8 ms·

New Comment Features

107 points by pg 18y ago

akirk 18y ago
I think it punishes commenting on niche hacker news postings that don't make it to the front page (i.e. far enough up on the list). If only few people read a posting, only few people will upvote it. So even if the comment would be valuable for a high traffic posting, it doesn't really get any points. Something that I really like about Hacker News, is that you can find lots of stuff on the second or third page that doesn't appeal to too many people, but is still interesting. Now, if you comment there a lot, it will decrease your karma. IMO these comments can be more valuable to those interested than it can be appreciated using points (esp. for Ask HN/YC posts).
andrewljohnson 18y ago
The feature helps me find better comments, faster - therefore it is good. It intuitively highlights for me low-scoring comments that I may want to read.
- icey 18y ago
  I'm not too sure about that. My name is in orange, and I've had my share of terrible comments. I'm honestly not too sure what the orange adds to the mix. Personally, I think it would be more useful to have the score displayed in the user's profile. I tend to check a person's profile if I think they're new and here to troll; that would help verify or disprove that (for me at least).
Angostura 18y ago
Would it be possible to have an indication of your comments-points average within your profile. The new orange badge-of honour has motivated me to become more insightful, witty, helpful and technically adept... but I want to know how much more ISWHTA I need to become to hit the threshold. There's actually a serious point to this, some people will be quite serious about wanting to "go orange" and I think that's a fine aspiration. Unfortunately, the system as devised is likely to penalises two types of comment: 1. Commenting on slightly older stories - the comment is less likely to be voted up (or down) and will therefore harm the commentor's points average. 2. The "Thanks" comment. I have on occasion posted a quick 'thank you' to someone for answering a question. I wouldn't expect that to be voted up - it is not interesting or insightful, it's just an (almost private) message of appreciation for some help. Saying "thanks" reduces your average. If you want less of that type of behaviour then, fine - but I suspect that these are unintended consequences.
jacquesm 18y ago
Visible distinction between users creates an upperclass and an underclass, if there is no very good reason for doing so I am very much against it. Use the 'karma' counters as an internal mechanism to reward users with extra features or to remove those features if their karma drops below the thresholds again because of misbehviour. Use it to sort the submissions and the comments possibly using some kind of weighting system so that the 'good' content (content by long established users) bubbles to the top, it gives newcomers something to strive for. But don't make it visible, remove the points from the header of the site, keep it under water. Why? This is why: - good 'karma' need not be shown, it comes across in every posting you make, because you are supposedly showing good judgement in your writing, not in the 'colour of your name' - there will be no timidity for rookies to speak out against 'old timers', similar bs happens on ./ where your UID number seems to be the arbitrator of the discussion - karma has some meaning outside of HN, and if I take that meaning correctly then you're not going to get any for showing it - karma tends to self-reinforce enough when used as an underwater feature, it will self-reinforce out of control as soon as you make it into a distinct mark - this feature to create a distinction between the 'top group', the 'incrowd' of those who are 'better' and 'the rest' (the unwashed masses or whatever you wish to call them) will be an incentive to game the system, if it is underwater such an incentive is not present.
DanielBMarkham 18y ago
New rule: screw the comments where you're trying to help one person understand anything. It'll just lower your comment average. Better to post generally agreeable and interesting but mostly forgettable nuggets that impact a larger group.
- tokenadult 18y ago
  New rule: screw the comments where you're trying to help one person understand anything. It'll just lower your comment average. I'll observe empirically if that's what happens under the new system. It looks like it could be a risk (as with this comment).
danw 18y ago
I liked it until I realised my username is not orange!
fauigerzigerk 18y ago
So let's summarise what's not welcome here: * Having longer debates involving fewer people. * Commenting on new posts that may never make it to the front page. * Commenting at the "wrong" time of day. * Commenting on fringe issues unloved by the crowd. * Adding a comment to an already long comment thread. [Edit] I don't mind scoring low at all (I do mind negative scores). That doesn't keep me from doing all of the above. But being visually set apart from people who, for whatever reason, do not do these things as frequently as I do makes me think I'm in the wrong place.
Harkins 18y ago
I think a problem with this is that it doesn't just highlight consistently good commenters, it does so at the time of moderation. When I'm deciding whether to upvote a comment, there's an indicator that appears to say everyone else thinks I should.
brk 18y ago
I would have thought about going the complete opposite direction... Hide the username until AFTER you've voted. I think that in any society you tend to find people you agree with and disagree with, and then become biased in your opinion of anything they say/suggest. Does it really matter who posted a comment? You either agree with it, or you don't.
altano 18y ago
I don't know of any Internet community that was kept sane by coloring "good" commenters orange, but it sounds like a start. Is stricter moderation out of the question or just not in the cards yet?
ejs 18y ago
The funny thing is just the other day I was thinking that one of the best parts of HN is that comments and submissions are evaluated on their merit. Since a users name is relatively obscure and not as identifiable as forums with avatars I never really remember names or associate them with good or bad submissions. To me this seems to be contradictory to the way HN is supposed to work. Maybe (probably) I am reading too much into this but it just seems to be reinforcing a kind of Ad Hominem discrediting of submissions. In fact I think it would probably be more interesting if it went the other way, don't show names at all on submissions. Maybe revel the name only after say 30 minutes from submission time. If HN's goal is to avoid becoming redit/digg... why implement the same ideas as they have?
jballanc 18y ago
Ultimately, I think the biggest issue with the commenting system is that it's too easy to get lost. For example, this post now has 181 comments, and I barely have time to read 20. Maybe comment 84 has a really good point to be made? Don't know...I'll never see it. Not that this is unique to HN. Any community that gets above a certain size is going to have an issue where only those dedicated enough to read through entire 181 comment threads can really participate fully. Anyone who is pressed for time, or only interested in being a casual community member gets punished by the legions of 12 hours-a-day staring at comment threads dedicated fanatics. Anyway, this is not a rant, but a suggestion. What about not showing some comments? I mean, I sort of already do this on my own, but why not choose a random subset of comments (and their corresponding threads) to display. Make the frequency dependent on the score. At the very least, would it be too much to ask for disclosure arrows? For example, the first thread on this page was entertaining for the first 4-5 comments. After that, I just wished it would go away, but instead it continued for another 3-4 pages. Anyhow, for the time being I'm kind of curious how a community run by self professed geeks, with the express intention of remaining a community for said self professed geeks, fares in the long run... ...should be a fun ride
ratsbane 18y ago
Can you add something to the user-stats page (http://news.ycombinator.com/user http://news.ycombinator.com/user? ) to show the ratio? Now it shows the numerator (karma) but not the denominator (comment quantity). I'd like to know how close I am to being orange.
lst 18y ago
