7 ms·

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

by mixmax 15y 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 15y ago
[deleted]
alain94040 15y ago
Agreed (if you don't like short comments like mine, bring back the vote count and I'll happily upvote the parent)
- jaxn 15y 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 15y ago
    I like the chain of comments more than an up-vote.
  - derefr 15y ago
    Why do you need to communicate your agreement? I receive no benefit from knowing that you, as an individual, like something.
    - alain94040 15y ago
      Isn't that the whole point of discussion? Otherwise, all comments would only be contradicting their parent. The upvote count allowed us to balance disagreements (which usually need an counter-argument) with agreement, which don't need to re-iterate what has been said. Now we get to have a lot of "+1" to counter-balance the criticism.
      - derefr 15y ago
        If we're speaking purely in terms of debate for purposes of Aumann-theoretic truth-finding, then there's many other things you can do to accede to someone else's point than by simply saying some moral equivalent to "Hear, hear!" For example, you can reinforce the parent post with additional justifications, or explore corollaries to its conclusions. You can provide an example if it's a generality, or generalize it if it's a concrete example. Someone I don't know saying "This!" about a subject I'm no expert on is just as informationally-empty to me as that same person posting a single-sentence "No, you're wrong." I see an opinion, but that provides me with no more basis on which to form my opinion. But agreeing and disagreeing aren't the whole of discussion, either. The posts I enjoy the most on HN are neither of these—instead, they're just comments on the subject of the article, but with the ideas of their parent commenter serving as an additional jumping-off point for whatever tangent they find themselves on. When I think of something that's valuable to the discussion (and therefore deserves upvotes), I think of the parents to these posts—the ones that cause people to spin off tangents in all sorts of directions; those are what I want to see more of here. On the other hand, the expression of purely normative opinions, whether through the voting arrows or through long-winded sermons that still simply amount to "Yay!" or "Boo!", is something I want to see avoided altogether. I can form my own opinions by reading the facts in the discussion and doing research on them, thank-you-very-much—and if I don't have time to do that, then I shouldn't think I have time to form an opinion.
ggchappell 15y ago
> For instance, I don't know whether your comment is something a lot of people agree on (it has a lot of upvotes) .... That highlights a major problem right there. I would hope that upvotes are for worthwhile contributions to the discussion. You (and others) seem to assume that they are for agreement. Different things. I would like to know whether lots of people think a comment is worthwhile. But except in the rare case of polls, I'm usually not much interested in who agrees. So as long as lots of people think in terms of agreement, I say counts can stay hidden.
- hackinthebochs 15y ago
  Most upvotes are going to be based on agreement, its simply psychological. We're more likely to even consider upvoting something if we agree with it. Downvotes on the other hand, have a detrimental effect such that we can stop to think if this actually deserves a downvote after we get the impulse. So even though ideally upvotes should be about adding to discussion, it's just not going to play out that way.
  - dwc 15y ago
    I think it's even worse: upvotes are upvotes, and the reason why someone clicked it varies. It could mean "I agree," "this was well stated and insightful" or even "I disagree and it's dumb and mean but so represents common sentiment that I think everyone should read this." The symbol is a little triangle, and inherently says none of those things. People will click to mean whatever they mean.
  - goblin89 15y ago
    Person feel obliged to register their opinion on some question. And upvoting appears the only acceptable way to do this (since "me too"-kind responses get downvoted quickly). So I think the ways to increase voting quality are: 1) allow to register user's agreement/disagreement with the post separately of the post itself (like another voting button), or 2) say in rules that you can't display your agreement or disagreement by upvoting. I think 2 is the best, since users will be forced to make sufficient contribution when they agree or disagree.
- 15y ago
karlzt 15y ago
>> or it has just been posted two seconds ago, and is thus the top comment. you can always see how much time has passed since that comment was posted.
- 1337p337 15y ago
  Then you go back and read the source so you can try to run through the calculation backwards in your head to estimate, relative to the surrounding comments' timestamps, what the score might be based on its position?

