8 ms·

While we're on the topic of suggestions that aren't likely to be implemented ;) I like to see the user name hidden on comments and submissions until after you

by brk 17y ago

While we're on the topic of suggestions that aren't likely to be implemented ;) I like to see the user name hidden on comments and submissions until after you vote and/or reply. Judge the content on the content alone, not on the author.

comatose_kid 17y ago
But then people would upvote comments (or worse, decrease s/n by responding) just to find out who authored them.
rincewind 17y ago
I trust security advice from tptacek or cperciva more than from [name withheld until you vote]. Threads get really confusing when [name withheld until you vote] argues with himself all the time.
- adimit 17y ago
  How about withholding the name still, but offering a way to 'opt-out' from voting. You don't see the name until you either vote up or opt out. After you've withheld your voice, you can't go vote again on that submission/comment.
  - eru 17y ago
    > you either vote up or opt out How about voting down?
    - Novash 17y ago
      You can't vote down until you hit a certain karma threshold.
      - eru 17y ago
        Yes, I know. I just could not resist making the itemization complete.
    - neoclassical 17y ago
      I oppose voting down. It encourages a lynch mob mentality. What helps instead is an ability to, Slashdot-like, tag posts with warnings: spam, stupid, irrelevant, "humor," etc.
- nir 17y ago
  That's my point - some people got high karma by posting intelligent comments, but many others just got it by posting a lot and echoing popular views. So, karma score in itself is pretty useless, in my opinion.
  - johnmw 17y ago
    This is probably getting a tad too complicated but having a number of different 'upvote' icons (ala Slashdot) would be interesting. You could upvote someone for being funny, informative, insightful, and so on. If someone has a high karma for being funny in topics related to computer security, you probably wouldn't trust their security advice so much.
- brk 17y ago
  Your point about valuing an opinion more highly from a person who is known to be accurate on a subject is valid. In the arguments case, I think it's easy enough to follow an A/B conversation, even without names. In the first case though, it still seems that the majority of comments here are not so specialized as to require the posters identity to determine if the content is accurate enough or not. Ideally, if you could not judge the accuracy of the comment on your own you would leave it alone. There would be enough others that could judge it impartially that the comment itself would get voted up or down appropriately.
  - apotheon 17y ago
    There's still the matter of confusion when [name withheld] is responding to [name withheld], though -- and for that reason alone, I'm afraid I have to disagree with your suggestion. It's also the case that sometimes I'm not entirely sure what someone's trying to say unless and until I look at it within the context of his or her earlier comments in the same discussion. If I can't match someone's comment with the context of previous comments, I sometimes can't tell if they're being sarcastic, accidentally saying "can" instead of "can't", and so on. I judge by the content of a comment rather than by name, and I agree that's a good way to do it, but I don't think that needs to be enforced by withholding information from us.
    - pbhj 17y ago
      You could simply name all respondents by their response position in the thread, first is person1 (hope that's not too limiting!): person1:yay person2:people here like intelligent comments person3:go to digg if you want to yay all the time person1:yay And have an option to reveal names and/or show them on the mouseover link for personX.
- Bleys 17y ago
  You would just need to break out the gensyms to resolve the differentiation issue.
- calcnerd256 17y ago
  If users can no longer rely upon their names being displayed, they will come up with alternate ways of identifying themselves. Forced anonymous has worked in some places in the past.
  - Novash 17y ago
    I don't know why you were downvotted. You do have a point. If we hide the name of the user on the header, they will probably simply post their name on the post itself.
- jwr 17y ago
  I don't trust security advice from tptacek. First because we had a discussion and we clearly do not agree as to who can be trusted, but second (and more generally), I don't trust anyone who has enough time to gather lots of karma on HN. Most people have better things to do.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  If you are not in a position to evaluate an argument about security you probably shouldn't be following the advice anyway.
- xuhu 17y ago
  > Threads get really confusing when [name withheld until you vote] argues with himself all the time. Randomly generated names, until you vote ?
- pjvandehaar 17y ago
  An answer to the second would be a system pointing out people's replies to themselves.
pg 17y ago
Intriguing idea. Maybe I'll do something like that.
- scott_s 17y ago
  Keep in mind that this might have adverse affects on the community. I upvote/downvote sparingly, but after over a year of reading people's comments, I feel like I "know" certain people because I recognize trends in what they say.
- sachinag 17y ago
  The issue is that respondents may start addressing their comments to nerf such a change. Instead of: "You're forgetting something", you may get: "tdavis, you're forgetting something."
  - pyre 17y ago
    True, but that person could get appropriately down-voted for that 'work around' if enough people dislike it.
    - apotheon 17y ago
      What -- so now we aren't allowed to refer to people by name? I think that's a terrible idea, especially when I'm talking to foo about something bar said.
- hughprime 17y ago
  I don't think that the upside (creating a marginally fairer karma system) would outweigh the downside (making the whole site a whole lot less readable).
  - diN0bot 17y ago
    what about this: make up random names for people. these names should be consistent for the entire discussion on this page across page views, but different for a different discussion. i've never been able to remember who someone is or what they do. the benefit of trusting A more on a security issue because A has proven himself to be a master of security issues...well, that's a tough problem. i'd rather see anonymous names, no karma and a security certificate. karma is useful to draw n00bs into the system--i found it pretty darn cool when i started out. now i don't care at all. after 200 points they should disappear: now you've earned yourself a real soul.
calambrac 17y ago
I disagree. There are people on here that I don't want to waste my time reading at all, they're more or less consistent trolls (who knows, maybe I'm one for some people). I may miss out on some accidentally or authentically insightful commentary now and then because I completely skip over comments by certain people, but there's enough insightful commnentary in the universe that I can live with it. Reputations are important.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
PebblesRox 17y ago
Hiding names should be optional, like "showdead." Then you can choose for yourself instead of getting stuck with a system you dislike.
sp332 17y ago
It's really hard to follow threaded conversations without any kind of ID.
jwecker 17y ago
This was mentioned by someone here a few years ago, but I still think it would be cool to see the karma/posts ratio for people. Just for kicks, not for voting (: To be perfectly honest I never even notice the names on comments. OK, not totally true, I notice pg and one or two other people that I know personally. I remember when hacker news started and pg would automatically get pretty much every member upvoting him (hence him not being in the leaders section- no one even comes close I assume).
onreact-com 17y ago
Imagine this with politicians: Not knowing whether a speech was made by Obama or Cheney would greatly improve trust in politicians ;-)
ilitirit 17y ago
I'd prefer to see the number of karma points hidden, rather than the user name. The user names don't really interest me that much, and I tend to forget them very quickly.
radu_floricica 17y ago
Or just hide it and show it on mouse over. The only problem is that is makes conversations difficult to follow. Who answered this post? The OP? The grandparent? Somebody else? One solution is to display made-up ids, but they have to be easy to recognize. Some help would be if you mouse-over an id to show the name on all the posts of the same user.

