5 ms·

Completely agree on the “certain users” thing. The UI de-emphasises the author of the comment. There’s no profile picture or “checkmark” for us to recognise and

Completely agree on the “certain users” thing. The UI de-emphasises the author of the comment. There’s no profile picture or “checkmark” for us to recognise and reflex vote. That’s a good thing! There isn’t a concept of following certain users, another good thing. If there was, we’d have popular users “dunking” on unpopular ones and having their opinions confirmed by their followers showing up to vote. If anything, HN threads reward people who comment early. I’ve noticed the users with most karma are also extremely online and comment on a lot of threads early. If the thread becomes popular, their comments get more views and karma than someone who comments later. Even here, HN tries to mitigate this effect by giving every new comment in every thread and sub-thread a few minutes at the top when it’s new. This encourages people to comment even if they’re late to the party. More could be done like removing the list of top users or moving profile karma a couple of clicks away, but HN does more than most websites to de-emphasise power users. That’s why I comment here and not elsewhere.

dang 4y ago
People sometimes ask us to remove all the points and karma stuff from what gets displayed. Do you think that we should?
- nindalf 4y ago
  I don't really check anyone else's karma, so hiding others' wouldn't change my behaviour. I am vain about my own karma though. Maybe a UI toggle to hide my karma so I would care less about it?
- crossroadsguy 4y ago
  That is what I intended to point to. I believe karma/points could be hidden and maybe that semi-hidden leaderboard page as well. I would not even want to see my own karma really.
- _tk_ 4y ago
  I feel like if karma was removed, the "created" date should be removed as well. I'd certainly welcome the change and do not see the benefits of karma. Maybe someone can enlighten me.
- lionkor 4y ago
  instead of a karma number, it would be better to have a different indicator. still count karma in the backend, but display only a percentile, or a number of symbols depending on the karma compared to other users on the platform. For example, relatively low karma would be `+`, high would be `+++`. Something that is very difficult to game and gameify, while still giving a nice little indicator of activity and whether someone's other comments are liked here. Or just make the user karma a simple average over all their posts and comments. Anything but a straight number that goes up each time! I use my own karma display as a way to check if its likely i have new replies.
  - crossroadsguy 4y ago
    This is an excellent suggestion. Coupled with hiding username (which is even more of a radical change) I think the forum will be even better.
    - lionkor 4y ago
      usernames I do like, personally, since some people I know are on here, and sometimes a comment's content changes if the username is known to you, e.g. WalterBright.
- p-e-w 4y ago
  I would advocate an even more radical change: Remove the username from posts and comments, at least by default. If the purpose of this site is exchange of ideas (rather than personal interaction), who wrote something should never matter. Only what was written matters. Discussion threads become collectively sourced arguments rather than ego battles. Take the identity of posters out of the equation. In the rare cases where it matters (e.g. "Show HN" threads where the author offers to answer questions), it should be no problem for people to explicitly identify themselves ("author here"; this is mostly already happening anyway).
  - ianai 4y ago
    An idea I had: Have some way to reflect whether the OP of a reply messaged the reply or not. i.e. If UserX posts a comment and UserY replies, under the UserY comment have a single, empty line for UserX's reply where UserX's comment will appear if UserX replies. Edit-Or text "no reply" then a "replied" link once done along with the other "top line" links. I think that would underscore that what appears to be a conversation between two people is not. That's important and I think often lost in online discussion. If UserX doesn't reply they might have been persuaded to UserY's position and one way of signaling that is to not reply. Meanwhile there's very likely someone who will read a well reasoned and backed up comment and nonetheless disagree, and they're most likely to reply given their disagreement. More so in the age of bots. The aggregate effect is for discussions to be weighted harshly negatively to the point of destructively. Edit-I'm not very aware of the "famous user" effect. Sure there are usernames I recognize, but it's few, and the UI doesn't seem to give them much weight. I 'worry' more about the criticality of the site.
  - figassis 4y ago
    How would you know it was Dang that was moderating, or some stripe ceo replying to yet another deplatforming post?
  - gus_massa 4y ago
    With comments, HN is a community. Whiteout comments, HN is just a bunch of black pixels on a grey background. I'm tracking in my head a few hundred of users. I don't know the exact number because I never made an written list. Some users make consistently good comments in some topics, and it's an important signal for a discussion. For example. ColinWright is a mathematician like me. I usually skim the math posts but he reads the whole post. So when he make a comment in that post it's usually accurate. If he says that in page 3, second paragraph there is a huge error, I just go to page 3, second paragraph and there is surely an error. Nobody is perfect, but some users have earned a good reputations in some topics. I classified others as clueless enthusiastic, others as troll/morons/crackpots. Other are just unclassified. It's topic specific, so I may think a user makes good comments in one topic and regular comments in other topics. (I don't remember any case of good comments in one topic and really bad comments in other topics, but I have no formal list to check, it's just a fuzzy memory list in my head.)
- xupybd 4y ago
  Karma is still part of the skinner box that keeps me commenting. I'd rather keep my addiction.

