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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 bes

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
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- 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.
  - wdewind 16y ago
    Removing the obvious noise comments like "+1", "lol", bad jokes etc. how are you defining signal and noise? This is my entire point: I don't care about the points when I know about the topic, it's when I'm not qualified to decide what is signal and noise that they are valuable. I can't agree that the signal noise ratio has gone up since the system changed, though this is a subjective, unmeasurable point.
  - randallsquared 16y ago
    It may improve the "level of discussion" in some abstract way, but it certainly does make it less useful for individual readers. It was common, before, for me to jump into the comments of a dicussion, check out the few highest rated ones, and then read the article with that information in mind, coming back to read other comments after that. With nothing to differentiate upvoted comments (unless they happen to be at the same thread level in the same thread), there's no way for me to do that, now. I don't view this as a good thing.
    - JabavuAdams 16y ago
      Maybe it's making the site less useful to those who are making the site less useful.
      - randallsquared 16y ago
        Well, thanks for being direct, at least.
      - alain94040 16y ago
        You don't seem to accept that other people may have different tastes than you. I often use the vote count to be more efficient in getting a grasp of the issues quickly, without reading everything. Great for you if you like to read everything from start to finish. Not everyone does, at least not all the time.
        JabavuAdams 16y ago
- ajj 16y ago
  I agree. In terms of learning new things, the vote count helps tremendously! You can tell that a security-related suggestion earning 50 up votes is sound (of course considering context), technology-wise. I've learned a lot about passwords, plaintext, server-side hashing, salting and related best-practices solely from HN comments. Displaying scores might make the other aspects troubling (since group-think is supported unnecessarily, often disregarding novel thoughts or disagreements). But I've learned to ignore such things, especially since most of the conflicts are "opinions" anyway, so the value addition is somewhat limited. In terms of actual facts and expertise though, nothing can beat the vote count! Having said that, I am still not sure which one I prefer given that there is inherently a tradeoff between the two aspects.
  - JabavuAdams 16y ago
    > In terms of learning new things, the vote count helps tremendously! You can tell that a security-related suggestion earning 50 up votes is sound (of course considering context), technology-wise. No, absolutely not! You can only tell that other non-experts agree in some path-dependent fashion. I'll occasionally see highly-upvoted nonsense in an area that I'm expert in. This is very bad. This is some kind of cognitive bias. EDIT> I should clarify that it's entirely possible for experts to disagree. So this isn't the you disagree with me so you dumb argument.
    - kenjackson 16y ago
      But that's a great opportunity for the expert to step in and say something valuable in reply. The high upvote count of the "wrong" response will lead to your response getting more readers. The fact is we're already half way bought in to this "social bias". Otherwise just get rid of the voting altogether. Get rid of karma. In fact, get rid of associating usernames with comments. But I think everyone realizes, even if they don't like to admit it, that social context provides some value, even if not perfect.
      - JabavuAdams 16y ago
        > Get rid of karma. In fact, get rid of associating usernames with comments. These two things are very different. I'd be all for getting rid of karma, but usernames provide identity. I.e. when evaluating someone's comment it would be good to see other comments they've made that might provide insight into their biases. 1) username <-> insight into what you think over time 2) karma <-> insight into how popular your comments are I want (1) and not (2) for my own learning. (2) is interesting in terms of studying group behaviour.
deleted 16y ago
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mikx 16y ago
This is the internet, the best and truthiest will always float up eventually. Having a poorer experience is a perpetual compromise for something that can be corrected by vigilant readers.
lukifer 16y ago
Idea: a [view count] link. Once clicked, votes are ignored for that comment. You can vote, or get the social proof, but not both.
- mmaunder 16y ago
  That's quite brilliant. How about up, down and abstain buttons and if you click any you get to see the vote count and you're done voting. It will encourage voting, remove the social proof influence and give the option to abstain.
  - alexgartrell 16y ago
    There should be an option to abstain from voting as well, for those that don't know if it's a valid comment or not.
    - nathanb 16y ago
      Isn't that just called "not voting"?
      - angusgr 16y ago
        I think they mean "not voting but still being able to see how people voted on that particular comment"
        allwein 16y ago
        About 4 seconds after that feature was implemented, someone would write a greasemonkey script that clicks all the abstain buttons for an HN article.
        angusgr 16y ago
        If you choose to run that script then you're choosing to not vote at all (assuming votes can't be changed, which they can't now.) Which means you can't contribute to the "social confirmation up/down vote pile-on" problem either. So that particular problem would remain solved.
MichaelApproved 16y ago
But even you admit that eventually the excellent comment would eventually make it's way back up. Maybe the solution is to only show positive vote counts. We were already stopped at -4, so not showing any count unless it's above 1 isn't that far off.
siddhant 16y ago
> The problem with vote counts is that two downvotes can start a cascade of reflex downvotes. If the comment is good, eventually its going to float up to the top anyway. An excellent article submitted at a time when most HN folks are away is less likely to hit the front page. This is a problem similar to what you mention. Hiding comment scores, IMHO is not the solution. Rather, it just kills the HN experience (at least for me).
joelangeway 16y ago
You put that excellently. Indeed, Hacker News was and should be a place where social proof is not desired.