by brk 17y ago

comatose_kid 17y ago

But then people would upvote comments (or worse, decrease s/n by responding) just to find out who authored them.

rincewind 17y ago

I trust security advice from tptacek or cperciva more than from [name withheld until you vote]. Threads get really confusing when [name withheld until you vote] argues with himself all the time.

adimit 17y ago
How about withholding the name still, but offering a way to 'opt-out' from voting. You don't see the name until you either vote up or opt out. After you've withheld your voice, you can't go vote again on that submission/comment.
- eru 17y ago
  > you either vote up or opt out How about voting down?
  - Novash 17y ago
    You can't vote down until you hit a certain karma threshold.
    - eru 17y ago
      Yes, I know. I just could not resist making the itemization complete.
  - neoclassical 17y ago
    I oppose voting down. It encourages a lynch mob mentality. What helps instead is an ability to, Slashdot-like, tag posts with warnings: spam, stupid, irrelevant, "humor," etc.
nir 17y ago
That's my point - some people got high karma by posting intelligent comments, but many others just got it by posting a lot and echoing popular views. So, karma score in itself is pretty useless, in my opinion.
- johnmw 17y ago
  This is probably getting a tad too complicated but having a number of different 'upvote' icons (ala Slashdot) would be interesting. You could upvote someone for being funny, informative, insightful, and so on. If someone has a high karma for being funny in topics related to computer security, you probably wouldn't trust their security advice so much.
brk 17y ago
Your point about valuing an opinion more highly from a person who is known to be accurate on a subject is valid. In the arguments case, I think it's easy enough to follow an A/B conversation, even without names. In the first case though, it still seems that the majority of comments here are not so specialized as to require the posters identity to determine if the content is accurate enough or not. Ideally, if you could not judge the accuracy of the comment on your own you would leave it alone. There would be enough others that could judge it impartially that the comment itself would get voted up or down appropriately.
- apotheon 17y ago
  There's still the matter of confusion when [name withheld] is responding to [name withheld], though -- and for that reason alone, I'm afraid I have to disagree with your suggestion. It's also the case that sometimes I'm not entirely sure what someone's trying to say unless and until I look at it within the context of his or her earlier comments in the same discussion. If I can't match someone's comment with the context of previous comments, I sometimes can't tell if they're being sarcastic, accidentally saying "can" instead of "can't", and so on. I judge by the content of a comment rather than by name, and I agree that's a good way to do it, but I don't think that needs to be enforced by withholding information from us.
  - pbhj 17y ago
    You could simply name all respondents by their response position in the thread, first is person1 (hope that's not too limiting!): person1:yay person2:people here like intelligent comments person3:go to digg if you want to yay all the time person1:yay And have an option to reveal names and/or show them on the mouseover link for personX.
Bleys 17y ago
You would just need to break out the gensyms to resolve the differentiation issue.
calcnerd256 17y ago
If users can no longer rely upon their names being displayed, they will come up with alternate ways of identifying themselves. Forced anonymous has worked in some places in the past.
- Novash 17y ago
  I don't know why you were downvotted. You do have a point. If we hide the name of the user on the header, they will probably simply post their name on the post itself.
jwr 17y ago
I don't trust security advice from tptacek. First because we had a discussion and we clearly do not agree as to who can be trusted, but second (and more generally), I don't trust anyone who has enough time to gather lots of karma on HN. Most people have better things to do.
jacquesm 17y ago
If you are not in a position to evaluate an argument about security you probably shouldn't be following the advice anyway.
xuhu 17y ago
> Threads get really confusing when [name withheld until you vote] argues with himself all the time. Randomly generated names, until you vote ?
pjvandehaar 17y ago
An answer to the second would be a system pointing out people's replies to themselves.

