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But now I cant quickly skim off information from a thread. There are 87 comments in this thread at this moment. I am not interested in reading 87 comments abo

by kniwor 17y ago

But now I cant quickly skim off information from a thread. There are 87 comments in this thread at this moment. I am not interested in reading 87 comments about this experiment. I am however very much interested in seeing what the top few most insightful comments in this thread are. That feedback is very important. Right now I am feeling blind as a bat...

tumult 17y ago
Ones near the top are some kind of product of age (more recent) and score (higher). By the way, the kind of skimming you're describing is what leads to mob voting :) People skim for the highest rated stuff, read it, then rate it up more. Plenty of good comments never get rated up, and people who say the most inflammatory stuff (or just make stupid jokes) get the votes early on and stay in the "lead" as it were, the system having been made into a game.
- DanielBMarkham 17y ago
  Repeat after me: you cannot have a system with points and expect people not to play games with it. Just accept it as a given and try to work around mob voting in other ways. Perhaps there is a way to make the system work against it's own mob tendencies. The entire point of using karma is that it means something -- it has value. Heck, I bet to some folks it has a lot of value. I'd further bet that it has so much value to some folks that you could monetize it. But that's a discussion for another day.
  - tumult 17y ago
    Of course it's a game. But it should be a game that fosters insightful comments and interesting threads, not one-liner jokes and inflammatory outbursts.
    - DanielBMarkham 17y ago
      I agree. I wonder if you could just have three buttons/widgets: insightful, funny, and troll. Then just click what you think of the article, and insightful articles rise to the top. Heck, you could even make it a user preference whether to sort insightful first, funny first, or troll first (why you'd want to do that I don't know, but some might) It would involve just one more graphic element than the current up/down arrows, and would give people release to say the funny things when they feel like they have to instead of having the site self-police.
      - tumult 17y ago
        I think you just described slashdot without visible karma counts :)
      - camccann 17y ago
        or troll first (why you'd want to do that I don't know, but some might) At least on slashdot, the "troll"s are sometimes, in their own way, funnier than the "funny"s (if only because of not involving overdone /. in-jokes).
        DanielBMarkham 17y ago
        I'd go so far as to say that I'd enjoy reading jokes and one-liners the folks here have to say about the news. We've got some really smart people that read HN. I bet their jokes are hilarious. But that's only sometimes, not all of the time. If there could be a button for turning jokes off or on (or sorting by funny) then it'd be a hoot to see the site in that asepct., In short, I don't think it's a human behavior problem. Computer systems should let people act like people naturally act. This is a display problem. Some folks are seeing things in spots they would not like them to be in. Instead of viewing the site as some huge function to take limited input and provide maximum output, perhaps it's better viewed as a big bucket of various randomized data. Then the purpose of the site is to sort and organize that random data in such a way as to provide maximum utility.
        johnnybgoode 17y ago
  - unalone 17y ago
    Repeat after me: you cannot have a system with points and expect people not to play games with it. Exactly! A lot of games just got killed, and now we're hearing some protesting about it. The entire point of using karma is that it means something -- it has value. Heck, I bet to some folks it has a lot of value. I'd further bet that it has so much value to some folks that you could monetize it. But that's a discussion for another day. You don't find it slightly pathetic that people would be judging themselves by the score of their comments on a web site? And I say this as an upstanding member of the Karma Kommunity. There is, actually, one system of points that works brilliantly. Metafilter's favoriting system, which allows upvotes but not downvotes, lets top comments get notified, but doesn't penalize any other comments, and because MF uses a flat commenting system the conversation isn't at all affected by what people like and dislike.
  - Perceval 17y ago
    I agree. As an administrator on Wikipedia since 2004, I have to say that, while Wikipedia is not perfect, I do appreciate their skeptical stance toward voting. Especially where points matter and pseudonimity allows for multiple accounts, voting runs into awful problems. The Wikimedia foundation has codified some of their thoughts on the negative effects of voting here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Voting_is_evil http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Voting_is_evil
- kniwor 17y ago
  I think you hit the nail on it's head in the later part of your comment. I think what is killing reddit is that funny attracts 10x votes when insightful attracts x and lately that is exactly what is happening here. But I don't think this experiment is a solution at all. The thread as ordered by the HN algo is definitely not the right order to read a thread.
  - borism 17y ago
    there is no one single "right" - there is better and worse. I think this change is for the better.
DanielBMarkham 17y ago