- jacques_chester 16y ago
  Everyone agrees that social proof is deleterious.
  - ericd 16y ago
    Not true, otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion - the OP is saying that it's a necessary filter.
    - randallsquared 16y ago
      "Everyone agrees"? :)
      - jacques_chester 16y ago
        Everyone agrees that my sarcastic jokes are funny. Especially the metajokes.
      - ericd 16y ago
        Yeah, I should have more faith in the commenters. Not used to attempts at humor here...
    - zspade 16y ago
      How can I see who's winning this argument without seeing the vote-count!
  - deleted 16y ago
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- wdewind 16y ago
  And yet what we've left in is the feedback mechanism that provides people a self-centered understanding of how well the community receives them. ie: People are still "scoring points," though maybe we have made the points less valuable.
Sakes 16y ago
I definitely agree, having upvotes visible fostered a herd mentality. What I really like is there is less of a knee jerk reaction to assigning value to a post. You can assume it's value based upon placement, but in order to determine it's value you must actually read what they say. What I don't understand is why people need to be told what is valuable. With an ever changing community, I don't see how you could forever trust it's ability to tell you what is a quality post and what is noise. I find myself upvoting less as a result of this change because the post must actually persuade me to upvote it without the influence of the group mentality. This means my upvotes are now more meaningful, and I think that is a good thing. I believe many people are having similar experiences.
- wdewind 16y ago
  You're right about the herd mentality, but that's the whole point: measuring the herd mentality has a value. No one is asking you to put 100% of your judgment in the point count, and you'd be a fool to do so, much as you'd be a fool to believe everything you see on TV. Showing points does not kill HNers brains. We've already lost if it does.
  - ericd 16y ago
    It has far less value than you might think. When this community was 100% startuppers, that worked better, but now there are so many people who don't have first hand experience that are willing to upvote anything that sounds correct that it's lost a lot of its value. It's now a dangerous positive feedback loop. High vote counts tend to be very convincing to all but the most discriminating people, it's not the mark of a fool to believe what everyone is telling them is correct, just a sign of inexperience with that topic.
    - wdewind 16y ago
      What you've just told me is the community is broken, not the system.
      - 16y ago
nyellin 16y ago
On the whole, I concur. However, for comments like your own, the votes are interesting, as a rough measure of whether the HN community agrees with you or not. (It's a rough measure because upvoting!=agreeing.) Clarification: I don't want to bring back vote counts, or even a general indicator of votes, like others have suggested. I approve of the hiding votes, but a creative compromise could be better than what we have now.
- JCB_K 16y ago
  * a rough measure of whether the HN community agrees with you or not.* It shouldn't be. Like you said, upvoting!=agreeing. It should be a rough measure of you making your point in a good way.
  - ugh 16y ago
    I think there is a problem with the “upvote doesn’t imply agreement” dictum. It doesn’t make all that much sense to me, at least not in all situations. I can imagine an eloquent, well written movie review with which I don’t agree but which I think is so well written that it should be read by more people. That’s taste and you should certainly not downvote taste, but most discussions on HN are not about taste but rather about questions with right and wrong answers. When I’m disagreeing with someone about those I must be thinking that what the person writes is based on wrong facts or is illogical. Should users be encouraged to upvote eloquent and well written comments even if they think those comments are spreading false information and are illogical? (Whether or not such comments should be downvoted is a different question. I tend not to.) It’s never quite that clear cut in the real world. You might feel that the facts are wrong or that some illogical argument is hiding somewhere in the comment but you might not be sure about it. Upvoting may be the right thing to do, then – the comment can be seen by a wider audience and it can come under more scrutiny. The comment and its analysis can help all parties to get closer to the truth. There is no doubt to me that there are situations in which upvoting despite disagreement can be a good idea. I also think that upvoting because of agreement and not upvoting because of disagreement can be a good idea. On a certain level, agreement and “making your point in a good way” are one and the same. No matter how eloquent, how can a comment with factual errors that undermine its central thesis ever be an example of “making your point in a good way”?
jasonlotito 16y ago
> The problem with vote counts is that two downvotes can start a cascade of reflex downvotes. So? As you said, this is usually corrected. And, if points don't matter as so many people want to suggest, where is the harm in having some indicator of a posts quality. Please note indicator does not mean points. I've been suggesting for some time now that high quality posts should be marked in some manner. No, rising to the top of the page is not a good manner, as it only affects parent posts. Downvoted posts already get this treatment, even under the current system. In fact, without some sort of quality indicator, points are useless. Finally, their is a lot of discussion about how lack of points force people to read and research. That's all well and good, but I'm smart enough to know that I can't research everything, and their is value in knowing what the community thinks of a topic. It helps to steer me in the right direction. Basically... If you aren't going to use points to highlight good comments, then having points is useless, and they only serve those who think karma is worth anything.
petercooper 16y ago
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. Why would the people need "high karma" to vote it back up? I ask this as someone with high karma. "showdead" is an option available to anyone, isn't it? I don't know the answer but I've always had it turned on at least.
d0m 16y ago
