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Idea: a [view count] link. Once clicked, votes are ignored for that comment. You can vote, or get the social proof, but not both.
by 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 agoThat'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 agoThere 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 agoIsn't that just called "not voting"?
- angusgr 16y agoI think they mean "not voting but still being able to see how people voted on that particular comment"
- allwein 16y agoAbout 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 agoIf 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.
- robertk 16y agoI agree so much I'm commenting.
- calvin 16y agoPerlmonks.org does this. They only show you vote counts for nodes you've voted on. It always seemed effective to me -- I'd vote on comments I thought were good, and after I voted I'd see what their vote scores were.
- drivebyacct2 16y agoThat defeats the entire point of having people vote who know what they're talking about. I watch my karma on reddit and HN very closely. It is very rare that I get reflexively downvoted as a result of initial voting, and when it does happen, I mention it and clarify my post and almost always see it even back out.
- fluidcruft 16y agoOh, are you one of those pathologic "Edit: Downvotes? Really?!?" karma gamers on reddit that seem to feel entitled to upvotes? I think that sort of meta-entitlement karma-whoring is extremely annoying. I get a little chuckle when the person playing that game makes the edit within the ninja-edit window and is missing the edit-star on their comment. Of course even on HN even with the hidden points, you see your own comment points, so feel free to go ahead and play that game here. Or just pretend you're being abused by the ignorant hordes. It's pretty easy. Nobody knows if you're actually negative here anymore. Edit: Downvotes? WTF? I'd like to know who downvoted this. At least post some constructive criticism.
- drivebyacct2 16y agoI'm a karma gamer for being disappointed when rational opinions are downvoted by people that make incorrect assumptions or whose opinion get in the way of a good discussion? I didn't really ask for your judgement, but since you've taken it upon yourself... I don't "game" karma. The few posts that I've editted here to inquire about downvotes have usually resulted in a further discussion supporting my point, or at the very least opening up further discussion about areas of contention. As it often turns out, no one had bothered checking the child comment below me that said "No you're wrong because of [obvious statement].", when in reality it turned out that actual evidence or a simple screenshot proved my stance. If I edit my post and point this out and inquire as to why people downvoted me without supporting their position... That's me "gaming karma"? That's a sad stance. I should just let people say that Chrome 11 lacks H.264 support when a very simple test and very minimal amounts of research prove otherwise? What would you have me do, but edit my post and plea that people take a second to research what they think they know rather than just recalling the infamous blog post that was on HN for a week discussing a phase-out of H264?
- vacri 16y agoHow does that option help the main poster? Forcing him to vote on comments (even as abstention) is just meaningless mechanism that gets in the way.
- alain94040 16y agoAgreed (if you don't like short comments like mine, bring back the vote count and I'll happily upvote the parent)
- corin_ 16y agoI want that option as an account setting, I'd gladly give up all voting rights in return for being able to see vote counts.
- allwein 16y agoThis makes me sad. I always thought that part of being a good user on HN was submitting feedback via comments and voting. To imagine that there are users out there who don't consider this a community, and want only to leech off the useful information contributed by others, is saddening.
- corin_ 16y agoIn general I would agree, and I would agree that people should do their part in up (and down) voting comments. But to me, with no scores visible, I hardly notice the impact. I always read all the way down the page, and rather than trying to work out how high a comment has been voted based on its position on a page, I just ignore it. So I'd rather chose to not have any votes and actually get something out of other people's votes than to have an impact that nobody can actually see.
- dhughes 16y agoI figured that is part of how it works anyway not just upvotes.
- joe_the_user 16y agoWould having a socket puppet just to peek at votes be grounds for banning?
- bmccormack 16y agoWould this even be a problem for most scenarios? I don't think most users have (or would want to spend) the time to look at two browsers for every set of comments I want to view and/or vote on.
- moe 16y agoThis is a hacker community. It will take all of 24 hours for purpose-built bookmarklets or even browser extensions to appear.
- jokermatt999 16y agoSeeing vote counts could also be a karma linked feature, I suppose. That makes it enough work to the point where it's probably not worth it to game the system.
- ladon86 16y agoA great idea. You get to see votes only after voting, which eliminates social proof inertia and gives an incentive to vote. As long as you can't revoke votes (a la reddit), this would work beautifully.
- vacri 16y agoBad idea. That doesn't help skimming for info, which is the main poster's problem - you have to read the comment before you decide to find out if it's upvoted. And once you've done that, you've already committed the time. Sound nice, but it's not practical.
- alain94040 16y agoAgreed (if you don't like short comments like mine, bring back the vote count and I'll happily upvote the parent)
- joeyespo 16y agoI upvoted this. My own opinion. I don't know how many other silent readers agree, but hopefully I can know soon. Building on your idea: why not also have the downvote count revealed after pressing up/down/pass? That way we can also know more than the net score tells us.
- blhack 16y agoHow does this help the situation at all? And how long before there's a plugin to "click" all of the [view count] links? The point is that we want to be able to see karma relative to the rest of the thread. If one comment in 20 has 150 upvotes, it means we should at least look at it because what is being said might be important.
- alain94040 16y agoAgreed (if you don't like short comments like mine, bring back the vote count and I'll happily upvote the parent)
- mjgoins 16y agoUnless you create two accounts.
- rmc 16y agoAll systems can be hacked and tweaked, you should never write off a system just because its possible to work around it. It's a trade off, and you have to weigh it all up.
- jrwoodruff 16y agoNo. It's overly complicated for the problem that's trying to be solved. I would have to weigh voting on a comment against seeing how many other people voted on it for EVERY comment. I just want to scan smart comments and learn the sides of an issue quickly. What is the problem we're trying to solve again, anyways? And do the multiple downsides mentioned here multiple times (and heavily upvoted each time) really outweigh the downside of whatever that perceived issue is?
- lukifer 16y agoThe problem is groupthink. Even HN is not immune.
- Laments 16y agoPretty sure they're doing this already; have you guys looked at how this thread is sorted? It's not by time of post, implying that your vote is tallied (and counts).
- Kilimanjaro 16y agoAlso a [view votes] for the whole page, and you lose your right to vote on that particular topic.