I feel your pain. I don't think I like the new system that much. At least so far. I'm used to scanning comments as a way to determine which articles to read. Postings with a lot of comment action usually indicate something emotionally appealing. Once I go to the comments section, then I filter by score, only looking at comments above a certain threshold (depending on how much time I have). I usually try not to comment, unless some comment has been upvoted to a high level and doesn't make sense to me. Alas, there are a huge number of comments that I disagree with or fail to understand, and only by knowing the score am I able to determine whether or not my adding to the discussion will help the other readers. That don't work no more. Now I'm just blindly poking around in the comments section, not really feeling connected to the discussion at all...
- greendestiny 17y ago
  I don't look at the score to understand a comment, I look at the score to understand the community response to a comment. To me there is just less information now.
- mechanical_fish 17y ago
  This is precisely the problem. Without some idea of what earlier readers think of the comments it is much harder to skim. The top-level comments presumably rise and sink based roughly on their karma (though the algorithm also seems to have other considerations, like momentum). But what of the second-tier comments and below? Ripostes are often where the action is. I might find that I'm reduced to skimming for names that I recognize. That's how the rest of the web works. The web in general has no karma system, so the way to "upvote" something is to repeat it with your byline: You Twitter it or reblog it (or retweet it, or re-reblog it) with a link and your signature, implying a certain degree of implicit endorsement. I expect that if this system holds we'll start seeing more "amen" comments. I kind of hope so, frankly: Now the only way I will spot an incredibly insightful but short comment buried downthread is if I see a bunch of comments from people I vaguely know saying "amen". I'm not sure this trend will represent progress, however. If we want to tinker, consider this: relative rankings on a page. Find a way to distinguish the top-voted 20% of comments from the second quintile, and the second quintile from everything else. (My instinct is not to bother distinguishing things below the top 40%, and of course negative-karma comments presumably are still doing their disappearing act, my favorite cute HN feature.) At the risk of repeating the legendary eye-searing Orange Name experiment... we could turn the byline of comments in the top 20% a different color from the second 20%, which in turn is a different color from everything else. Red is probably the wrong color for any of this -- too loud. Think "green". I'm thinking shades of green: Comments in the first quintile have very green bylines, comments in the second quintile have slightly green bylines, and all the other comments have their usual light grey bylines.
selven 17y ago
We could always make a compromise where people who choose to moderate can't see scores. It would be trivial to circumvent but it will deter 90% of people, and here that's 90% as good as deterring 100%.
Confusion 17y ago
For me, comment rankings also serve to verify the correctness of my thoughts about the article or a previous comment. I believe this is completely normal and reflects the ability to doubt yourself. The fact that I initially think a story or comment is valuable, does not mean it actually is valuable: I may be wrong. As there will usually be comments reflecting different sides of the issue, I need to know what the community thinks the value of these comments is, relative to each other. 20 Points for a comment 'supporting' my position and 20 for a comment arguing 'against' my position indicate that I shouldn't be too certain, but that my position is (probably) at least rational. 20 Points for a comment 'supporting' my position and 1 for a comment arguing 'against' my position is an additional sign that I am probably on the right track. 1 Point for a comment 'supporting' my position and 20 for a comment arguing 'against' my position is a clear sign that I may have missed something and should read that comment carefully. I really dislike this change.
- unalone 17y ago
  That implies you trust the community more than you trust your own judgment. If somebody refutes you elegantly, then you should look into their refutation regardless of whether or not the refutation has many points.
  - icey 17y ago
    I'm in a similar boat to Confusion on this one. I don't care about elegance; if I make a comment and then someone shows up with 2 sentences that basically say "You're an idiot. Obviously the answer is X." then context is important. Without knowing what the score is, I'll probably disregard the comment because I obviously disagree. However, if my comment has 1 point and the responder's has 50 points, then I know there's a pretty good chance I'm wrong, and know to go investigate.
    - unalone 17y ago
      Perhaps I'm in the minority; I'd downvote that even if it was right because that's a shitty attitude for somebody to take. Meanwhile, I think if somebody replies to you with something like that, it's worth investigating regardless of if they're the top answer or not. I'll draw a parallel to Reddit's "What's your favorite album?" threads. If you were to go by comment points alone, you'd think Radiohead's OK Computer was the best album of all time and that NIN took the four spots under that; meanwhile, albums out of the hive mind don't get as many upvotes, even if the commenter is more passionately in love with them. Similarly, just because a lot of people think one thing on HN doesn't mean that one thing is the best answer. Looking up multiple solutions may take more time, but that leads to learning and growth, which I think should be the point of any community.