Another really important feature is missing: For people like me, who every now and then make completely unpopular comments (with some negative consequences, at least mathematically speaking), it would be nice if we could get more and more invisible (I mean the user name), because unpopular folks really deserve absolute invisibility! (Take that, lst!!) Please down vote if you agree!
Jebdm 18y ago
I like the orange-username thing. Maybe it would make sense to apply it to submissions as well as comments?
- cperciva 18y ago
  If we're going to have submissions highlighted based on their submitter, I have another request: Please unhighlight (make grey, or something) submissions from accounts which are less than 1 hour old, at least until someone votes them up. The first thing I do when I see a spammy-sounding submission is check to see how old the submitting account is, and if it's less than an hour old the submissions is almost always spam.
  - Jebdm 18y ago
    Perhaps it would be good to put a karma threshold, or at least a time limit, on the ability to submit stories. (A karma threshold might be bad for people who like to browse but not comment.)
tptacek 18y ago
Wow, I hate this feature. Comment karma was already implicitly self-reinforcing. Now HN has reified that in the UI. Can we opt out of being highlighted?
- jeroen 18y ago
  Opt out for Firefox: put the following in usercontent.css @-moz-document url-prefix(http://news.ycombinator.com/) http://news.ycombinator.com/){ .comhead a font { color: #828282 !important; } } (how to create a user stylesheet: http://www.squarefree.com/userstyles/user-style-sheets.html http://www.squarefree.com/userstyles/user-style-sheets.html )
  - ralph 18y ago
    Excellent. Thanks very much. I've made them black and will now set about fixing some of the other poor colour decisions, e.g. the body of the top post of a thread being an unreadable gray which puts me off reading it through no fault of the author.
- pg 18y ago
  Oy. All day long I slave over a hot repl, and for what? Such ingratitude, I tell you.
  - ErrantX 18y ago
    I have to confess that the idea is clever: but ultimately does not fix the problem. The issue, as I see it, is not so much the posts as the voting. Which varies wildly and is fairly indescriminate. A worthless but sensationalist message might get lots of upvotes whilst a shy but informative message will get missed. I suggest it is the voting practices that need to be addressed. I vote very rarely on messages (maybe once or twice a day): making my approval something "to be gained". I know others use that approach too - and I think it makes things worth much more. Ideally (IMO) a good situation should be one where a post with 5 votes should be stunningly good and 20 votes a "once in a lifetime" achievment. Some ideas... - Vote weighting (Karma or average Karma effects the weight of your vote) - Include "Downvotes" next to the total. This helps identify messages with a lot of disagreement (i.e. something with a 1 might have 20 downs and 21 ups - that is worth taking a look at). - Im not sure how you position the comments (never tracked them in depth) but I think you could try - - New comments stay at the "top" of the page for a set time (an hr perhaps?) before being ranked properly. - - Ranked posts: push all negative marked posts below -1 to the bottom. All positive stuff to the top marked on activity (a combination of the direct replies and the number of up&down votes) That doesn't totally fix the problem but I suggest it might have an impact :D
cperciva 18y ago
Edit: I was seeing some weirdness with different comments by the same person being highlighted / not highlighted, but it turns out that it was just due to caching (see pg's response below).
- teej 18y ago
  I don't believe this is true. I see plenty of orange responses to my comments 30+ days old.
  - andreyf 18y ago
    Caches don't get updated all-at-once. Some older comments will be updated before others.
- pg 18y ago
  There's just some caching going on.
  - Shamiq 18y ago
    Will this go away over time?
    - pg 18y ago
      Twould be a pretty alarming form of caching if it didn't.
      - Shamiq 18y ago
        Point taken.
      - TrevorJ 18y ago
        :) (I probably just lowered my post-karma average, but that comment was way too funny not to react to.)
- tlrobinson 18y ago
joseakle 18y ago
Would it make sense to have moving (formula based) thresholds?
ROFISH 18y ago
Is this orangey feature retroactive on old comments at real time, or is it permanent for posts regardless of current karma?
TrevorJ 18y ago
While people will no doubt have a lot of differing opinions about any change in this community, one thing I find very encouraging is that PG and co are being extremely proactive and are very willing to try new things. -Whatever the outcome of any particular experiment is, I'm really glad to see that they are on top of things.
slackerIII 18y ago
Hmm... not sure about the comment karma thing. People with decent averages may refrain from posting more speculative comments, just so it doesn't drag them down. That would seem to reinforce a tendency towards group-think. Of course, maybe that is good. :)
- lallysingh 18y ago
  It also really hits those of us who make lots of little comments across several threads. Unless you're early to comment, the structure of the thread's already there -- you don't want to coerce your own discussion into it, just add your thoughts.
- azanar 18y ago
  Not just people with good averages, but more so people with lower averages who want to make them better.It may keep them from expressing counter-views that the orangey colored folks might, as a collective, down-mod and post ripostes which will encourage others to down-mod or not up-mod further. Not implying that the orangey folks think as a herd, but it is possible that, by virtue of their prettier coloring, people will be more inclined to follow their lead, and think their opinion the more correct one.
  - rms 18y ago
    Sure, it makes people less likely to post anything that goes against the desires of the group. This will impact inane and stupid and inflammatory things more than unpopular ideas. As long as they are phrased civilly, unpopular ideas usually do fine. It's just that very often people that know their ideas are unpopular go out of their way to antagonize the community.
diN0bot 18y ago
i'd love to see graphs/statistics of comment points over time for hn users.
- tptacek 18y ago
  You can get a lot of that info from searchyc; a couple days ago, the median average comment score for the top 50 users, (excluding pg) was 2.48, the mean was 3.09, stddev of .5. Yes, I am an unbelievably huge dork for knowing that.
jmtame 18y ago
i was just wondering today, "would it be possible to see a user's karma without actually opening up their profile?" this sort of addresses that. i like it.
- diN0bot 18y ago
  just curious given the recent scrutiny on karma: what goes through your mind when you want to know a user's karma?
  - davi 18y ago
    I often click on the username of someone whose comment I'm replying to, and glance at the age of their account, their karma, and sometimes click through for a look at their comments. I don't know exactly why I do this -- just want to know a little bit about who I'm talking to.
  - unalone 18y ago
    For me the process goes something like, "Hey! That's a really good point. Does this person have a high karma? If so, perhaps I've seen them before but haven't seen the name around." Other times it's, "Wow, this person sounds snotty and wretched. I hope they've got a low karma score to compensate. Perhaps even a negative. Oh, damn, they've got 24,000, I'm arguing with nickb again." Once every few months, it's "Look, this person's disagreeing with this 'unalone' bloke, they click the name, and - look! - he can't possibly be wrong with that karma score." I like to delude myself.
mighty 18y ago
My concern is that this doesn't negate or discourage a lot of the behaviors that get amply rewarded (e.g. one-line zingers), but which a lot of us recognize as harmful to the community in the long run. In fact, I suspect it will actually exacerbate the problem.
- TrevorJ 18y ago
  See, I think the one-liner blight could be headed off by auto-collapsing threads that are long and mostly really short replies unless the karma of the parent comment is above a certain threshold.
  - diN0bot 18y ago
    collapsible comment threads would be very much appreciated.
    - diN0bot 18y ago
      edit: i was going to whip out a greasemonkey script to do just that, but then i saw that the comments are just one big table...ug. i was hoping for nested div's. eit.
    - TrevorJ 18y ago
