6 ms·

on a somewhat related note; any chance of getting points on comments back? My personal opinion is that it degrades the site tremendously not to be able to skim

by mixmax 14y ago

on a somewhat related note; any chance of getting points on comments back? My personal opinion is that it degrades the site tremendously not to be able to skim through a thread and see which comments others have deemed interesting/noteworthy/insightful by upvoting them.

AndrewDucker 14y ago
It would be nice to have some indication. When reading down the page it would be nice to know what the interesting comments that happen to be on low-rated threads are.
RyanMcGreal 14y ago
I like seeing comment points but I'm not sure that it's a good thing to display them. Threads are already sorted by comment score so that the best comments are close to the top - I'm not sure what additional benefit comes from seeing the actual snapshot numbers aside from sheer curiosity.
- larrys 14y ago
  I agree. Also it creates a halo effect. And creates more incentive to click either up or down depending on how you view the number relative to your own opinion. Not having a count gives new comments a chance (since you don't automatically look at the "minutes ago" part). So a new comment can be not at the bottom giving it a chance to gain more exposure even though it has no points.
  - andyjohnson0 14y ago
    I also agree. From what I've seen on StackOverflow, having visible points encourages posting to gain points rather than to enrich the discussion.
- bryanlarsen 14y ago
  Threads are sorted by comment score and by age, with newer threads floating to the top. I think this is a great heuristic. My only beef is that this also naturally floats poor replies to great comments. It would be nice to have a good heuristic to know when to read the replies and when to move on to the next thread. I think one does exist: expandos. Give us the ability to expand and compact threads, and then automatically compact any old replies that haven't received a reasonable number of upvotes. I use the extension from hckrnews.com to give me expandos, but intelligent compaction would be so much sweeter.
  - scott_s 14y ago
    Just as bad as uplifting poor replies to great comments, it pushes down great replies to poor comments. I've seen some threads were the most informative and insightful comment was halfway down the page because it was a reply correcting misconceptions. The only solution I can think of are collapsable threads, similar to reddit.
  - russell 14y ago
    +/- expansion/contraction seems like a good idea to me too. It would be a good way for me to hide the occasional off topic argument between a couple of individuals and to find the grand.. parent of a comment.
- mixmax 14y ago
  We had this discussion back when the points were being hidden, and I went through a few posts with many comments to see whether it would be possible to find the good comments based on where they were in the thread. It turned out that because of the threaded comment system you get very little information about which comments have many votes and which don't. In the sample I checked it was impossible to get any idea of how popular a comment was around 50% of the time (this comment for instance, which is currently the only child to your comment could hav 0 upvotes or it could have 100. There's no way to know)
  - beagle3 14y ago
    The solution, I think, is some sort of "unthreaded" view (with link to the contextual "threaded" view). Because, even if you do see the score, it is unlikely anyone will notice a +1000 answer to a -2 top level post when there are 20 of the latter. The numbers themselves don't (and shouldn't) matter - only the rank.
citricsquid 14y ago
comments are still displayed based on their score: if a comment is at the top and ~1 hour old you can assume it's well rated.
- mixmax 14y ago
  this only works for the main trunk though. Lot of insightful comments are hidden way down as a child of a comment that doesn't have a lot of upvotes.
stralep 14y ago
I would really like to see comments I have upvoted... There are bunch of wise comments somewhere, that I have read, upvoted, and forgot.
- ColinWright 14y ago
  http://news.ycombinator.com/saved?id=stralep http://news.ycombinator.com/saved?id=stralep
  - stralep 14y ago
    Comments, not stories...
    - ColinWright 14y ago
      Ah - noted - apologies. I personally keep a separate note of comments of interest, and I was a little quick to respond. Yes, an equivalent for comments of "saved" would be useful.
- andyjohnson0 14y ago
  It would be useful to be able to 'star' or 'favourite' a comment or submission, to have them accessible in a private list, and to see how many people had done this to your own comments/submissions. I wouldn't like this to be generally visible though. As others have said, it creates a halo effect and discourages diversity of opinions.
  - stralep 14y ago
    I see no reason to use additional mechanism. Why not use upvote? I'm upvoting stories so I could see them later (as ColinWright noted), why not create a page I could see comments I liked?
    - andyjohnson0 14y ago
      Separation of concerns. You might want to be able to tag a post or comment as noteworthy but not want to upvote it. For example, to remind you to come back to it and add a comment explaining why its wrong or that you disagree with it. Basically: Upvote != Save for Later
hxa7241 14y ago
There is a dilemma there. If you are only skimming a few comments, you are not reading most. But if the comments are not being read, how can they be scored properly? The extent to which points allow reduced/selective reading is the extent to which the accuracy of that selection is itself reduced.