by kniwor 17y ago

tumult 17y ago

Ones near the top are some kind of product of age (more recent) and score (higher). By the way, the kind of skimming you're describing is what leads to mob voting :) People skim for the highest rated stuff, read it, then rate it up more. Plenty of good comments never get rated up, and people who say the most inflammatory stuff (or just make stupid jokes) get the votes early on and stay in the "lead" as it were, the system having been made into a game.

DanielBMarkham 17y ago
Repeat after me: you cannot have a system with points and expect people not to play games with it. Just accept it as a given and try to work around mob voting in other ways. Perhaps there is a way to make the system work against it's own mob tendencies. The entire point of using karma is that it means something -- it has value. Heck, I bet to some folks it has a lot of value. I'd further bet that it has so much value to some folks that you could monetize it. But that's a discussion for another day.
- tumult 17y ago
  Of course it's a game. But it should be a game that fosters insightful comments and interesting threads, not one-liner jokes and inflammatory outbursts.
  - DanielBMarkham 17y ago
    I agree. I wonder if you could just have three buttons/widgets: insightful, funny, and troll. Then just click what you think of the article, and insightful articles rise to the top. Heck, you could even make it a user preference whether to sort insightful first, funny first, or troll first (why you'd want to do that I don't know, but some might) It would involve just one more graphic element than the current up/down arrows, and would give people release to say the funny things when they feel like they have to instead of having the site self-police.
    - tumult 17y ago
      I think you just described slashdot without visible karma counts :)
    - camccann 17y ago
      or troll first (why you'd want to do that I don't know, but some might) At least on slashdot, the "troll"s are sometimes, in their own way, funnier than the "funny"s (if only because of not involving overdone /. in-jokes).
      - DanielBMarkham 17y ago
        I'd go so far as to say that I'd enjoy reading jokes and one-liners the folks here have to say about the news. We've got some really smart people that read HN. I bet their jokes are hilarious. But that's only sometimes, not all of the time. If there could be a button for turning jokes off or on (or sorting by funny) then it'd be a hoot to see the site in that asepct., In short, I don't think it's a human behavior problem. Computer systems should let people act like people naturally act. This is a display problem. Some folks are seeing things in spots they would not like them to be in. Instead of viewing the site as some huge function to take limited input and provide maximum output, perhaps it's better viewed as a big bucket of various randomized data. Then the purpose of the site is to sort and organize that random data in such a way as to provide maximum utility.
        johnnybgoode 17y ago
- unalone 17y ago
  Repeat after me: you cannot have a system with points and expect people not to play games with it. Exactly! A lot of games just got killed, and now we're hearing some protesting about it. The entire point of using karma is that it means something -- it has value. Heck, I bet to some folks it has a lot of value. I'd further bet that it has so much value to some folks that you could monetize it. But that's a discussion for another day. You don't find it slightly pathetic that people would be judging themselves by the score of their comments on a web site? And I say this as an upstanding member of the Karma Kommunity. There is, actually, one system of points that works brilliantly. Metafilter's favoriting system, which allows upvotes but not downvotes, lets top comments get notified, but doesn't penalize any other comments, and because MF uses a flat commenting system the conversation isn't at all affected by what people like and dislike.
- Perceval 17y ago
  I agree. As an administrator on Wikipedia since 2004, I have to say that, while Wikipedia is not perfect, I do appreciate their skeptical stance toward voting. Especially where points matter and pseudonimity allows for multiple accounts, voting runs into awful problems. The Wikimedia foundation has codified some of their thoughts on the negative effects of voting here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Voting_is_evil http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Voting_is_evil
kniwor 17y ago
I think you hit the nail on it's head in the later part of your comment. I think what is killing reddit is that funny attracts 10x votes when insightful attracts x and lately that is exactly what is happening here. But I don't think this experiment is a solution at all. The thread as ordered by the HN algo is definitely not the right order to read a thread.
- borism 17y ago
  there is no one single "right" - there is better and worse. I think this change is for the better.