      I've seen that work really well on a couple sites. I played a certain MMO for a while (I know, I know) and the overall maturity level was, shall we say...low. Anyway, one of the popular database sites implemented that feature for it's threaded comments and if you compared the tone of the discourse their to the tone on the regular forums, it was night and day. The trolls simply branched off into threads that where below a certain threshold and were autocollapsed. You could still see the parent thread title inline and click through to the full thread if you wanted, but the signal to noise was much improved.
      - diN0bot 18y ago
        word. i'm one of the standard slashdot->proggit->hn users. slashdot's comment system rocks (ui and concept). it's a very strange worse-is-better effect that reddit and hn have both meant losing features in exchange for the advantages of being part of smaller communities.
azanar 18y ago
This has me thinking, comment score appears to be tied to two independent things: 1. The quality of the post. 2. The time since the article was posted, it's arrival to the front page, etc. Not all insightful comments are modded up the same, for this reason amongst a number of others. If someone says something smart, but says it late, the net effect will be to drag their karma/comment ratio down. I'd be concerned that this would prevent people from making good points when they run the risk of insufficient eyeballs.
jfarmer 18y ago
Hopefully this doesn't go the way of The Sneetches.
- andreyf 18y ago
  No, but maybe the way of tsarist Russia or Rwanda? Vive la Révolution! Down with the dark orange ones!
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smanek 18y ago
It might be useful to be able to see the average score for my last 50 comments on my user page. In principle, I could of course compute it myself - but might as well have the computer do the tallying for me ;-)
- smanek 18y ago
  I don't know if this is a bug or a feature ... but, the edit button is no longer present on the main page. I have to click 'link', and then 'edit' is available. I was just going to edit my comment with a link to searchyc.com. It tells me, for example, that my average comment score is ~4, but that my last few comments have been unusually unpopular (or at least unnoticed), which I assume drove me below the threshold. Maybe it would be nice to take the maximum of a user's all time average and average of the last 50 comments - that way users who have historically made positive contributions are given a little leeway to voice unpopular/controversial opinions. EDIT: Odd, now the edit link is back. Maybe a weird effect of caching or something.
  - TrevorJ 18y ago
    I actually didn't know about search YC, thanks for mentioning it again, seems like a great utility.
- iigs 18y ago
  Mine was 2.98 before this comment, and assuming it stays at 1 will be 2.94. (edit: learned more about it, actually 2.6, see: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=467290 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=467290 ) I know what I have to do to game it (reload /newest and look for stuff that is generally interesting and I understand, contribute a neutrally toned slightly technical comment and not follow up or reply to questions), but I will not be doing it (much) because it it goes against two things that I value about comments here: 1) It's a friendly place to converse and ask legitimate questions without getting RTFM or LMGTFY (unless your question is reeeealllly dumb) 2) I value contributions that are presented later, even if they're not as highly scored (this, of course, the reason that comments aren't sorted by raw score), and I don't mind tagging something onto an article, even if I'm joining in late, provided I think it's a net contribution to the site.
rms 18y ago
So close... I'm at <s>3.2 3.26</s> 3.06 with the highest comment crossed off. I'll probably never get there. For what it's worth, I like the feature.
- deleted 18y ago
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jmackinn 18y ago
Is this really the direction that YC News should be headed? I don't think that this is a good idea and could easily lead to many problems. As some people here have pointed out, comments on new stories will be discouraged, deep and long threads will be curtailed, and comments are likely to get longer. It also creates a sort of class system within the community. Now a person's karma level is visually seen all the time.
- unalone 18y ago
  It's not quite a class system if it's based on your 50 most recent comments. 3.5 karma points a comment is a pretty low barrier of entry, after all, which means that a, it's easier to get the highlight, and b, it's not worth as much because it's easier to get, meaning people won't jump to try and achieve the highlighted title.
  - jmackinn 18y ago
    A class system may be extreme, but there is now a visual distinction between users and comments will likely be skewed by that.
    - unalone 18y ago
      Yeah, but a visual distinction that constantly shifts, with no high entry point, isn't much of one at all. Even if you do have it, you have no advantage over keeping it than somebody who's just joined yesterday. I don't know if it's a useful feature - I'll give it a few days and see if it starts looking natural - but it's not one that's creating any more of a skew than the leaderboard is currently.
  - froo 18y ago
    Except that getting karma points is more difficult for people who comment/post in offpeak times (like on the other side of the world), so this system can essentially penalise them.
    - unalone 18y ago
diN0bot 18y ago
i'd rather not see any karma or any points when i vote, thereby providing for content-based decisions. ideally, a comment would have three possible votes: up arrow, circle, down arrow. only after voting would a comment's score and user become visible.
- unalone 18y ago
  Really anal suggestion for a nonexistent feature: square instead of circle. That maintains the compact feel, while giving the visual metaphor of putting a hold on your vote. Somewhat related, I would really like an abstain feature not just because I like the idea of hiding votes, but because if I see an arrow I feel the need to click it until all the arrows disappear. An abstain button would help when I don't want to upvote and don't have a downvote.
pg 18y ago
BTW, average comment scores are only calculated very intermittently (because they wreak havoc with lazy loading) so it could take up to an hour before everyone's name displays in the right color.
ktom 18y ago
Regarding the link to the welcome page, I can see the reasoning to limit it to the first day, however I would argue that the link isn't that intrusive and should probably stick around until the first comment or some karma threshold. I certainly did not post within the first few days (if not months) and a quick reference to the guidelines would be handy. (actually i post so infrequently that having it always there would be handy)
huhtenberg 18y ago
pg, is it just a plain average as in "karma / count_of_comments" ? Consider using an average over a median range, i.e. sort comments by the score, trim top 10% and bottom 10% and then compute the average. This basically ignores occasional flukes, both positive and negative. Specifically, it rewards for consistently scoring well (and not just once) and doesn't punish for an occasional negative score.
- pg 18y ago
  I do a minimal version of what you suggest: I discard the highest score, which amounts to discarding the highest 2%.
timcederman 18y ago
Is it just me, or is this not active on older threads?
- sgibat 18y ago
  Given your comment, this comment is simply a test.
MaysonL 18y ago
You should not be using average: you should be using median (or perhaps average, using comment scores capped at 8 or 10) as the strategy you're using now will overly reward comments which hit a community sweet spot and garner 100 or so points, and discourage comments on stories which have been unwisely ignored [both of which tendencies are somewhat too pronounced on the site already]).
- pg 18y ago
  I tried both median and average, but ultimately went with average on the "judge talent at its best" principle. I do throw out the highest score though.
unalone 18y ago
You say that there are several features, and that the orange username is only the most conspicuous. Which other hard-to-find features have appeared?
- diN0bot 18y ago
  the default 1 point you get from commenting no longer adds to your karma. that is, the comment is 'worth' 1 point, but your karma doesn't change. i think it used to...though now im not so sure...
  - unalone 18y ago
    No, 1 is considered the base value. Your karma gets modified based on upvoting/downvoting. (So if you get voted down to a zero, you've lost a karma point.)
