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Can you explain the reasons why you see this as being an effective way to filter out overly-pedantic or critical comments? These comments seem to be the focus o
by gfodor 13y ago
Can you explain the reasons why you see this as being an effective way to filter out overly-pedantic or critical comments? These comments seem to be the focus on HN not just because they are common, but also because they get upvoted to the top of the discussion, perpetuating the theme.
Presumably the sub-audience who finds such comments productive to discussion enough to upvote them will happily flip them live, too. It seems like the only reason to think otherwise is if you think that most people who have high karma are not guilty of upvoting these types of comments.
- tptacek 13y agoBecause there's a karma threshold attached to promotion, a user who has some demonstrated engagement with the site will have to make a deliberate decision to grant a forum to limbo comments. That person will have to believe the comment makes a positive contribution and maintains civility. The phenomenon that bolts fatuous vitriol to the tops of threads requires no such deliberation. I have no idea if this is going to work, but I'm psyched to see it play out.
- 6ren 13y agoSeems similar to slashdot moderation; also enables meta-moderation.
- angersock 13y agoI'm not sure I'd be interested in that level of meta here on HN--consider the existing bickering about bannings, title rewrites, and off-topic stuff. This could be a step in the wrong direction.
- lmm 13y agoMeta-moderation enforces groupthink, which is why I left slashdot. If it happened here I'd go back to 4chan.
- abraininavat 13y agoYou've simply assumed that engaged users are less likely to vote up fatuous vitriol. That remains to be shown and I'm skeptical.
- jamesaguilar 13y agoIn another thread not long ago PG stated that this was exactly the case on a few comments he found vitriolic. If he measured the votes of only high-karma users, the comments would have been negative. You can search through his history to find his report on the subject (it was around three weeks ago, IIRC).
- tptacek 13y agoHere's the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5936055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5936055 To be clear: what he's saying in this thread seems to support the idea of a karma-limited feature for showing comments. The score (not the content) on a comment would have been negative; the comment, in context, was a superficial negative comment that commanded the top spot on a thread.
- gfodor 13y agoAt the very least, the intuition seems to me that if you have a high enough karma score, you've learned by example what is an acceptable and unacceptable comment and know how to compose comments that are acceptable, and should be able to tell the difference. Beyond that, if you set the knob high enough, you're going to capture people who have been around for a while and have been able to witness the rise of the pendants and armchair-experts compared to yesteryear so won't dismiss these things as "normal."
- simonrobb 13y agoIf this is the case, a good optimisation might be to weight the value of a vote according to the karma of the person casting that vote. This seems like a simple idea to me, and I don't know if it's used elsewhere, so please forgive me if I'm being a bit naive here!