4 ms·

That's a very fair point. Unfortunately, when I don't know the subject matter at hand, social proof is pretty much all I have to determine good opinion from bad

That's a very fair point. Unfortunately, when I don't know the subject matter at hand, social proof is pretty much all I have to determine good opinion from bad. Keep in mind that the title of this submission has to do with learning from HN, so that's the perspective I'm taking as well. If you don't know anything on a subject, the most popular opinion isn't necessarily a bad jumping off point for further research. I'm also not saying that you should ignore lesser voted answers on that basis alone. I'm simply saying that in a vacuum of other indicators, vote count works in a pinch.

danvet 15y ago
You still have that rough idea of social proof in the comment ordering. Of course there's the occasional very recent comment sprinkled in, but I think the error this introduces isn't worse that popular, but slight wrong comments upvoted with herd-thinking. I like it this way even for discovering new things, especially since the lack of comment points prevent my brain from going into autopilot mode. Trying to grasp new ideas without a concerning mind just doesn't cut it for me ...
- AgentConundrum 15y ago
  If you look at my original comment, you'll see I used the example of a conversation with only two participants as an example. In this situation, you don't even have the rough social proof of the comment order. Ordering is flawed even alone, because it has certain biases in comment age as well. I've seen new comments with no votes shown above other, very highly voted comments. I should mention that I'm not necessarily campaigning to bring back the vote counts, nor do I necessarily want them back (for reasons you describe well), but I do think they did have value, and we need a way to bring back that value while minimizing the bias. I'm not sure how to do that, but I do really like the "upvote, downvote, or abstain" concept mentioned in another comment on this submission, wherein the votes are hidden until you perform one of the listed actions. You can still view the votes, but you can't influence them after you know what they are.

danvet 15y ago

You still have that rough idea of social proof in the comment ordering. Of course there's the occasional very recent comment sprinkled in, but I think the error this introduces isn't worse that popular, but slight wrong comments upvoted with herd-thinking. I like it this way even for discovering new things, especially since the lack of comment points prevent my brain from going into autopilot mode. Trying to grasp new ideas without a concerning mind just doesn't cut it for me ...

AgentConundrum 15y ago
If you look at my original comment, you'll see I used the example of a conversation with only two participants as an example. In this situation, you don't even have the rough social proof of the comment order. Ordering is flawed even alone, because it has certain biases in comment age as well. I've seen new comments with no votes shown above other, very highly voted comments. I should mention that I'm not necessarily campaigning to bring back the vote counts, nor do I necessarily want them back (for reasons you describe well), but I do think they did have value, and we need a way to bring back that value while minimizing the bias. I'm not sure how to do that, but I do really like the "upvote, downvote, or abstain" concept mentioned in another comment on this submission, wherein the votes are hidden until you perform one of the listed actions. You can still view the votes, but you can't influence them after you know what they are.