- pg 18y ago
  There aren't any other ones besides the ones I describe in that post: orange usernames, welcome links for new users, and limiting downvotes. Maybe it would have been more accurate to call them changes rather than features.
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nx 18y ago
So that's why I couldn't downvote even though I have 69 karma!
- acangiano 18y ago
  As a reminder, downvoting should not occur to express disagreement with a commenter. It's a collective form of moderation for inappropriate comments.
  - jacquesm 18y ago
    I've yet to see it being used in any other way.
  - gravitycop 18y ago
    As a reminder, downvoting should not occur to express disagreement with a commenter. Source? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392347 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392347 3 points by pg 57 days ago | link Downvoting has always been used to express disagreement. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392267 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392267 1 point by palish 57 days ago | link There's nothing wrong with using the arrows to express agreement or disagreement.
    - gravitycop 18y ago
      I apologize. This is a better link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 14 points by pg 354 days ago | link | parent | flag I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness.
psyklic 18y ago
Just out of curiosity, how many users (currently) receive the grayish-orange distinction?
- pg 18y ago
  234, which turns out to be almost exactly 1% of the number of unique visitors the site gets on a weekday.
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froo 18y ago
Hmm, I'm not entirely sure if colouring someone's name is the best of ideas since you have now created an artificial class system within HN. While people will argue that it's only a colour, it is still a line in the sand that has been drawn and it will (if even slightly) penalise people that access the site primarily in offpeak times as their comments may go unnoticed when people scan threads for orange names.
- pbrown 18y ago
  I agree. I'm in Alaska, so I'm pretty much behind everybody. I'm usually posting while you all are asleep. I'm screwed.
chris11 18y ago
Here's the screen for new accounts: http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/6818/hackernewswelcomevl8.jpg http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/6818/hackernewswelcomevl8.jpg I think it's a great idea over all. I think it would be better though if all new account were automatically redirected to the welcome screen upon registration. That would make sure it's read. Right now it seems to be a little too easy to miss.
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ananthrk 18y ago
It would be cool to have this feature on a per-submission basis. Like someone consistently making good arguments in a submission vs someone trying to de-rail the thread.
uberc 18y ago
FWIW, here's a data point on how a new member of the community (i.e. me) is reacting to these changes. I've been an avid reader of HN headlines for some time, but only started joining the comment conversations in the last week or so. Discarding the top-karma comment, I've made 13 comments with an average karma of 3.08, ranging from 1 to 7. Here's what I am observing about my instinctive, not particularly thought through reaction to the change in terms of future commenting behavior: - I'll likely avoid what I think are low-value though not offensive comments, the throw-away chit-chat that is likely to just stay at 1, and which could be considered either acceptable pleasantries or distracting noise. - I'll also be more likely to avoid commenting on threads with many comments already, for fear that even a high-value comment late to the conversation will get overlooked and drag down my average. - I'll think twice about commenting on new submission, which I've found to be a good way to get in early on a conversation, but which will be more risky in future given that the submission may never get noticed, leaving me with an unnoticed 1-karma comment that brings down my average. - As I scan comments, I will instinctively skip through to the orange users. As a new user, I provisionally assume these are the users who (1) have, on average, higher-value comments and (2) which collectively define the personality and social norms of the community which I'm seeking to be part of. - I think I'll learn from the orange users in terms of community norms, but I don't think I'll actively conform my opinion to theirs. In fact, my assumption so far is that this is a community that values merit-based argument and substantive discussions, not just "I agree" or "I disgree" type discussions. I suspect I'll conform more to the style and approach of the orange users in making arguments, not to their opinions and views as such. Are the behaviors above good or bad? Intended by the community or not? If they encourage me to seek out fresh, likely to be popular conversations and add to them in a way that meets the approval of the community old-timers without groupthink in terms of substance (which I'd like to think would not be particularly appreciated around here), I suspect that's a good thing. But I do have a concern about my hesitance to comment on older threads (a hesitance which may be acceptable, since perhaps those conversations are effectively over) and new submissions (a hesitance which may be detrimental).
ralph 18y ago
pg, How about doing something about this complaint? At 31 votes, it's my highest scoring comment. :-) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=460859 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=460859
lgriffith 18y ago
Every system can be gamed. Including this one. What I find interesting is the + and - votes often appear to be attempts to deny or affirm the truth of the post in opposition to its actual truth content. Its as if mere expression of an opinion contains the expectation of being able to coerce reality to agree and that a counter opinion can cancel that effect. Its Postmodern philosophy in full flower. Kant would be proud of his intellectual children. Thankfully, there does seem to be much less adherence to Postmodern philosophy on this list compared to others which is why I bother with this list. However, the philosophy lives deeply inside the Karma feature. The fact remains, that throughout history, what most people believe to be true has little to do with what is actually true. Any new truth that is discovered, is discovered first by a single individual. If that truth is fundamental, it will be rejected by "common sense" and "consensus" until at least one generation has passed - likely several. So also a crackpot notion of a crank will take at least a generation to pass or at least the death of the crank. The age of a "truth" has a poor correspondence to what is actually true. The net of this is each is responsible for filtering the noise coming at him and finding the few gems of truth it contains. There is always the possibility of being wrong. Karma scores are simply irrelevant accumulations of noise signals. Sorry, that is the nature of the beast.
lisper 18y ago
I'm posting this comment only to find out what color I am.
- lisper 18y ago
  Black. Bummer.
pg 18y ago
BTW, I just turned off orange usernames for now. It's not a policy decision; computing it was killing the server. (It's not the computation itself that's the problem. The problem is that it causes a lot of stuff to get loaded from disk that would otherwise not be.)
- jaxn 18y ago
  Bummer. I was looking forward to that feature. I just went through and (roughly) calculated my average. I am just over the threshold. Which creates an interesting scenario: A couple of stupid comments from me and I will fall below the threshold. That creates a really great motivation. So, if you add this feature back, it might be worth it to run some reports to see if there is a "sweet spot". Not to mention it would be really neat to see the distribution of average comment scores.
BinaryPie 18y ago
The future is Orange. /sigh
msie 18y ago
I must be colour blind. I can't see any usernames in orange. :(
lst 18y ago
BTW: I really love the "0 karma" feature from sites like this one: It helps very, very much not to waste too much time here, given that I never learned anything substantial on places like this one. May I cite some better teachers: - books - real persons - live discussions - pubs - restaurants - (last not least) my family(!!) or simply: anything that escapes virtuality...