by mixmax 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

alain94040 15y ago

Agreed (if you don't like short comments like mine, bring back the vote count and I'll happily upvote the parent)

jaxn 15y 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 15y ago
  I like the chain of comments more than an up-vote.
- derefr 15y ago
  Why do you need to communicate your agreement? I receive no benefit from knowing that you, as an individual, like something.
  - alain94040 15y ago
    Isn't that the whole point of discussion? Otherwise, all comments would only be contradicting their parent. The upvote count allowed us to balance disagreements (which usually need an counter-argument) with agreement, which don't need to re-iterate what has been said. Now we get to have a lot of "+1" to counter-balance the criticism.
    - derefr 15y ago
      If we're speaking purely in terms of debate for purposes of Aumann-theoretic truth-finding, then there's many other things you can do to accede to someone else's point than by simply saying some moral equivalent to "Hear, hear!" For example, you can reinforce the parent post with additional justifications, or explore corollaries to its conclusions. You can provide an example if it's a generality, or generalize it if it's a concrete example. Someone I don't know saying "This!" about a subject I'm no expert on is just as informationally-empty to me as that same person posting a single-sentence "No, you're wrong." I see an opinion, but that provides me with no more basis on which to form my opinion. But agreeing and disagreeing aren't the whole of discussion, either. The posts I enjoy the most on HN are neither of these—instead, they're just comments on the subject of the article, but with the ideas of their parent commenter serving as an additional jumping-off point for whatever tangent they find themselves on. When I think of something that's valuable to the discussion (and therefore deserves upvotes), I think of the parents to these posts—the ones that cause people to spin off tangents in all sorts of directions; those are what I want to see more of here. On the other hand, the expression of purely normative opinions, whether through the voting arrows or through long-winded sermons that still simply amount to "Yay!" or "Boo!", is something I want to see avoided altogether. I can form my own opinions by reading the facts in the discussion and doing research on them, thank-you-very-much—and if I don't have time to do that, then I shouldn't think I have time to form an opinion.

ggchappell 15y ago

> For instance, I don't know whether your comment is something a lot of people agree on (it has a lot of upvotes) .... That highlights a major problem right there. I would hope that upvotes are for worthwhile contributions to the discussion. You (and others) seem to assume that they are for agreement. Different things. I would like to know whether lots of people think a comment is worthwhile. But except in the rare case of polls, I'm usually not much interested in who agrees. So as long as lots of people think in terms of agreement, I say counts can stay hidden.

hackinthebochs 15y ago
Most upvotes are going to be based on agreement, its simply psychological. We're more likely to even consider upvoting something if we agree with it. Downvotes on the other hand, have a detrimental effect such that we can stop to think if this actually deserves a downvote after we get the impulse. So even though ideally upvotes should be about adding to discussion, it's just not going to play out that way.
- dwc 15y ago
  I think it's even worse: upvotes are upvotes, and the reason why someone clicked it varies. It could mean "I agree," "this was well stated and insightful" or even "I disagree and it's dumb and mean but so represents common sentiment that I think everyone should read this." The symbol is a little triangle, and inherently says none of those things. People will click to mean whatever they mean.
- goblin89 15y ago
  Person feel obliged to register their opinion on some question. And upvoting appears the only acceptable way to do this (since "me too"-kind responses get downvoted quickly). So I think the ways to increase voting quality are: 1) allow to register user's agreement/disagreement with the post separately of the post itself (like another voting button), or 2) say in rules that you can't display your agreement or disagreement by upvoting. I think 2 is the best, since users will be forced to make sufficient contribution when they agree or disagree.
15y ago

karlzt 15y ago

>> or it has just been posted two seconds ago, and is thus the top comment. you can always see how much time has passed since that comment was posted.

1337p337 15y ago
Then you go back and read the source so you can try to run through the calculation backwards in your head to estimate, relative to the surrounding comments' timestamps, what the score might be based on its position?