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It's worth comparing this poll to the one about whether HN should display comment scores: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2595605 https://news.ycombinator.

It's worth comparing this poll to the one about whether HN should display comment scores: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2595605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2595605 Only 38.5% of users were in favor of comment scores being hidden, but it was decidedly a positive change for the site.

paulrademacher 13y ago
Is there a follow-up poll showing that it's "decidedly a positive change"? :-)
- tripzilch 13y ago
  According to rkuykendall-com, that actually was the follow-up poll, held after the change was implemented. So no, it was not widely regarded to be a decidedly positive change.
rkuykendall-com 13y ago
A few notes: 1) That poll was conducted well after the change. That makes it a very different type of poll. 2) This change has half as much support, if you ignore the wait-and-sees.
- ryannevius 13y ago
  Why on earth would you ignore the "wait-and-sees"?
  - rkuykendall-com 13y ago
    It was hard to compare a yes/no poll with a yes/no/idk poll. So I dropped the idk. They didn't think it wouldn't work, and they didn't think it would work, so there was no parallel to the other poll.
lbotos 13y ago
As a fun aside, the other day a coworker and I noticed that HNsearch actually shows comment scores when you view per author: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=sillysaurus3#!/comment/forever/prefix/0/author%3Asillysaurus3 https://hn.algolia.com/?q=sillysaurus3#!/comment/forever/pre... (I'm not sure if this is intentional or not, but interesting none the less.)
- BrandonMarc 13y ago
  Shh, now they'll turn it off!
te_chris 13y ago
Prove that it was a positive change. If anything it's made parsing the comments harder IMO as the comment count provides extra context about how the community feels about the comment.
- vinhboy 13y ago
  Your comment brings up a really great point. Hiding comment karma actually took something away from the community. If it added something. I did not see it.
jcampbell1 13y ago
> it was decidedly a positive change for the site. Was it? When things were transparent, there were no reason to upvote interesting trollish comments. Now they get blindly up-voted for being interesting. For example, consider this article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7436401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7436401 About 5 facebook engineers are answering questions. They are of course buried by a meta discussion about whether facebook should use PHP at all. Since the change, I have written a few 50+ karma comments, and all were trolls. The change makes me like my own comments less. Getting a "high score" just requires posting something popular and mildly offensive, where as before, people could weigh, "what conversation is most important".
- rando289 13y ago
  Agree. I'll add that the most frustrating thing to me is this: 3 comments in a row, are ranked as #1, #2, and #3. I end up reading crap, or not reading good things because that order tells me almost nothing. If I saw the scores, and they were 200, 5, 3, I could know to skip the bottom 2 if I wasn't very interested in the topic. If the scores were 200, 199, 198, I would be sure not to neglect reading #3.
  - rando289 13y ago
    Not seeing the scores also encourages hijacking visibility by replying to the top comment. #1 score 1000 ->#2 score 5 #3 score 800 We end up reading comment #2 before and often instead of #3. Most really popular posts load 4-5 comments in reply to the actual post in the first page of comments. It's honestly ridiculous. I would really love to be able to collapse comment trees like on reddit, and even better if they aggressively collapsed by default based on their score.
    - tripzilch 13y ago
      Some simple comment auto-collapsing logic (like Reddit has, it's nothing magic) would actualy be "the simplest thing that could possibly work", a lot better and more straight-forward than adding yet another (third!) layer of voting to the comments. Also I agree that hiding scores was not "decidedly a positive change", for the reason rando289 points out, among other things. It's just so useful information. Sure it changes the way people deal out votes, but in the end it's all about how the posts are sorted, not the individual points, and I doubt the sort-order will change much (and if it does, whether it'd be worse).
ddlatham 13y ago
I disagree. With the scores visible I found it easier to pick out the best comments.
vinhboy 13y ago
Jeebus. I been waiting SOOOO long for a chance to tell everyone how much I hate hidden comment karma. Here is my chance. Ok. I am done. Sorry I just had to vent. Edit: Crap! my comment is pending... I guess I won't get to say it at all.