107 points by pg 18y ago

akirk 18y ago

I think it punishes commenting on niche hacker news postings that don't make it to the front page (i.e. far enough up on the list). If only few people read a posting, only few people will upvote it. So even if the comment would be valuable for a high traffic posting, it doesn't really get any points. Something that I really like about Hacker News, is that you can find lots of stuff on the second or third page that doesn't appeal to too many people, but is still interesting. Now, if you comment there a lot, it will decrease your karma. IMO these comments can be more valuable to those interested than it can be appreciated using points (esp. for Ask HN/YC posts).

andrewljohnson 18y ago

The feature helps me find better comments, faster - therefore it is good. It intuitively highlights for me low-scoring comments that I may want to read.

icey 18y ago
I'm not too sure about that. My name is in orange, and I've had my share of terrible comments. I'm honestly not too sure what the orange adds to the mix. Personally, I think it would be more useful to have the score displayed in the user's profile. I tend to check a person's profile if I think they're new and here to troll; that would help verify or disprove that (for me at least).

Angostura 18y ago

Would it be possible to have an indication of your comments-points average within your profile. The new orange badge-of honour has motivated me to become more insightful, witty, helpful and technically adept... but I want to know how much more ISWHTA I need to become to hit the threshold. There's actually a serious point to this, some people will be quite serious about wanting to "go orange" and I think that's a fine aspiration. Unfortunately, the system as devised is likely to penalises two types of comment: 1. Commenting on slightly older stories - the comment is less likely to be voted up (or down) and will therefore harm the commentor's points average. 2. The "Thanks" comment. I have on occasion posted a quick 'thank you' to someone for answering a question. I wouldn't expect that to be voted up - it is not interesting or insightful, it's just an (almost private) message of appreciation for some help. Saying "thanks" reduces your average. If you want less of that type of behaviour then, fine - but I suspect that these are unintended consequences.

jacquesm 18y ago

Visible distinction between users creates an upperclass and an underclass, if there is no very good reason for doing so I am very much against it. Use the 'karma' counters as an internal mechanism to reward users with extra features or to remove those features if their karma drops below the thresholds again because of misbehviour. Use it to sort the submissions and the comments possibly using some kind of weighting system so that the 'good' content (content by long established users) bubbles to the top, it gives newcomers something to strive for. But don't make it visible, remove the points from the header of the site, keep it under water. Why? This is why: - good 'karma' need not be shown, it comes across in every posting you make, because you are supposedly showing good judgement in your writing, not in the 'colour of your name' - there will be no timidity for rookies to speak out against 'old timers', similar bs happens on ./ where your UID number seems to be the arbitrator of the discussion - karma has some meaning outside of HN, and if I take that meaning correctly then you're not going to get any for showing it - karma tends to self-reinforce enough when used as an underwater feature, it will self-reinforce out of control as soon as you make it into a distinct mark - this feature to create a distinction between the 'top group', the 'incrowd' of those who are 'better' and 'the rest' (the unwashed masses or whatever you wish to call them) will be an incentive to game the system, if it is underwater such an incentive is not present.

DanielBMarkham 18y ago

New rule: screw the comments where you're trying to help one person understand anything. It'll just lower your comment average. Better to post generally agreeable and interesting but mostly forgettable nuggets that impact a larger group.

tokenadult 18y ago
New rule: screw the comments where you're trying to help one person understand anything. It'll just lower your comment average. I'll observe empirically if that's what happens under the new system. It looks like it could be a risk (as with this comment).

danw 18y ago

I liked it until I realised my username is not orange!

fauigerzigerk 18y ago

So let's summarise what's not welcome here: * Having longer debates involving fewer people. * Commenting on new posts that may never make it to the front page. * Commenting at the "wrong" time of day. * Commenting on fringe issues unloved by the crowd. * Adding a comment to an already long comment thread. [Edit] I don't mind scoring low at all (I do mind negative scores). That doesn't keep me from doing all of the above. But being visually set apart from people who, for whatever reason, do not do these things as frequently as I do makes me think I'm in the wrong place.

Harkins 18y ago

I think a problem with this is that it doesn't just highlight consistently good commenters, it does so at the time of moderation. When I'm deciding whether to upvote a comment, there's an indicator that appears to say everyone else thinks I should.

brk 18y ago

I would have thought about going the complete opposite direction... Hide the username until AFTER you've voted. I think that in any society you tend to find people you agree with and disagree with, and then become biased in your opinion of anything they say/suggest. Does it really matter who posted a comment? You either agree with it, or you don't.

altano 18y ago

I don't know of any Internet community that was kept sane by coloring "good" commenters orange, but it sounds like a start. Is stricter moderation out of the question or just not in the cards yet?

ejs 18y ago

The funny thing is just the other day I was thinking that one of the best parts of HN is that comments and submissions are evaluated on their merit. Since a users name is relatively obscure and not as identifiable as forums with avatars I never really remember names or associate them with good or bad submissions. To me this seems to be contradictory to the way HN is supposed to work. Maybe (probably) I am reading too much into this but it just seems to be reinforcing a kind of Ad Hominem discrediting of submissions. In fact I think it would probably be more interesting if it went the other way, don't show names at all on submissions. Maybe revel the name only after say 30 minutes from submission time. If HN's goal is to avoid becoming redit/digg... why implement the same ideas as they have?

jballanc 18y ago

Ultimately, I think the biggest issue with the commenting system is that it's too easy to get lost. For example, this post now has 181 comments, and I barely have time to read 20. Maybe comment 84 has a really good point to be made? Don't know...I'll never see it. Not that this is unique to HN. Any community that gets above a certain size is going to have an issue where only those dedicated enough to read through entire 181 comment threads can really participate fully. Anyone who is pressed for time, or only interested in being a casual community member gets punished by the legions of 12 hours-a-day staring at comment threads dedicated fanatics. Anyway, this is not a rant, but a suggestion. What about not showing some comments? I mean, I sort of already do this on my own, but why not choose a random subset of comments (and their corresponding threads) to display. Make the frequency dependent on the score. At the very least, would it be too much to ask for disclosure arrows? For example, the first thread on this page was entertaining for the first 4-5 comments. After that, I just wished it would go away, but instead it continued for another 3-4 pages. Anyhow, for the time being I'm kind of curious how a community run by self professed geeks, with the express intention of remaining a community for said self professed geeks, fares in the long run... ...should be a fun ride

ratsbane 18y ago

Can you add something to the user-stats page (http://news.ycombinator.com/user http://news.ycombinator.com/user? ) to show the ratio? Now it shows the numerator (karma) but not the denominator (comment quantity). I'd like to know how close I am to being orange.

lst 18y ago

Another really important feature is missing: For people like me, who every now and then make completely unpopular comments (with some negative consequences, at least mathematically speaking), it would be nice if we could get more and more invisible (I mean the user name), because unpopular folks really deserve absolute invisibility! (Take that, lst!!) Please down vote if you agree!