happimess 14y ago
In my experience with reddit, displaying the score of a comment leads to bandwagon voting, which adds easily avoided noise to the sorting process. It also leads to a certain amount of karma fetishization, which results in easy jokes and fluff. With regards to skimming, I think that comment folding is a useful feature with few drawbacks.
dclowd9901 14y ago
I don't think this is a good idea. I think that when someone sees a comment that would otherwise not be agreeable on a personal level, when it has votes from many other members, it has a tendency to sway your personal convictions a bit, just enough to make you second guess your own opinions. Let a comment stand for its merit. I honestly wish they'd take names off the comments too. I feel like there are way too many recognizeable handles around here, which can have a similar effect of self-fulfilling prophecy. Case in point: has PG ever been downvoted? Ever?
- tokenadult 14y ago
  Case in point: has PG ever been downvoted? Ever? I downvoted a recent comment by pg that for quite a while was (and STILL is) the top comment in its thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4253156 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4253156 but that pg later acknowledged didn't have a sufficient factual basis. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4254592 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4254592 Conspiracy theories are very enticing to the human mind, so they often get too many upvotes here on HN. Although I did downvote pg's first comment in the thread mentioned here, I was outnumbered by many more people who upvoted it, mistakenly.
  - jeswin 14y ago
    It is perhaps more useful when a mistake is corrected with a reply/comment, than with a down-vote. Doing so gets people to read both. Besides in the absence of the original comment (incorrect as it may be), the followups lose context. Reserve down votes for opinions that do not deserve a reply. Such as pure trolling.
    - scott_s 14y ago
      Top comments in a thread frame discussion - if the top comment in a thread is a conspiracy theory, then it's likely that the entire discussion will be derailed. For that reason, I think it's valid to downvote such comments, to prevent them from derailing the discussion.
- 14y ago
WiseWeasel 14y ago
The only way I see to satisfy both sides of this argument is to hide the scores until you're done voting on comments for that page. Maybe an "I'm done voting" button at the top and bottom of the page, which removes all voting arrows and replaces them with scores. The score for a comment could also be displayed after you've voted on it. [The problem might lie in the implementation for this solution. You probably don't want to store the 'done voting on this story' information in cookies, since that's tied to a single device and vulnerable to user manipulation. This means that you need to maintain a list of stories for which each user is done voting in your database, and then check against that list on each page load. This adds a significant amount of server resource usage, as well as maintenance and performance tuning work for what amounts to an unnecessary feature. Showing scores for a comment after voting on it should be easy to implement, but then you'd be encouraging people to vote just so they can see a score, possibly even up-voting everything on the page. My guess is we're stuck with the status quo for the foreseeable future.]
- Peaker 14y ago
  Users would vote on comments randomly just to see their score...
brudgers 14y ago
Maybe seeing comment scores could be a reward for 10,000 karma points.
breckinloggins 14y ago
Compromise: how about showing points on comments but only after you yourself have accumulated a significant number of points?
- politician 14y ago
  Up-voted with a challenge: of what value is seeing comment points except stroking your own ego when your or your friends or people-you-always-agree-with comments' are voted up?
  - breckinloggins 14y ago
    Of none whatsoever; but ego can be a great motivator. The problem isn't being motivated by ego, it's being motivated by ego before you've proven to others that you can handle the responsibility. :)
SkyMarshal 14y ago
>My personal opinion is that it degrades the site tremendously not to be able to skim through a thread and see which comments others have deemed interesting/noteworthy/insightful by upvoting them. I completely disagree. The crowd is not always right in upvoting, as PG pointed out in his statement of the problem (dumb or useless comments getting massively upvoted). Relying on comment votes as a heuristic for rapidly scanning and deciding what to read is a good idea. Read for yourself and decide, and if you lack the knowledge to decide then bookmark it for later research if it's important, or move on to something else if not.
brandnewlow 14y ago
IPhone app I use to read HN has been busted and not showing usernames on comments for over a year now. It's annoying at often tell when some of the more active HN users comment because because their voices come through so strongly. A Patio11 comment (uber-detailed) is immediately recognizable. So is a Tptacek comment (aggressively but gracefully contrarian) or a PG comment (short declarative sentences followed by many many many responses).

by mixmax 14y ago

AndrewDucker 14y ago

It would be nice to have some indication. When reading down the page it would be nice to know what the interesting comments that happen to be on low-rated threads are.