paulrademacher 13y ago

Is there a follow-up poll showing that it's "decidedly a positive change"? :-)

tripzilch 13y ago
According to rkuykendall-com, that actually was the follow-up poll, held after the change was implemented. So no, it was not widely regarded to be a decidedly positive change.

rkuykendall-com 13y ago

A few notes: 1) That poll was conducted well after the change. That makes it a very different type of poll. 2) This change has half as much support, if you ignore the wait-and-sees.

ryannevius 13y ago
Why on earth would you ignore the "wait-and-sees"?
- rkuykendall-com 13y ago
  It was hard to compare a yes/no poll with a yes/no/idk poll. So I dropped the idk. They didn't think it wouldn't work, and they didn't think it would work, so there was no parallel to the other poll.

lbotos 13y ago

As a fun aside, the other day a coworker and I noticed that HNsearch actually shows comment scores when you view per author: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=sillysaurus3#!/comment/forever/prefix/0/author%3Asillysaurus3 https://hn.algolia.com/?q=sillysaurus3#!/comment/forever/pre... (I'm not sure if this is intentional or not, but interesting none the less.)

BrandonMarc 13y ago
Shh, now they'll turn it off!

te_chris 13y ago

Prove that it was a positive change. If anything it's made parsing the comments harder IMO as the comment count provides extra context about how the community feels about the comment.

vinhboy 13y ago
Your comment brings up a really great point. Hiding comment karma actually took something away from the community. If it added something. I did not see it.

jcampbell1 13y ago

> it was decidedly a positive change for the site. Was it? When things were transparent, there were no reason to upvote interesting trollish comments. Now they get blindly up-voted for being interesting. For example, consider this article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7436401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7436401 About 5 facebook engineers are answering questions. They are of course buried by a meta discussion about whether facebook should use PHP at all. Since the change, I have written a few 50+ karma comments, and all were trolls. The change makes me like my own comments less. Getting a "high score" just requires posting something popular and mildly offensive, where as before, people could weigh, "what conversation is most important".

rando289 13y ago
Agree. I'll add that the most frustrating thing to me is this: 3 comments in a row, are ranked as #1, #2, and #3. I end up reading crap, or not reading good things because that order tells me almost nothing. If I saw the scores, and they were 200, 5, 3, I could know to skip the bottom 2 if I wasn't very interested in the topic. If the scores were 200, 199, 198, I would be sure not to neglect reading #3.
- rando289 13y ago
  Not seeing the scores also encourages hijacking visibility by replying to the top comment. #1 score 1000 ->#2 score 5 #3 score 800 We end up reading comment #2 before and often instead of #3. Most really popular posts load 4-5 comments in reply to the actual post in the first page of comments. It's honestly ridiculous. I would really love to be able to collapse comment trees like on reddit, and even better if they aggressively collapsed by default based on their score.
  - tripzilch 13y ago
    Some simple comment auto-collapsing logic (like Reddit has, it's nothing magic) would actualy be "the simplest thing that could possibly work", a lot better and more straight-forward than adding yet another (third!) layer of voting to the comments. Also I agree that hiding scores was not "decidedly a positive change", for the reason rando289 points out, among other things. It's just so useful information. Sure it changes the way people deal out votes, but in the end it's all about how the posts are sorted, not the individual points, and I doubt the sort-order will change much (and if it does, whether it'd be worse).

ddlatham 13y ago

I disagree. With the scores visible I found it easier to pick out the best comments.

vinhboy 13y ago

Jeebus. I been waiting SOOOO long for a chance to tell everyone how much I hate hidden comment karma. Here is my chance. Ok. I am done. Sorry I just had to vent. Edit: Crap! my comment is pending... I guess I won't get to say it at all.