But then, you need to have a little faith in HN and PG. Best posts are usually shown first. Try that: Check a new post and try to guess the votes for the posts at the top of the page. It's still the same algorithm as before.. posts with -4 are shown in light gray.. high voted posts are shown first, etc.
munderwood 16y ago
What if the net number of votes a comment has received is hidden whenever it is between -10 and +10 (for example)? That way you are able to tell that a comment hasn't yet been rated highly, but also can't jump on the bandwagon of voting whichever direction the first couple of voters do. When a comment has a votecount somewhere near zero, you still have to think about it yourself (if you want to read it), but can also choose to ignore it if you only want to read already highly rated ones. If a comment at some point has, say, 12 votes and then receives three downvotes, it would return to the nebulous "small vote-count" status. Another scheme I've liked on some sites is to show the counts for both up and downvotes, along with the total. A comment's having 10 upvotes and zero downvotes can be quite different from its having 100 upvotes and 90 downvotes, even though both equate to a net count of +10.
mixmax 16y ago
This is a minor detail that might or might or might not be significant. I personally don't see a lot of comments with negative votes that weren't deserved, but maybe you frequent other threads than I do. On the other hand, I agree with the OP that not showing the votes has significant downsides. For instance, I don't know whether your comment is something a lot of people agree on (it has a lot of upvotes) or it has just been posted two seconds ago, and is thus the top comment. You won't know whether other people agree with my comment either. This becomes even worse when it's a discussion about something like security - if someone posts a comment saying that you should always use md5 encryption and someone else replies that this is wrong and you should always use bcrypt which is right? I simply don't know, even though one of the answers may be obviously correct and the other obviously incorrect. Besides - low scores are about the same as they were before, and high scores are a bit higher. Source: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465002 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465002
- deleted 16y ago
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- alain94040 16y ago
  Agreed (if you don't like short comments like mine, bring back the vote count and I'll happily upvote the parent)
  - jaxn 16y ago
    Whereas before this would have gotten downvoted, but there is now no meaningful way to communicate your agreement than to leave a comment.
    - rch 16y ago
      I like the chain of comments more than an up-vote.
    - derefr 16y ago
      Why do you need to communicate your agreement? I receive no benefit from knowing that you, as an individual, like something.
blhack 16y ago
I hate this assumption that everybody on HN is stupid. We're not. HN is one of the smartest communities on the internet. I'm not saying that everybody here is completely immune to what you're talking about, but this isn't digg. We're not just going to heap on the downvotes because we're trying to follow the pack. In fact I've found the opposite to be true; HNers seem to be really good about correcting downvotes. Compare the bottom comments here to the bottom comments at reddit if you don't believe me. And what you're saying isn't fixed by hiding vote counts, downvoted comments still appear grayed out.
- docgnome 16y ago
  I agree with what you're saying, but I'm not entirely sure this is a totally conscious reflex. I'd be interested in seeing a study where comments are rated with one set showing a low or negative score, the same comment with a high score, and then again with a neutral score. Given to three different groups of course.
- rexreed 16y ago
  I agree that we're smart. That's why I think we can all read things. Points add little value to a good comment, or detract substantially from a bad one. If you don't have time to read, you shouldn't be participating in an active forum like this.
  - blhack 16y ago
    Do you also apply this logic to books in a library? How do you choose which ones to read? Do you read all of them? I think if you don't have time to read all of the books and judge them on their merits, then you shouldn't be participating in an activity like reading books.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - phaylon 16y ago
      If I'm interested in a book, I tend to read user reviews. A "351 people said this book is great" note won't help me much. I do the same thing for electronics. And most other things too, when the number of choices isn't very limited already, come to think of it.
Bud 16y ago
Hard to count the ways in which mmaunder is wrong here, but let's try: >You need to ween yourself off your social proof addiction. Judgmental and prescriptive much? >The problem with vote counts is that two downvotes can start a cascade of reflex downvotes. a) You're guessing b) Is that really "a problem" c) Said "cascade" can only actually amount to 3 additional downvotes before the -4 limit is hit. Not much of a "cascade". >Or at best, it won't get upvoted. How do you know this? And if you do know it, why are you contradicting it in your very next sentence? >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. Yeah, this sentence. Anyway, the effect also "caused" many stupid comments to be rightly downvoted. BTW, high karma does not equal "smartness"; but it's interesting that you seem to like high karma so very much, since your rating is rather high, but hate displaying the accumulated karma on actual posts. Who precisely is "addicted", here?
- billswift 16y ago
  The -4 limit was discontinued months ago. Other than that, I agree.
Sukotto 16y ago
You need to ween yourself off your social proof addiction I think you are making an unwarranted assumption about the OP. The OP, like me, gained a great deal of value from knowing the vote counts of comments. In much the same way I (and presumably s/he) gain value from knowing the score and comment count of the post itself. Vote counts were not perfect indicator of value, but they were better than having to guess at comment quality by observing the relative position of comments vs posting time. [edit] Interesting. The comments from mixmax (29 minutes ago | http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2495535 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2495535) and blhack (20 minutes ago | http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2495561 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2495561) show higher than my brand new one. Presumably that means quite a few other people have voted them up in agreement