RyanMcGreal 14y ago

I like seeing comment points but I'm not sure that it's a good thing to display them. Threads are already sorted by comment score so that the best comments are close to the top - I'm not sure what additional benefit comes from seeing the actual snapshot numbers aside from sheer curiosity.

larrys 14y ago
I agree. Also it creates a halo effect. And creates more incentive to click either up or down depending on how you view the number relative to your own opinion. Not having a count gives new comments a chance (since you don't automatically look at the "minutes ago" part). So a new comment can be not at the bottom giving it a chance to gain more exposure even though it has no points.
- andyjohnson0 14y ago
  I also agree. From what I've seen on StackOverflow, having visible points encourages posting to gain points rather than to enrich the discussion.
bryanlarsen 14y ago
Threads are sorted by comment score and by age, with newer threads floating to the top. I think this is a great heuristic. My only beef is that this also naturally floats poor replies to great comments. It would be nice to have a good heuristic to know when to read the replies and when to move on to the next thread. I think one does exist: expandos. Give us the ability to expand and compact threads, and then automatically compact any old replies that haven't received a reasonable number of upvotes. I use the extension from hckrnews.com to give me expandos, but intelligent compaction would be so much sweeter.
- scott_s 14y ago
  Just as bad as uplifting poor replies to great comments, it pushes down great replies to poor comments. I've seen some threads were the most informative and insightful comment was halfway down the page because it was a reply correcting misconceptions. The only solution I can think of are collapsable threads, similar to reddit.
- russell 14y ago
  +/- expansion/contraction seems like a good idea to me too. It would be a good way for me to hide the occasional off topic argument between a couple of individuals and to find the grand.. parent of a comment.
mixmax 14y ago
We had this discussion back when the points were being hidden, and I went through a few posts with many comments to see whether it would be possible to find the good comments based on where they were in the thread. It turned out that because of the threaded comment system you get very little information about which comments have many votes and which don't. In the sample I checked it was impossible to get any idea of how popular a comment was around 50% of the time (this comment for instance, which is currently the only child to your comment could hav 0 upvotes or it could have 100. There's no way to know)
- beagle3 14y ago
  The solution, I think, is some sort of "unthreaded" view (with link to the contextual "threaded" view). Because, even if you do see the score, it is unlikely anyone will notice a +1000 answer to a -2 top level post when there are 20 of the latter. The numbers themselves don't (and shouldn't) matter - only the rank.

citricsquid 14y ago

comments are still displayed based on their score: if a comment is at the top and ~1 hour old you can assume it's well rated.

mixmax 14y ago
this only works for the main trunk though. Lot of insightful comments are hidden way down as a child of a comment that doesn't have a lot of upvotes.

stralep 14y ago

I would really like to see comments I have upvoted... There are bunch of wise comments somewhere, that I have read, upvoted, and forgot.

ColinWright 14y ago
http://news.ycombinator.com/saved?id=stralep http://news.ycombinator.com/saved?id=stralep
- stralep 14y ago
  Comments, not stories...
  - ColinWright 14y ago
    Ah - noted - apologies. I personally keep a separate note of comments of interest, and I was a little quick to respond. Yes, an equivalent for comments of "saved" would be useful.
andyjohnson0 14y ago
It would be useful to be able to 'star' or 'favourite' a comment or submission, to have them accessible in a private list, and to see how many people had done this to your own comments/submissions. I wouldn't like this to be generally visible though. As others have said, it creates a halo effect and discourages diversity of opinions.
- stralep 14y ago
  I see no reason to use additional mechanism. Why not use upvote? I'm upvoting stories so I could see them later (as ColinWright noted), why not create a page I could see comments I liked?
  - andyjohnson0 14y ago
    Separation of concerns. You might want to be able to tag a post or comment as noteworthy but not want to upvote it. For example, to remind you to come back to it and add a comment explaining why its wrong or that you disagree with it. Basically: Upvote != Save for Later

hxa7241 14y ago

There is a dilemma there. If you are only skimming a few comments, you are not reading most. But if the comments are not being read, how can they be scored properly? The extent to which points allow reduced/selective reading is the extent to which the accuracy of that selection is itself reduced.