dang 4y ago

People sometimes ask us to remove all the points and karma stuff from what gets displayed. Do you think that we should?

nindalf 4y ago
I don't really check anyone else's karma, so hiding others' wouldn't change my behaviour. I am vain about my own karma though. Maybe a UI toggle to hide my karma so I would care less about it?
crossroadsguy 4y ago
That is what I intended to point to. I believe karma/points could be hidden and maybe that semi-hidden leaderboard page as well. I would not even want to see my own karma really.
_tk_ 4y ago
I feel like if karma was removed, the "created" date should be removed as well. I'd certainly welcome the change and do not see the benefits of karma. Maybe someone can enlighten me.
lionkor 4y ago
instead of a karma number, it would be better to have a different indicator. still count karma in the backend, but display only a percentile, or a number of symbols depending on the karma compared to other users on the platform. For example, relatively low karma would be `+`, high would be `+++`. Something that is very difficult to game and gameify, while still giving a nice little indicator of activity and whether someone's other comments are liked here. Or just make the user karma a simple average over all their posts and comments. Anything but a straight number that goes up each time! I use my own karma display as a way to check if its likely i have new replies.
- crossroadsguy 4y ago
  This is an excellent suggestion. Coupled with hiding username (which is even more of a radical change) I think the forum will be even better.
  - lionkor 4y ago
    usernames I do like, personally, since some people I know are on here, and sometimes a comment's content changes if the username is known to you, e.g. WalterBright.
p-e-w 4y ago
I would advocate an even more radical change: Remove the username from posts and comments, at least by default. If the purpose of this site is exchange of ideas (rather than personal interaction), who wrote something should never matter. Only what was written matters. Discussion threads become collectively sourced arguments rather than ego battles. Take the identity of posters out of the equation. In the rare cases where it matters (e.g. "Show HN" threads where the author offers to answer questions), it should be no problem for people to explicitly identify themselves ("author here"; this is mostly already happening anyway).
- ianai 4y ago
  An idea I had: Have some way to reflect whether the OP of a reply messaged the reply or not. i.e. If UserX posts a comment and UserY replies, under the UserY comment have a single, empty line for UserX's reply where UserX's comment will appear if UserX replies. Edit-Or text "no reply" then a "replied" link once done along with the other "top line" links. I think that would underscore that what appears to be a conversation between two people is not. That's important and I think often lost in online discussion. If UserX doesn't reply they might have been persuaded to UserY's position and one way of signaling that is to not reply. Meanwhile there's very likely someone who will read a well reasoned and backed up comment and nonetheless disagree, and they're most likely to reply given their disagreement. More so in the age of bots. The aggregate effect is for discussions to be weighted harshly negatively to the point of destructively. Edit-I'm not very aware of the "famous user" effect. Sure there are usernames I recognize, but it's few, and the UI doesn't seem to give them much weight. I 'worry' more about the criticality of the site.
- figassis 4y ago
  How would you know it was Dang that was moderating, or some stripe ceo replying to yet another deplatforming post?
- gus_massa 4y ago
  With comments, HN is a community. Whiteout comments, HN is just a bunch of black pixels on a grey background. I'm tracking in my head a few hundred of users. I don't know the exact number because I never made an written list. Some users make consistently good comments in some topics, and it's an important signal for a discussion. For example. ColinWright is a mathematician like me. I usually skim the math posts but he reads the whole post. So when he make a comment in that post it's usually accurate. If he says that in page 3, second paragraph there is a huge error, I just go to page 3, second paragraph and there is surely an error. Nobody is perfect, but some users have earned a good reputations in some topics. I classified others as clueless enthusiastic, others as troll/morons/crackpots. Other are just unclassified. It's topic specific, so I may think a user makes good comments in one topic and regular comments in other topics. (I don't remember any case of good comments in one topic and really bad comments in other topics, but I have no formal list to check, it's just a fuzzy memory list in my head.)
xupybd 4y ago
Karma is still part of the skinner box that keeps me commenting. I'd rather keep my addiction.