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
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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.
- wdewind 16y ago
  Removing the obvious noise comments like "+1", "lol", bad jokes etc. how are you defining signal and noise? This is my entire point: I don't care about the points when I know about the topic, it's when I'm not qualified to decide what is signal and noise that they are valuable. I can't agree that the signal noise ratio has gone up since the system changed, though this is a subjective, unmeasurable point.
- randallsquared 16y ago
  It may improve the "level of discussion" in some abstract way, but it certainly does make it less useful for individual readers. It was common, before, for me to jump into the comments of a dicussion, check out the few highest rated ones, and then read the article with that information in mind, coming back to read other comments after that. With nothing to differentiate upvoted comments (unless they happen to be at the same thread level in the same thread), there's no way for me to do that, now. I don't view this as a good thing.
  - JabavuAdams 16y ago
    Maybe it's making the site less useful to those who are making the site less useful.
    - randallsquared 16y ago
      Well, thanks for being direct, at least.
    - alain94040 16y ago
      You don't seem to accept that other people may have different tastes than you. I often use the vote count to be more efficient in getting a grasp of the issues quickly, without reading everything. Great for you if you like to read everything from start to finish. Not everyone does, at least not all the time.
      - JabavuAdams 16y ago
ajj 16y ago
I agree. In terms of learning new things, the vote count helps tremendously! You can tell that a security-related suggestion earning 50 up votes is sound (of course considering context), technology-wise. I've learned a lot about passwords, plaintext, server-side hashing, salting and related best-practices solely from HN comments. Displaying scores might make the other aspects troubling (since group-think is supported unnecessarily, often disregarding novel thoughts or disagreements). But I've learned to ignore such things, especially since most of the conflicts are "opinions" anyway, so the value addition is somewhat limited. In terms of actual facts and expertise though, nothing can beat the vote count! Having said that, I am still not sure which one I prefer given that there is inherently a tradeoff between the two aspects.
- JabavuAdams 16y ago
  > In terms of learning new things, the vote count helps tremendously! You can tell that a security-related suggestion earning 50 up votes is sound (of course considering context), technology-wise. No, absolutely not! You can only tell that other non-experts agree in some path-dependent fashion. I'll occasionally see highly-upvoted nonsense in an area that I'm expert in. This is very bad. This is some kind of cognitive bias. EDIT> I should clarify that it's entirely possible for experts to disagree. So this isn't the you disagree with me so you dumb argument.
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    But that's a great opportunity for the expert to step in and say something valuable in reply. The high upvote count of the "wrong" response will lead to your response getting more readers. The fact is we're already half way bought in to this "social bias". Otherwise just get rid of the voting altogether. Get rid of karma. In fact, get rid of associating usernames with comments. But I think everyone realizes, even if they don't like to admit it, that social context provides some value, even if not perfect.
    - JabavuAdams 16y ago
      > Get rid of karma. In fact, get rid of associating usernames with comments. These two things are very different. I'd be all for getting rid of karma, but usernames provide identity. I.e. when evaluating someone's comment it would be good to see other comments they've made that might provide insight into their biases. 1) username <-> insight into what you think over time 2) karma <-> insight into how popular your comments are I want (1) and not (2) for my own learning. (2) is interesting in terms of studying group behaviour.