happimess 14y ago

In my experience with reddit, displaying the score of a comment leads to bandwagon voting, which adds easily avoided noise to the sorting process. It also leads to a certain amount of karma fetishization, which results in easy jokes and fluff. With regards to skimming, I think that comment folding is a useful feature with few drawbacks.

dclowd9901 14y ago

I don't think this is a good idea. I think that when someone sees a comment that would otherwise not be agreeable on a personal level, when it has votes from many other members, it has a tendency to sway your personal convictions a bit, just enough to make you second guess your own opinions. Let a comment stand for its merit. I honestly wish they'd take names off the comments too. I feel like there are way too many recognizeable handles around here, which can have a similar effect of self-fulfilling prophecy. Case in point: has PG ever been downvoted? Ever?

tokenadult 14y ago
Case in point: has PG ever been downvoted? Ever? I downvoted a recent comment by pg that for quite a while was (and STILL is) the top comment in its thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4253156 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4253156 but that pg later acknowledged didn't have a sufficient factual basis. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4254592 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4254592 Conspiracy theories are very enticing to the human mind, so they often get too many upvotes here on HN. Although I did downvote pg's first comment in the thread mentioned here, I was outnumbered by many more people who upvoted it, mistakenly.
- jeswin 14y ago
  It is perhaps more useful when a mistake is corrected with a reply/comment, than with a down-vote. Doing so gets people to read both. Besides in the absence of the original comment (incorrect as it may be), the followups lose context. Reserve down votes for opinions that do not deserve a reply. Such as pure trolling.
  - scott_s 14y ago
    Top comments in a thread frame discussion - if the top comment in a thread is a conspiracy theory, then it's likely that the entire discussion will be derailed. For that reason, I think it's valid to downvote such comments, to prevent them from derailing the discussion.
14y ago

WiseWeasel 14y ago

The only way I see to satisfy both sides of this argument is to hide the scores until you're done voting on comments for that page. Maybe an "I'm done voting" button at the top and bottom of the page, which removes all voting arrows and replaces them with scores. The score for a comment could also be displayed after you've voted on it. [The problem might lie in the implementation for this solution. You probably don't want to store the 'done voting on this story' information in cookies, since that's tied to a single device and vulnerable to user manipulation. This means that you need to maintain a list of stories for which each user is done voting in your database, and then check against that list on each page load. This adds a significant amount of server resource usage, as well as maintenance and performance tuning work for what amounts to an unnecessary feature. Showing scores for a comment after voting on it should be easy to implement, but then you'd be encouraging people to vote just so they can see a score, possibly even up-voting everything on the page. My guess is we're stuck with the status quo for the foreseeable future.]

Peaker 14y ago
Users would vote on comments randomly just to see their score...

brudgers 14y ago

Maybe seeing comment scores could be a reward for 10,000 karma points.

breckinloggins 14y ago

Compromise: how about showing points on comments but only after you yourself have accumulated a significant number of points?

politician 14y ago
Up-voted with a challenge: of what value is seeing comment points except stroking your own ego when your or your friends or people-you-always-agree-with comments' are voted up?
- breckinloggins 14y ago
  Of none whatsoever; but ego can be a great motivator. The problem isn't being motivated by ego, it's being motivated by ego before you've proven to others that you can handle the responsibility. :)

SkyMarshal 14y ago

>My personal opinion is that it degrades the site tremendously not to be able to skim through a thread and see which comments others have deemed interesting/noteworthy/insightful by upvoting them. I completely disagree. The crowd is not always right in upvoting, as PG pointed out in his statement of the problem (dumb or useless comments getting massively upvoted). Relying on comment votes as a heuristic for rapidly scanning and deciding what to read is a good idea. Read for yourself and decide, and if you lack the knowledge to decide then bookmark it for later research if it's important, or move on to something else if not.

brandnewlow 14y ago

IPhone app I use to read HN has been busted and not showing usernames on comments for over a year now. It's annoying at often tell when some of the more active HN users comment because because their voices come through so strongly. A Patio11 comment (uber-detailed) is immediately recognizable. So is a Tptacek comment (aggressively but gracefully contrarian) or a PG comment (short declarative sentences followed by many many many responses).