (possibly different) score for each segment. E.g. Allow a comment to have 4 different scores. 4) Start the comment off with a random score in the range [-2, +2], but one that's different for each viewer segment 5) track (but hide) the number of upvotes and downvotes for each score 6) display just init + upvotes - downvotes to each segment

starpilot 16y ago

To new HN readers, the comments appear to be sorted randomly. There's no explanation for why some posts are at the top or bottom. That's a definite flaw of hiding the votecounts and could dissuade newcomers.

billswift 16y ago
It is also annoying when you post a reply and the comments have shifted order. I guess PG expects you to start reading the thread from the top again.

solid 16y ago

How about the Slashdot system? +1/5 Insightful/Funny/etc?

tokenadult 16y ago

When I first started reading HN I learned a TON very quickly and everyday about completely new stuff, and was able to do so because I could easily sort through the legitimacy of opinions based on their upvotes. And yet the founder of HN said 25 days ago that there is a problem with HN, "the decreasing quality of comment threads on HN." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403696 He summed up the problem by saying "The problem has several components: comments that are (a) mean and/or (b) dumb that (c) get massively upvoted." If pg observed a situation like that, isn't it a bad idea to "sort through the legitimacy of opinions based on their upvotes"? A link and comment in another recent metadiscussion thread largely sums up the back-and-forth about visible comment scores as a signal on comments in active threads: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465357 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465357 >> Please bring back the comment scores. It helps a lot in parsing the comments and assigning a proportional weight to each when reading them. > I had to think about this a bit, and I disagree so far. I'm finding that I'm not pre-judging comments as much. It's nice to be able to read someone's comment without knowing first that 70 or 80 or 3 other people thought it was worthwhile. Once I had thought about that a bit, I reached the second conclusion. Readers on HN are gaining more quality comments as readers look at comments according to their inherent value and not upvoting or downvoting based on the crowd appeal of what someone else has already voted. Cognitive scientists have done a lot of research on what is called anchoring bias, http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/a/anchoring.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/a/anchoring.htm and I get the impression, after 892 days as a registered user of HN, that comment upvotes and downvotes for the last year or so have not been based on the same careful consideration of comment quality as they were in the early days of HN, but rather have been based too much on what net karma score is already displayed as people vote. I like the new comment score system of not displaying net comment scores on OTHER people's posts (of course I can still see my own comment scores) better than the previous system. In the spirit of pg's statement, I try to help the quality of HN by actively upvoting thoughtful, helpful comments, and being on the lookout for mean comments (which pg hopes will not be upvoted by anyone) and dumb comments (which surely don't help any users relying on comment scores to learn new facts) for downvoting those. A comment that is both mean and dumb ought to be downvoted, not upvoted. We can all do our part to help the quality of the community. In his thread, pg mentioned comments that are mean or dumb "that (c) get massively upvoted." With that condition of HN less than a month ago in mind, how do the highest-voted comments visible in the bestcomments list http://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments http://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments look to all of you recently? Are there fewer mean comments than before? Are there fewer dumb comments than before? Are the comments that are "massively upvoted" since the experiment began mostly comments that are reasonably kind and well-informed, helpful comments on the whole? In most of the treads you visit, do helpful, thoughtful comments seem to rise to a position of prominence, while mean or dumb comments gray out? Remember, pg's claim is that recently HN has not been a place where there is an "easy way for readers to differentiate the noise," but rather a place where the noise has had an attached badge of being signal rather than noise. That isn't good for anyone reading HN. As you correctly point out, we STILL have "the location on the page," which is useful at least for comparing multiple comments at the same reply level as a comment thread develops, and the actual sources and reasoning used by one or another user in supporting points made in comments. People who LOOK UP what the facts are can find out a lot about who is taking care to do good research and who is just making stuff up. And that's always the safest path to learning, to check the sources to verify other people's factual claims.

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rexreed 16y ago

I don't understand this. I have no problem discerning good quality content and comments from bad quality. I just read stuff. It sounds intellectually lazy and quite possibly self-defeating to rely on the trivialities of other people's votes to determine what is important to YOU. After all, what is important to ME or not important to ME has nothing to do with what's important to YOU. The fact that you have stopped learning anything on HN, as you put it, has to do with YOU and not ME. So, don't blame the lack of votes. I wonder how you can get along in this world where you have to evaluate things at face value. In the "real world", there aren't point values and upvote/downvote nonsense on things. I hope HN gets rid of the point system altogether. I'm sure I'm in the minority.

bane 16y ago

Perhaps pg should set a point where the points are revealed, but additional voting is locked out (but not comments)? Perhaps 24-48 hours after an article is submitted? Then provide a link to those articles as they decay into that group for people who really need point confirmation to catch up on what the rest of the community thought?

_sh 16y ago

Here's a thought: maybe it's time to close HN. That's right, close it down. PG said all along HN was a production experiment for Arc, so maybe it's time to evaluate the hypothesis and conclude the experiment. All this hand-wringing about 'the community' and signal/noise indicates the membership has outmanoeuvred any means of wrangling it into some pre-conceived notion of 'quality'. For better or for worse, the thundering hoards of the internet have arrived and are drowning out the elitist clique. If that is bad for everybody, then it's time to shut up shop.

blhack 16y ago

To the people who think that comment points should not be visible: How do you go about choosing which books to read? Do you read all of them, are you exclusive to specific authors, or do you depend on your peers to make suggestions?

lhnn 16y ago

Could we have a hybrid? We don't need to see the exact number... what if massively upvoted (100+ points) got a green highlight on the "link" URL, and massively downvoted (-10 or more) get shaded, like they already do? This keeps the content from being so quickly judged, but eventually shows strong content that has been upvoted by hundreds without bias.

gsivil 16y ago

How come this post is not in the first page after 8 hours while the following post for example still is? Joel Spolsky: Lunch (joelonsoftware.com) 275 points by alexlmiller 12 hours ago | flag | 175 comments

pluies 16y ago
"Ask HN"-types posts (i.e. without a link) are heavily disadvantaged. They take more upvotes to get to the front page, and fall down faster.
- gsivil 16y ago
  is there an explanation for that?

ilitirit 16y ago

I think the best solution would be for everyone to just start posting "better" commentary (and submissions), and revert back to the old ways of downvoting things that add no value to the discussion. The "old" HN was a lot drier (for lack of a better word), but the discussions were generally much more informative and/or insightful. I remember people complaining about getting downvoted for a comment that would have probably gotten many upvotes on other sites, and I was always pleased to that these in turn were downvoted as well. This doesn't seem to happen any more though, which is a shame IMO.

known 16y ago

What are the incentives for up/down voting?

fleitz 16y ago

The only thing you're no longer learning is groupthink. Be glad you aren't learning it. It's easy to learn in person, just parrot what everyone else is saying. You don't need HN to learn it. You realize that people game the upvote system right? Writing karma whore comments is so easy when you know the votes. If you really want to know the votes, just reverse engineer the algorithm, it will show you the relative votes.

fuckoff 16y ago

here here!

mattreading 16y ago

Karma is a form of currency. It's influence should be exploited not suffocated! There are ways to use it that would benefit the community.

c00p3r 16y ago

Jumping by upvotes from newbies and fanboys is very wrong approach to learning. ^_^

hkon 16y ago

Take any site like this, they all suffer from this problem when the number of users reach a certain point. I like the slashdot way of organizing stuff. Mods who actively moderate and categorize comments. It's more work, but the end result will be of higher quality.