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mikx 16y ago

This is the internet, the best and truthiest will always float up eventually. Having a poorer experience is a perpetual compromise for something that can be corrected by vigilant readers.

lukifer 16y ago

Idea: a [view count] link. Once clicked, votes are ignored for that comment. You can vote, or get the social proof, but not both.

mmaunder 16y ago
That's quite brilliant. How about up, down and abstain buttons and if you click any you get to see the vote count and you're done voting. It will encourage voting, remove the social proof influence and give the option to abstain.
- alexgartrell 16y ago
  There should be an option to abstain from voting as well, for those that don't know if it's a valid comment or not.
  - nathanb 16y ago
    Isn't that just called "not voting"?
    - angusgr 16y ago
      I think they mean "not voting but still being able to see how people voted on that particular comment"
      - allwein 16y ago
        About 4 seconds after that feature was implemented, someone would write a greasemonkey script that clicks all the abstain buttons for an HN article.
        angusgr 16y ago
        If you choose to run that script then you're choosing to not vote at all (assuming votes can't be changed, which they can't now.) Which means you can't contribute to the "social confirmation up/down vote pile-on" problem either. So that particular problem would remain solved.

MichaelApproved 16y ago

But even you admit that eventually the excellent comment would eventually make it's way back up. Maybe the solution is to only show positive vote counts. We were already stopped at -4, so not showing any count unless it's above 1 isn't that far off.

siddhant 16y ago

> The problem with vote counts is that two downvotes can start a cascade of reflex downvotes. If the comment is good, eventually its going to float up to the top anyway. An excellent article submitted at a time when most HN folks are away is less likely to hit the front page. This is a problem similar to what you mention. Hiding comment scores, IMHO is not the solution. Rather, it just kills the HN experience (at least for me).

joelangeway 16y ago

You put that excellently. Indeed, Hacker News was and should be a place where social proof is not desired.

jacques_chester 16y ago
Everyone agrees that social proof is deleterious.
- ericd 16y ago
  Not true, otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion - the OP is saying that it's a necessary filter.
  - randallsquared 16y ago
    "Everyone agrees"? :)
    - jacques_chester 16y ago
      Everyone agrees that my sarcastic jokes are funny. Especially the metajokes.
    - ericd 16y ago
      Yeah, I should have more faith in the commenters. Not used to attempts at humor here...
  - zspade 16y ago
    How can I see who's winning this argument without seeing the vote-count!
- deleted 16y ago
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wdewind 16y ago
And yet what we've left in is the feedback mechanism that provides people a self-centered understanding of how well the community receives them. ie: People are still "scoring points," though maybe we have made the points less valuable.