Jebdm 18y ago

I like the orange-username thing. Maybe it would make sense to apply it to submissions as well as comments?

cperciva 18y ago
If we're going to have submissions highlighted based on their submitter, I have another request: Please unhighlight (make grey, or something) submissions from accounts which are less than 1 hour old, at least until someone votes them up. The first thing I do when I see a spammy-sounding submission is check to see how old the submitting account is, and if it's less than an hour old the submissions is almost always spam.
- Jebdm 18y ago
  Perhaps it would be good to put a karma threshold, or at least a time limit, on the ability to submit stories. (A karma threshold might be bad for people who like to browse but not comment.)

tptacek 18y ago

Wow, I hate this feature. Comment karma was already implicitly self-reinforcing. Now HN has reified that in the UI. Can we opt out of being highlighted?

jeroen 18y ago
Opt out for Firefox: put the following in usercontent.css @-moz-document url-prefix(http://news.ycombinator.com/) http://news.ycombinator.com/){ .comhead a font { color: #828282 !important; } } (how to create a user stylesheet: http://www.squarefree.com/userstyles/user-style-sheets.html http://www.squarefree.com/userstyles/user-style-sheets.html )
- ralph 18y ago
  Excellent. Thanks very much. I've made them black and will now set about fixing some of the other poor colour decisions, e.g. the body of the top post of a thread being an unreadable gray which puts me off reading it through no fault of the author.
pg 18y ago
Oy. All day long I slave over a hot repl, and for what? Such ingratitude, I tell you.
- ErrantX 18y ago
  I have to confess that the idea is clever: but ultimately does not fix the problem. The issue, as I see it, is not so much the posts as the voting. Which varies wildly and is fairly indescriminate. A worthless but sensationalist message might get lots of upvotes whilst a shy but informative message will get missed. I suggest it is the voting practices that need to be addressed. I vote very rarely on messages (maybe once or twice a day): making my approval something "to be gained". I know others use that approach too - and I think it makes things worth much more. Ideally (IMO) a good situation should be one where a post with 5 votes should be stunningly good and 20 votes a "once in a lifetime" achievment. Some ideas... - Vote weighting (Karma or average Karma effects the weight of your vote) - Include "Downvotes" next to the total. This helps identify messages with a lot of disagreement (i.e. something with a 1 might have 20 downs and 21 ups - that is worth taking a look at). - Im not sure how you position the comments (never tracked them in depth) but I think you could try - - New comments stay at the "top" of the page for a set time (an hr perhaps?) before being ranked properly. - - Ranked posts: push all negative marked posts below -1 to the bottom. All positive stuff to the top marked on activity (a combination of the direct replies and the number of up&down votes) That doesn't totally fix the problem but I suggest it might have an impact :D

cperciva 18y ago

Edit: I was seeing some weirdness with different comments by the same person being highlighted / not highlighted, but it turns out that it was just due to caching (see pg's response below).

teej 18y ago
I don't believe this is true. I see plenty of orange responses to my comments 30+ days old.
- andreyf 18y ago
  Caches don't get updated all-at-once. Some older comments will be updated before others.
pg 18y ago
There's just some caching going on.
- Shamiq 18y ago
  Will this go away over time?
  - pg 18y ago
    Twould be a pretty alarming form of caching if it didn't.
    - Shamiq 18y ago
      Point taken.
    - TrevorJ 18y ago
      :) (I probably just lowered my post-karma average, but that comment was way too funny not to react to.)
tlrobinson 18y ago

joseakle 18y ago

Would it make sense to have moving (formula based) thresholds?

ROFISH 18y ago

Is this orangey feature retroactive on old comments at real time, or is it permanent for posts regardless of current karma?

TrevorJ 18y ago

While people will no doubt have a lot of differing opinions about any change in this community, one thing I find very encouraging is that PG and co are being extremely proactive and are very willing to try new things. -Whatever the outcome of any particular experiment is, I'm really glad to see that they are on top of things.

slackerIII 18y ago

Hmm... not sure about the comment karma thing. People with decent averages may refrain from posting more speculative comments, just so it doesn't drag them down. That would seem to reinforce a tendency towards group-think. Of course, maybe that is good. :)

lallysingh 18y ago
It also really hits those of us who make lots of little comments across several threads. Unless you're early to comment, the structure of the thread's already there -- you don't want to coerce your own discussion into it, just add your thoughts.
azanar 18y ago
Not just people with good averages, but more so people with lower averages who want to make them better.It may keep them from expressing counter-views that the orangey colored folks might, as a collective, down-mod and post ripostes which will encourage others to down-mod or not up-mod further. Not implying that the orangey folks think as a herd, but it is possible that, by virtue of their prettier coloring, people will be more inclined to follow their lead, and think their opinion the more correct one.
- rms 18y ago
  Sure, it makes people less likely to post anything that goes against the desires of the group. This will impact inane and stupid and inflammatory things more than unpopular ideas. As long as they are phrased civilly, unpopular ideas usually do fine. It's just that very often people that know their ideas are unpopular go out of their way to antagonize the community.

diN0bot 18y ago

i'd love to see graphs/statistics of comment points over time for hn users.

tptacek 18y ago
You can get a lot of that info from searchyc; a couple days ago, the median average comment score for the top 50 users, (excluding pg) was 2.48, the mean was 3.09, stddev of .5. Yes, I am an unbelievably huge dork for knowing that.

jmtame 18y ago

i was just wondering today, "would it be possible to see a user's karma without actually opening up their profile?" this sort of addresses that. i like it.

diN0bot 18y ago
just curious given the recent scrutiny on karma: what goes through your mind when you want to know a user's karma?
- davi 18y ago
  I often click on the username of someone whose comment I'm replying to, and glance at the age of their account, their karma, and sometimes click through for a look at their comments. I don't know exactly why I do this -- just want to know a little bit about who I'm talking to.
- unalone 18y ago
  For me the process goes something like, "Hey! That's a really good point. Does this person have a high karma? If so, perhaps I've seen them before but haven't seen the name around." Other times it's, "Wow, this person sounds snotty and wretched. I hope they've got a low karma score to compensate. Perhaps even a negative. Oh, damn, they've got 24,000, I'm arguing with nickb again." Once every few months, it's "Look, this person's disagreeing with this 'unalone' bloke, they click the name, and - look! - he can't possibly be wrong with that karma score." I like to delude myself.

mighty 18y ago

My concern is that this doesn't negate or discourage a lot of the behaviors that get amply rewarded (e.g. one-line zingers), but which a lot of us recognize as harmful to the community in the long run. In fact, I suspect it will actually exacerbate the problem.

