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That would be very annoying. Whether comment threads are valuable or not has less to do with the diversity of the commenters than the quality. A hundred random

by chc 15y ago

That would be very annoying. Whether comment threads are valuable or not has less to do with the diversity of the commenters than the quality. A hundred random responses are far less valuable than two well-informed and well-written responses. I would stop reading HN if we could no longer see who said what — as it is, a lot of my reading is through HackerFollow. I get more out of the site that way. To be blunt, some commenters are better than others.

ScottWhigham 15y ago
+1 I already find it difficult to handle the threaded reply layout on long pages. Adding this would only make it worse. Good on you, OP, for posing the question though. It's a good question to ask, I think. I just happen to think otherwise (and agree with chc).
fabricode 15y ago
What would be annoying? The comments with the highest votes would still be at the top. He/she said nothing about randomizing the comments. The only effect of the idea would be to eliminate "celebrity" votes.
- chc 15y ago
  Who cares if the comments with the highest votes are at the top? That's just as true of /r/lolcats. I care about how much trouble it is to find good content. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Given a practical and insightful essay on the day-to-day running of a business and a picture of a cat in a funny pose, most people will vote for the cat every time. Making it harder to find good comments will only exacerbate this, because it's easy for the cat-lovers to find silly pictures, so to speak, while carefully reading every comment on every post for insight takes more time than most people have to spend on an Internet forum. In fact, I'll go further, although tentatively: I think authorship is probably a stronger predictor of comment quality than votes are. For example, blind contrarianism will almost always take the top spot in a thread — at least for a while — and even mildly criticizing Apple on a thread where lots of Apple fans happen to be will get you several downvotes. There are so many factors besides quality and authorship that affect voting — the mere popularity of a comment's sentiment is often enough to trump everything else. (EDIT: Thanks, anonymous downvoter, for making my point for me!)

by chc 15y ago

ScottWhigham 15y ago

+1 I already find it difficult to handle the threaded reply layout on long pages. Adding this would only make it worse. Good on you, OP, for posing the question though. It's a good question to ask, I think. I just happen to think otherwise (and agree with chc).

fabricode 15y ago

What would be annoying? The comments with the highest votes would still be at the top. He/she said nothing about randomizing the comments. The only effect of the idea would be to eliminate "celebrity" votes.

chc 15y ago
Who cares if the comments with the highest votes are at the top? That's just as true of /r/lolcats. I care about how much trouble it is to find good content. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Given a practical and insightful essay on the day-to-day running of a business and a picture of a cat in a funny pose, most people will vote for the cat every time. Making it harder to find good comments will only exacerbate this, because it's easy for the cat-lovers to find silly pictures, so to speak, while carefully reading every comment on every post for insight takes more time than most people have to spend on an Internet forum. In fact, I'll go further, although tentatively: I think authorship is probably a stronger predictor of comment quality than votes are. For example, blind contrarianism will almost always take the top spot in a thread — at least for a while — and even mildly criticizing Apple on a thread where lots of Apple fans happen to be will get you several downvotes. There are so many factors besides quality and authorship that affect voting — the mere popularity of a comment's sentiment is often enough to trump everything else. (EDIT: Thanks, anonymous downvoter, for making my point for me!)