Sakes 16y ago

I definitely agree, having upvotes visible fostered a herd mentality. What I really like is there is less of a knee jerk reaction to assigning value to a post. You can assume it's value based upon placement, but in order to determine it's value you must actually read what they say. What I don't understand is why people need to be told what is valuable. With an ever changing community, I don't see how you could forever trust it's ability to tell you what is a quality post and what is noise. I find myself upvoting less as a result of this change because the post must actually persuade me to upvote it without the influence of the group mentality. This means my upvotes are now more meaningful, and I think that is a good thing. I believe many people are having similar experiences.

wdewind 16y ago
You're right about the herd mentality, but that's the whole point: measuring the herd mentality has a value. No one is asking you to put 100% of your judgment in the point count, and you'd be a fool to do so, much as you'd be a fool to believe everything you see on TV. Showing points does not kill HNers brains. We've already lost if it does.
- ericd 16y ago
  It has far less value than you might think. When this community was 100% startuppers, that worked better, but now there are so many people who don't have first hand experience that are willing to upvote anything that sounds correct that it's lost a lot of its value. It's now a dangerous positive feedback loop. High vote counts tend to be very convincing to all but the most discriminating people, it's not the mark of a fool to believe what everyone is telling them is correct, just a sign of inexperience with that topic.
  - wdewind 16y ago
    What you've just told me is the community is broken, not the system.
    - 16y ago

nyellin 16y ago

On the whole, I concur. However, for comments like your own, the votes are interesting, as a rough measure of whether the HN community agrees with you or not. (It's a rough measure because upvoting!=agreeing.) Clarification: I don't want to bring back vote counts, or even a general indicator of votes, like others have suggested. I approve of the hiding votes, but a creative compromise could be better than what we have now.

JCB_K 16y ago
* a rough measure of whether the HN community agrees with you or not.* It shouldn't be. Like you said, upvoting!=agreeing. It should be a rough measure of you making your point in a good way.
- ugh 16y ago
  I think there is a problem with the “upvote doesn’t imply agreement” dictum. It doesn’t make all that much sense to me, at least not in all situations. I can imagine an eloquent, well written movie review with which I don’t agree but which I think is so well written that it should be read by more people. That’s taste and you should certainly not downvote taste, but most discussions on HN are not about taste but rather about questions with right and wrong answers. When I’m disagreeing with someone about those I must be thinking that what the person writes is based on wrong facts or is illogical. Should users be encouraged to upvote eloquent and well written comments even if they think those comments are spreading false information and are illogical? (Whether or not such comments should be downvoted is a different question. I tend not to.) It’s never quite that clear cut in the real world. You might feel that the facts are wrong or that some illogical argument is hiding somewhere in the comment but you might not be sure about it. Upvoting may be the right thing to do, then – the comment can be seen by a wider audience and it can come under more scrutiny. The comment and its analysis can help all parties to get closer to the truth. There is no doubt to me that there are situations in which upvoting despite disagreement can be a good idea. I also think that upvoting because of agreement and not upvoting because of disagreement can be a good idea. On a certain level, agreement and “making your point in a good way” are one and the same. No matter how eloquent, how can a comment with factual errors that undermine its central thesis ever be an example of “making your point in a good way”?

jasonlotito 16y ago

> The problem with vote counts is that two downvotes can start a cascade of reflex downvotes. So? As you said, this is usually corrected. And, if points don't matter as so many people want to suggest, where is the harm in having some indicator of a posts quality. Please note indicator does not mean points. I've been suggesting for some time now that high quality posts should be marked in some manner. No, rising to the top of the page is not a good manner, as it only affects parent posts. Downvoted posts already get this treatment, even under the current system. In fact, without some sort of quality indicator, points are useless. Finally, their is a lot of discussion about how lack of points force people to read and research. That's all well and good, but I'm smart enough to know that I can't research everything, and their is value in knowing what the community thinks of a topic. It helps to steer me in the right direction. Basically... If you aren't going to use points to highlight good comments, then having points is useless, and they only serve those who think karma is worth anything.

petercooper 16y ago

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. Why would the people need "high karma" to vote it back up? I ask this as someone with high karma. "showdead" is an option available to anyone, isn't it? I don't know the answer but I've always had it turned on at least.

d0m 16y ago

But then, you need to have a little faith in HN and PG. Best posts are usually shown first. Try that: Check a new post and try to guess the votes for the posts at the top of the page. It's still the same algorithm as before.. posts with -4 are shown in light gray.. high voted posts are shown first, etc.

munderwood 16y ago

What if the net number of votes a comment has received is hidden whenever it is between -10 and +10 (for example)? That way you are able to tell that a comment hasn't yet been rated highly, but also can't jump on the bandwagon of voting whichever direction the first couple of voters do. When a comment has a votecount somewhere near zero, you still have to think about it yourself (if you want to read it), but can also choose to ignore it if you only want to read already highly rated ones. If a comment at some point has, say, 12 votes and then receives three downvotes, it would return to the nebulous "small vote-count" status. Another scheme I've liked on some sites is to show the counts for both up and downvotes, along with the total. A comment's having 10 upvotes and zero downvotes can be quite different from its having 100 upvotes and 90 downvotes, even though both equate to a net count of +10.

