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My instinct is the hidden scores are the bigger problem. There are so many posts where the top comment seems relevant and interesting, and I up-vote it blindly

My instinct is the hidden scores are the bigger problem. There are so many posts where the top comment seems relevant and interesting, and I up-vote it blindly, even though it already has like 50 up-votes, and the more interesting discussion is buried. As a 1000+ karma user, I'll make the same mistake, under the new system. Hiding the scores was a popular change because comments that would normally generate +5, all the sudden were getting +60. It made everyone feel better. None complained, but the site got worse. I really miss the old days, when I could check the comments page, and the top comment would be a new, interesting, nuanced, balanced, comprehensive, perspective on the issue. Now the top comment is the first popular opinion followed by a bunch of trolling. Can we bring back showing scores for a week? Maybe as a april fools joke.

dfc 13y ago
Why not put a new mental rule in place: Do not upvote top level comments unless they are extremely new <10 minutes ago. Then you get the benefits of hidden scores and you do not contribute to burying the interesting discussions. It is also worth rethinking blindly up-voting. How reasonable is it to expect a comment scoring system to succeed when users blindly upvote things?
- jcampbell1 13y ago
  That is a good suggestion for me, but it doesn't fix anything. I want to read interesting, comprehensive, and nuanced comments. My voting won't change that. The reason HN moved to blind voting was because there was ugly complaining about high karma users. HN should have hidden the usernames rather than the votes. The Economist works this way. My new theory is that HN should exploit the Hawthorne effect. Basically change the rules constantly to get the best results.
ajanuary 13y ago
An alternative could be that the impact of an upvote is inversly proportional to its position on the page. You'd probably have to combine it with other metrics like age.

dfc 13y ago

Why not put a new mental rule in place: Do not upvote top level comments unless they are extremely new <10 minutes ago. Then you get the benefits of hidden scores and you do not contribute to burying the interesting discussions. It is also worth rethinking blindly up-voting. How reasonable is it to expect a comment scoring system to succeed when users blindly upvote things?

jcampbell1 13y ago
That is a good suggestion for me, but it doesn't fix anything. I want to read interesting, comprehensive, and nuanced comments. My voting won't change that. The reason HN moved to blind voting was because there was ugly complaining about high karma users. HN should have hidden the usernames rather than the votes. The Economist works this way. My new theory is that HN should exploit the Hawthorne effect. Basically change the rules constantly to get the best results.

ajanuary 13y ago

An alternative could be that the impact of an upvote is inversly proportional to its position on the page. You'd probably have to combine it with other metrics like age.