pg 17y ago

Intriguing idea. Maybe I'll do something like that.

scott_s 17y ago
Keep in mind that this might have adverse affects on the community. I upvote/downvote sparingly, but after over a year of reading people's comments, I feel like I "know" certain people because I recognize trends in what they say.
sachinag 17y ago
The issue is that respondents may start addressing their comments to nerf such a change. Instead of: "You're forgetting something", you may get: "tdavis, you're forgetting something."
- pyre 17y ago
  True, but that person could get appropriately down-voted for that 'work around' if enough people dislike it.
  - apotheon 17y ago
    What -- so now we aren't allowed to refer to people by name? I think that's a terrible idea, especially when I'm talking to foo about something bar said.
hughprime 17y ago
I don't think that the upside (creating a marginally fairer karma system) would outweigh the downside (making the whole site a whole lot less readable).
- diN0bot 17y ago
  what about this: make up random names for people. these names should be consistent for the entire discussion on this page across page views, but different for a different discussion. i've never been able to remember who someone is or what they do. the benefit of trusting A more on a security issue because A has proven himself to be a master of security issues...well, that's a tough problem. i'd rather see anonymous names, no karma and a security certificate. karma is useful to draw n00bs into the system--i found it pretty darn cool when i started out. now i don't care at all. after 200 points they should disappear: now you've earned yourself a real soul.

calambrac 17y ago

I disagree. There are people on here that I don't want to waste my time reading at all, they're more or less consistent trolls (who knows, maybe I'm one for some people). I may miss out on some accidentally or authentically insightful commentary now and then because I completely skip over comments by certain people, but there's enough insightful commnentary in the universe that I can live with it. Reputations are important.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

PebblesRox 17y ago

Hiding names should be optional, like "showdead." Then you can choose for yourself instead of getting stuck with a system you dislike.

sp332 17y ago

It's really hard to follow threaded conversations without any kind of ID.

jwecker 17y ago

This was mentioned by someone here a few years ago, but I still think it would be cool to see the karma/posts ratio for people. Just for kicks, not for voting (: To be perfectly honest I never even notice the names on comments. OK, not totally true, I notice pg and one or two other people that I know personally. I remember when hacker news started and pg would automatically get pretty much every member upvoting him (hence him not being in the leaders section- no one even comes close I assume).

onreact-com 17y ago

Imagine this with politicians: Not knowing whether a speech was made by Obama or Cheney would greatly improve trust in politicians ;-)

ilitirit 17y ago

I'd prefer to see the number of karma points hidden, rather than the user name. The user names don't really interest me that much, and I tend to forget them very quickly.

radu_floricica 17y ago

Or just hide it and show it on mouse over. The only problem is that is makes conversations difficult to follow. Who answered this post? The OP? The grandparent? Somebody else? One solution is to display made-up ids, but they have to be easy to recognize. Some help would be if you mouse-over an id to show the name on all the posts of the same user.