TrevorJ 18y ago
See, I think the one-liner blight could be headed off by auto-collapsing threads that are long and mostly really short replies unless the karma of the parent comment is above a certain threshold.
- diN0bot 18y ago
  collapsible comment threads would be very much appreciated.
  - diN0bot 18y ago
    edit: i was going to whip out a greasemonkey script to do just that, but then i saw that the comments are just one big table...ug. i was hoping for nested div's. eit.
  - TrevorJ 18y ago
    I've seen that work really well on a couple sites. I played a certain MMO for a while (I know, I know) and the overall maturity level was, shall we say...low. Anyway, one of the popular database sites implemented that feature for it's threaded comments and if you compared the tone of the discourse their to the tone on the regular forums, it was night and day. The trolls simply branched off into threads that where below a certain threshold and were autocollapsed. You could still see the parent thread title inline and click through to the full thread if you wanted, but the signal to noise was much improved.
    - diN0bot 18y ago
      word. i'm one of the standard slashdot->proggit->hn users. slashdot's comment system rocks (ui and concept). it's a very strange worse-is-better effect that reddit and hn have both meant losing features in exchange for the advantages of being part of smaller communities.

azanar 18y ago

This has me thinking, comment score appears to be tied to two independent things: 1. The quality of the post. 2. The time since the article was posted, it's arrival to the front page, etc. Not all insightful comments are modded up the same, for this reason amongst a number of others. If someone says something smart, but says it late, the net effect will be to drag their karma/comment ratio down. I'd be concerned that this would prevent people from making good points when they run the risk of insufficient eyeballs.

jfarmer 18y ago

Hopefully this doesn't go the way of The Sneetches.

andreyf 18y ago
No, but maybe the way of tsarist Russia or Rwanda? Vive la Révolution! Down with the dark orange ones!

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smanek 18y ago

It might be useful to be able to see the average score for my last 50 comments on my user page. In principle, I could of course compute it myself - but might as well have the computer do the tallying for me ;-)

smanek 18y ago
I don't know if this is a bug or a feature ... but, the edit button is no longer present on the main page. I have to click 'link', and then 'edit' is available. I was just going to edit my comment with a link to searchyc.com. It tells me, for example, that my average comment score is ~4, but that my last few comments have been unusually unpopular (or at least unnoticed), which I assume drove me below the threshold. Maybe it would be nice to take the maximum of a user's all time average and average of the last 50 comments - that way users who have historically made positive contributions are given a little leeway to voice unpopular/controversial opinions. EDIT: Odd, now the edit link is back. Maybe a weird effect of caching or something.
- TrevorJ 18y ago
  I actually didn't know about search YC, thanks for mentioning it again, seems like a great utility.
iigs 18y ago
Mine was 2.98 before this comment, and assuming it stays at 1 will be 2.94. (edit: learned more about it, actually 2.6, see: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=467290 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=467290 ) I know what I have to do to game it (reload /newest and look for stuff that is generally interesting and I understand, contribute a neutrally toned slightly technical comment and not follow up or reply to questions), but I will not be doing it (much) because it it goes against two things that I value about comments here: 1) It's a friendly place to converse and ask legitimate questions without getting RTFM or LMGTFY (unless your question is reeeealllly dumb) 2) I value contributions that are presented later, even if they're not as highly scored (this, of course, the reason that comments aren't sorted by raw score), and I don't mind tagging something onto an article, even if I'm joining in late, provided I think it's a net contribution to the site.

rms 18y ago

So close... I'm at <s>3.2 3.26</s> 3.06 with the highest comment crossed off. I'll probably never get there. For what it's worth, I like the feature.

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jmackinn 18y ago

Is this really the direction that YC News should be headed? I don't think that this is a good idea and could easily lead to many problems. As some people here have pointed out, comments on new stories will be discouraged, deep and long threads will be curtailed, and comments are likely to get longer. It also creates a sort of class system within the community. Now a person's karma level is visually seen all the time.

unalone 18y ago
It's not quite a class system if it's based on your 50 most recent comments. 3.5 karma points a comment is a pretty low barrier of entry, after all, which means that a, it's easier to get the highlight, and b, it's not worth as much because it's easier to get, meaning people won't jump to try and achieve the highlighted title.
- jmackinn 18y ago
  A class system may be extreme, but there is now a visual distinction between users and comments will likely be skewed by that.
  - unalone 18y ago
    Yeah, but a visual distinction that constantly shifts, with no high entry point, isn't much of one at all. Even if you do have it, you have no advantage over keeping it than somebody who's just joined yesterday. I don't know if it's a useful feature - I'll give it a few days and see if it starts looking natural - but it's not one that's creating any more of a skew than the leaderboard is currently.
- froo 18y ago
  Except that getting karma points is more difficult for people who comment/post in offpeak times (like on the other side of the world), so this system can essentially penalise them.
  - unalone 18y ago

diN0bot 18y ago

i'd rather not see any karma or any points when i vote, thereby providing for content-based decisions. ideally, a comment would have three possible votes: up arrow, circle, down arrow. only after voting would a comment's score and user become visible.

unalone 18y ago
Really anal suggestion for a nonexistent feature: square instead of circle. That maintains the compact feel, while giving the visual metaphor of putting a hold on your vote. Somewhat related, I would really like an abstain feature not just because I like the idea of hiding votes, but because if I see an arrow I feel the need to click it until all the arrows disappear. An abstain button would help when I don't want to upvote and don't have a downvote.

pg 18y ago

BTW, average comment scores are only calculated very intermittently (because they wreak havoc with lazy loading) so it could take up to an hour before everyone's name displays in the right color.

ktom 18y ago

Regarding the link to the welcome page, I can see the reasoning to limit it to the first day, however I would argue that the link isn't that intrusive and should probably stick around until the first comment or some karma threshold. I certainly did not post within the first few days (if not months) and a quick reference to the guidelines would be handy. (actually i post so infrequently that having it always there would be handy)

huhtenberg 18y ago

pg, is it just a plain average as in "karma / count_of_comments" ? Consider using an average over a median range, i.e. sort comments by the score, trim top 10% and bottom 10% and then compute the average. This basically ignores occasional flukes, both positive and negative. Specifically, it rewards for consistently scoring well (and not just once) and doesn't punish for an occasional negative score.

pg 18y ago
I do a minimal version of what you suggest: I discard the highest score, which amounts to discarding the highest 2%.

timcederman 18y ago

Is it just me, or is this not active on older threads?

sgibat 18y ago
Given your comment, this comment is simply a test.

