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It's funny that you write this b/c I hadn't read any of those threads myself. I have a filter where I don't often read the comments on stories from major media

It's funny that you write this b/c I hadn't read any of those threads myself. I have a filter where I don't often read the comments on stories from major media that make it to HN. There's rarely anything much to discuss and you're absolutely right that I do not care what anyone on HN thinks of Steve Jobs. As a side note, I'm happy about the removal of point visibility on comments... but I wonder if perhaps increased tribalism might be a result of users in search of social meaning... which used to be easier to obtain via points.. and over time has been replaced by an emergent tribal system, wars, etc.

gojomo 15y ago
My first impression of the lack of displayed scores was that it was triggering slightly more short, redundant comments of agreement or disagreement, as people scratched an itch for public display of assent/dissent. I suspect you're right that a change in tone and increase in the use of tribal-loyalty-signifiers might also be a side-effect of invisible scores. An upvote or downvote was only ever a coarse grunt or shake of the head, but in many social situations, there's a feeling one must send such signals to be 'present'. Often when one outlet for a behavior is closed, the behavior flows elsewhere. Perhaps no visible point-effect means more signalling via tone and word choice: publicly upvoting via fanboyish tone, and publicly downvoting via snark. It's a theory!
redler 15y ago
I think you're spot-on. This has to be a part of it. Whatever its issues, the visible point system was a way for readers to interact with the site in a way that produced a response for all to see. Whether this encouraged herd behavior or changed the shape of discussions in an unfavorable way is another issue. Comment-dimming notwithstanding, that feedback has been removed. There's a class of reader whose desire for a kind of interactivity is no longer satisfied by the voting system; for them, pile-on voting has been replaced by pile-on posting (albeit often in the more thoughtful HN style). Which in turn begets more such posts, and thus a more polarized conversational shape.
- tptacek 15y ago
  I think you guys are falling in love with a clever narrative about voting and comments and socialization and aren't remembering all the pointless and objectively stupid arguments we were having about transient down and up fluctuations in comment scores when we could see them all.
  - grandalf 15y ago
    Perhaps -- but then it was about points and not about ideologies.
lotharbot 15y ago
I suspect at least a part of increased tribalism is that, without visible comment scores, people aren't being shown as clearly that "that's not the HN way" and "this is the HN way". On the rare occasions that a tribal comment gets downvoted to gray, this is often misinterpreted as "tribal downvotes", and therefore the tribe responds by upvoting (a power even new users have). As long as the comment gets back to 1, it appears the same as comments at 5, 10, or 100 -- so the tribe doesn't see how differently tribal and non-tribal comments are treated, and therefore doesn't learn the community standard. I think visible comment scores would help. I also think it would help to aggressively flag such comments, and to respond to such comments with "this sort of tribalism doesn't belong on Hacker News" (especially if that response was, visibly, upvoted to 10 or 20 points!)

gojomo 15y ago

My first impression of the lack of displayed scores was that it was triggering slightly more short, redundant comments of agreement or disagreement, as people scratched an itch for public display of assent/dissent. I suspect you're right that a change in tone and increase in the use of tribal-loyalty-signifiers might also be a side-effect of invisible scores. An upvote or downvote was only ever a coarse grunt or shake of the head, but in many social situations, there's a feeling one must send such signals to be 'present'. Often when one outlet for a behavior is closed, the behavior flows elsewhere. Perhaps no visible point-effect means more signalling via tone and word choice: publicly upvoting via fanboyish tone, and publicly downvoting via snark. It's a theory!

redler 15y ago

I think you're spot-on. This has to be a part of it. Whatever its issues, the visible point system was a way for readers to interact with the site in a way that produced a response for all to see. Whether this encouraged herd behavior or changed the shape of discussions in an unfavorable way is another issue. Comment-dimming notwithstanding, that feedback has been removed. There's a class of reader whose desire for a kind of interactivity is no longer satisfied by the voting system; for them, pile-on voting has been replaced by pile-on posting (albeit often in the more thoughtful HN style). Which in turn begets more such posts, and thus a more polarized conversational shape.

tptacek 15y ago
I think you guys are falling in love with a clever narrative about voting and comments and socialization and aren't remembering all the pointless and objectively stupid arguments we were having about transient down and up fluctuations in comment scores when we could see them all.
- grandalf 15y ago
  Perhaps -- but then it was about points and not about ideologies.

lotharbot 15y ago

I suspect at least a part of increased tribalism is that, without visible comment scores, people aren't being shown as clearly that "that's not the HN way" and "this is the HN way". On the rare occasions that a tribal comment gets downvoted to gray, this is often misinterpreted as "tribal downvotes", and therefore the tribe responds by upvoting (a power even new users have). As long as the comment gets back to 1, it appears the same as comments at 5, 10, or 100 -- so the tribe doesn't see how differently tribal and non-tribal comments are treated, and therefore doesn't learn the community standard. I think visible comment scores would help. I also think it would help to aggressively flag such comments, and to respond to such comments with "this sort of tribalism doesn't belong on Hacker News" (especially if that response was, visibly, upvoted to 10 or 20 points!)