mixmax 16y ago

This is a minor detail that might or might or might not be significant. I personally don't see a lot of comments with negative votes that weren't deserved, but maybe you frequent other threads than I do. On the other hand, I agree with the OP that not showing the votes has significant downsides. For instance, I don't know whether your comment is something a lot of people agree on (it has a lot of upvotes) or it has just been posted two seconds ago, and is thus the top comment. You won't know whether other people agree with my comment either. This becomes even worse when it's a discussion about something like security - if someone posts a comment saying that you should always use md5 encryption and someone else replies that this is wrong and you should always use bcrypt which is right? I simply don't know, even though one of the answers may be obviously correct and the other obviously incorrect. Besides - low scores are about the same as they were before, and high scores are a bit higher. Source: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465002 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465002

deleted 16y ago
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alain94040 16y ago
Agreed (if you don't like short comments like mine, bring back the vote count and I'll happily upvote the parent)
- jaxn 16y ago
  Whereas before this would have gotten downvoted, but there is now no meaningful way to communicate your agreement than to leave a comment.
  - rch 16y ago
    I like the chain of comments more than an up-vote.
  - derefr 16y ago
    Why do you need to communicate your agreement? I receive no benefit from knowing that you, as an individual, like something.

blhack 16y ago

I hate this assumption that everybody on HN is stupid. We're not. HN is one of the smartest communities on the internet. I'm not saying that everybody here is completely immune to what you're talking about, but this isn't digg. We're not just going to heap on the downvotes because we're trying to follow the pack. In fact I've found the opposite to be true; HNers seem to be really good about correcting downvotes. Compare the bottom comments here to the bottom comments at reddit if you don't believe me. And what you're saying isn't fixed by hiding vote counts, downvoted comments still appear grayed out.

docgnome 16y ago
I agree with what you're saying, but I'm not entirely sure this is a totally conscious reflex. I'd be interested in seeing a study where comments are rated with one set showing a low or negative score, the same comment with a high score, and then again with a neutral score. Given to three different groups of course.
rexreed 16y ago
I agree that we're smart. That's why I think we can all read things. Points add little value to a good comment, or detract substantially from a bad one. If you don't have time to read, you shouldn't be participating in an active forum like this.
- blhack 16y ago
  Do you also apply this logic to books in a library? How do you choose which ones to read? Do you read all of them? I think if you don't have time to read all of the books and judge them on their merits, then you shouldn't be participating in an activity like reading books.
  - deleted 16y ago
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  - phaylon 16y ago
    If I'm interested in a book, I tend to read user reviews. A "351 people said this book is great" note won't help me much. I do the same thing for electronics. And most other things too, when the number of choices isn't very limited already, come to think of it.

Bud 16y ago

Hard to count the ways in which mmaunder is wrong here, but let's try: >You need to ween yourself off your social proof addiction. Judgmental and prescriptive much? >The problem with vote counts is that two downvotes can start a cascade of reflex downvotes. a) You're guessing b) Is that really "a problem" c) Said "cascade" can only actually amount to 3 additional downvotes before the -4 limit is hit. Not much of a "cascade". >Or at best, it won't get upvoted. How do you know this? And if you do know it, why are you contradicting it in your very next sentence? >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. Yeah, this sentence. Anyway, the effect also "caused" many stupid comments to be rightly downvoted. BTW, high karma does not equal "smartness"; but it's interesting that you seem to like high karma so very much, since your rating is rather high, but hate displaying the accumulated karma on actual posts. Who precisely is "addicted", here?

billswift 16y ago
The -4 limit was discontinued months ago. Other than that, I agree.

Sukotto 16y ago

You need to ween yourself off your social proof addiction I think you are making an unwarranted assumption about the OP. The OP, like me, gained a great deal of value from knowing the vote counts of comments. In much the same way I (and presumably s/he) gain value from knowing the score and comment count of the post itself. Vote counts were not perfect indicator of value, but they were better than having to guess at comment quality by observing the relative position of comments vs posting time. [edit] Interesting. The comments from mixmax (29 minutes ago | http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2495535 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2495535) and blhack (20 minutes ago | http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2495561 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2495561) show higher than my brand new one. Presumably that means quite a few other people have voted them up in agreement