MaysonL 18y ago

You should not be using average: you should be using median (or perhaps average, using comment scores capped at 8 or 10) as the strategy you're using now will overly reward comments which hit a community sweet spot and garner 100 or so points, and discourage comments on stories which have been unwisely ignored [both of which tendencies are somewhat too pronounced on the site already]).

pg 18y ago
I tried both median and average, but ultimately went with average on the "judge talent at its best" principle. I do throw out the highest score though.

unalone 18y ago

You say that there are several features, and that the orange username is only the most conspicuous. Which other hard-to-find features have appeared?

diN0bot 18y ago
the default 1 point you get from commenting no longer adds to your karma. that is, the comment is 'worth' 1 point, but your karma doesn't change. i think it used to...though now im not so sure...
- unalone 18y ago
  No, 1 is considered the base value. Your karma gets modified based on upvoting/downvoting. (So if you get voted down to a zero, you've lost a karma point.)
pg 18y ago
There aren't any other ones besides the ones I describe in that post: orange usernames, welcome links for new users, and limiting downvotes. Maybe it would have been more accurate to call them changes rather than features.

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nx 18y ago

So that's why I couldn't downvote even though I have 69 karma!

acangiano 18y ago
As a reminder, downvoting should not occur to express disagreement with a commenter. It's a collective form of moderation for inappropriate comments.
- jacquesm 18y ago
  I've yet to see it being used in any other way.
- gravitycop 18y ago
  As a reminder, downvoting should not occur to express disagreement with a commenter. Source? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392347 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392347 3 points by pg 57 days ago | link Downvoting has always been used to express disagreement. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392267 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392267 1 point by palish 57 days ago | link There's nothing wrong with using the arrows to express agreement or disagreement.
  - gravitycop 18y ago
    I apologize. This is a better link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 14 points by pg 354 days ago | link | parent | flag I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness.

psyklic 18y ago

Just out of curiosity, how many users (currently) receive the grayish-orange distinction?

pg 18y ago
234, which turns out to be almost exactly 1% of the number of unique visitors the site gets on a weekday.

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froo 18y ago

Hmm, I'm not entirely sure if colouring someone's name is the best of ideas since you have now created an artificial class system within HN. While people will argue that it's only a colour, it is still a line in the sand that has been drawn and it will (if even slightly) penalise people that access the site primarily in offpeak times as their comments may go unnoticed when people scan threads for orange names.

pbrown 18y ago
I agree. I'm in Alaska, so I'm pretty much behind everybody. I'm usually posting while you all are asleep. I'm screwed.

chris11 18y ago

Here's the screen for new accounts: http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/6818/hackernewswelcomevl8.jpg http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/6818/hackernewswelcomevl8.jpg I think it's a great idea over all. I think it would be better though if all new account were automatically redirected to the welcome screen upon registration. That would make sure it's read. Right now it seems to be a little too easy to miss.

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ananthrk 18y ago

It would be cool to have this feature on a per-submission basis. Like someone consistently making good arguments in a submission vs someone trying to de-rail the thread.

uberc 18y ago

FWIW, here's a data point on how a new member of the community (i.e. me) is reacting to these changes. I've been an avid reader of HN headlines for some time, but only started joining the comment conversations in the last week or so. Discarding the top-karma comment, I've made 13 comments with an average karma of 3.08, ranging from 1 to 7. Here's what I am observing about my instinctive, not particularly thought through reaction to the change in terms of future commenting behavior: - I'll likely avoid what I think are low-value though not offensive comments, the throw-away chit-chat that is likely to just stay at 1, and which could be considered either acceptable pleasantries or distracting noise. - I'll also be more likely to avoid commenting on threads with many comments already, for fear that even a high-value comment late to the conversation will get overlooked and drag down my average. - I'll think twice about commenting on new submission, which I've found to be a good way to get in early on a conversation, but which will be more risky in future given that the submission may never get noticed, leaving me with an unnoticed 1-karma comment that brings down my average. - As I scan comments, I will instinctively skip through to the orange users. As a new user, I provisionally assume these are the users who (1) have, on average, higher-value comments and (2) which collectively define the personality and social norms of the community which I'm seeking to be part of. - I think I'll learn from the orange users in terms of community norms, but I don't think I'll actively conform my opinion to theirs. In fact, my assumption so far is that this is a community that values merit-based argument and substantive discussions, not just "I agree" or "I disgree" type discussions. I suspect I'll conform more to the style and approach of the orange users in making arguments, not to their opinions and views as such. Are the behaviors above good or bad? Intended by the community or not? If they encourage me to seek out fresh, likely to be popular conversations and add to them in a way that meets the approval of the community old-timers without groupthink in terms of substance (which I'd like to think would not be particularly appreciated around here), I suspect that's a good thing. But I do have a concern about my hesitance to comment on older threads (a hesitance which may be acceptable, since perhaps those conversations are effectively over) and new submissions (a hesitance which may be detrimental).

ralph 18y ago

pg, How about doing something about this complaint? At 31 votes, it's my highest scoring comment. :-) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=460859 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=460859

lgriffith 18y ago

Every system can be gamed. Including this one. What I find interesting is the + and - votes often appear to be attempts to deny or affirm the truth of the post in opposition to its actual truth content. Its as if mere expression of an opinion contains the expectation of being able to coerce reality to agree and that a counter opinion can cancel that effect. Its Postmodern philosophy in full flower. Kant would be proud of his intellectual children. Thankfully, there does seem to be much less adherence to Postmodern philosophy on this list compared to others which is why I bother with this list. However, the philosophy lives deeply inside the Karma feature. The fact remains, that throughout history, what most people believe to be true has little to do with what is actually true. Any new truth that is discovered, is discovered first by a single individual. If that truth is fundamental, it will be rejected by "common sense" and "consensus" until at least one generation has passed - likely several. So also a crackpot notion of a crank will take at least a generation to pass or at least the death of the crank. The age of a "truth" has a poor correspondence to what is actually true. The net of this is each is responsible for filtering the noise coming at him and finding the few gems of truth it contains. There is always the possibility of being wrong. Karma scores are simply irrelevant accumulations of noise signals. Sorry, that is the nature of the beast.

lisper 18y ago

I'm posting this comment only to find out what color I am.

lisper 18y ago
Black. Bummer.

pg 18y ago

BTW, I just turned off orange usernames for now. It's not a policy decision; computing it was killing the server. (It's not the computation itself that's the problem. The problem is that it causes a lot of stuff to get loaded from disk that would otherwise not be.)

jaxn 18y ago
Bummer. I was looking forward to that feature. I just went through and (roughly) calculated my average. I am just over the threshold. Which creates an interesting scenario: A couple of stupid comments from me and I will fall below the threshold. That creates a really great motivation. So, if you add this feature back, it might be worth it to run some reports to see if there is a "sweet spot". Not to mention it would be really neat to see the distribution of average comment scores.

BinaryPie 18y ago

The future is Orange. /sigh

msie 18y ago

I must be colour blind. I can't see any usernames in orange. :(

lst 18y ago

BTW: I really love the "0 karma" feature from sites like this one: It helps very, very much not to waste too much time here, given that I never learned anything substantial on places like this one. May I cite some better teachers: - books - real persons - live discussions - pubs - restaurants - (last not least) my family(!!) or simply: anything that escapes virtuality...