DanielBMarkham 17y ago

I feel your pain. I don't think I like the new system that much. At least so far. I'm used to scanning comments as a way to determine which articles to read. Postings with a lot of comment action usually indicate something emotionally appealing. Once I go to the comments section, then I filter by score, only looking at comments above a certain threshold (depending on how much time I have). I usually try not to comment, unless some comment has been upvoted to a high level and doesn't make sense to me. Alas, there are a huge number of comments that I disagree with or fail to understand, and only by knowing the score am I able to determine whether or not my adding to the discussion will help the other readers. That don't work no more. Now I'm just blindly poking around in the comments section, not really feeling connected to the discussion at all...

greendestiny 17y ago
I don't look at the score to understand a comment, I look at the score to understand the community response to a comment. To me there is just less information now.
mechanical_fish 17y ago
This is precisely the problem. Without some idea of what earlier readers think of the comments it is much harder to skim. The top-level comments presumably rise and sink based roughly on their karma (though the algorithm also seems to have other considerations, like momentum). But what of the second-tier comments and below? Ripostes are often where the action is. I might find that I'm reduced to skimming for names that I recognize. That's how the rest of the web works. The web in general has no karma system, so the way to "upvote" something is to repeat it with your byline: You Twitter it or reblog it (or retweet it, or re-reblog it) with a link and your signature, implying a certain degree of implicit endorsement. I expect that if this system holds we'll start seeing more "amen" comments. I kind of hope so, frankly: Now the only way I will spot an incredibly insightful but short comment buried downthread is if I see a bunch of comments from people I vaguely know saying "amen". I'm not sure this trend will represent progress, however. If we want to tinker, consider this: relative rankings on a page. Find a way to distinguish the top-voted 20% of comments from the second quintile, and the second quintile from everything else. (My instinct is not to bother distinguishing things below the top 40%, and of course negative-karma comments presumably are still doing their disappearing act, my favorite cute HN feature.) At the risk of repeating the legendary eye-searing Orange Name experiment... we could turn the byline of comments in the top 20% a different color from the second 20%, which in turn is a different color from everything else. Red is probably the wrong color for any of this -- too loud. Think "green". I'm thinking shades of green: Comments in the first quintile have very green bylines, comments in the second quintile have slightly green bylines, and all the other comments have their usual light grey bylines.

selven 17y ago

We could always make a compromise where people who choose to moderate can't see scores. It would be trivial to circumvent but it will deter 90% of people, and here that's 90% as good as deterring 100%.

Confusion 17y ago

For me, comment rankings also serve to verify the correctness of my thoughts about the article or a previous comment. I believe this is completely normal and reflects the ability to doubt yourself. The fact that I initially think a story or comment is valuable, does not mean it actually is valuable: I may be wrong. As there will usually be comments reflecting different sides of the issue, I need to know what the community thinks the value of these comments is, relative to each other. 20 Points for a comment 'supporting' my position and 20 for a comment arguing 'against' my position indicate that I shouldn't be too certain, but that my position is (probably) at least rational. 20 Points for a comment 'supporting' my position and 1 for a comment arguing 'against' my position is an additional sign that I am probably on the right track. 1 Point for a comment 'supporting' my position and 20 for a comment arguing 'against' my position is a clear sign that I may have missed something and should read that comment carefully. I really dislike this change.

unalone 17y ago
That implies you trust the community more than you trust your own judgment. If somebody refutes you elegantly, then you should look into their refutation regardless of whether or not the refutation has many points.
- icey 17y ago
  I'm in a similar boat to Confusion on this one. I don't care about elegance; if I make a comment and then someone shows up with 2 sentences that basically say "You're an idiot. Obviously the answer is X." then context is important. Without knowing what the score is, I'll probably disregard the comment because I obviously disagree. However, if my comment has 1 point and the responder's has 50 points, then I know there's a pretty good chance I'm wrong, and know to go investigate.
  - unalone 17y ago
    Perhaps I'm in the minority; I'd downvote that even if it was right because that's a shitty attitude for somebody to take. Meanwhile, I think if somebody replies to you with something like that, it's worth investigating regardless of if they're the top answer or not. I'll draw a parallel to Reddit's "What's your favorite album?" threads. If you were to go by comment points alone, you'd think Radiohead's OK Computer was the best album of all time and that NIN took the four spots under that; meanwhile, albums out of the hive mind don't get as many upvotes, even if the commenter is more passionately in love with them. Similarly, just because a lot of people think one thing on HN doesn't mean that one thing is the best answer. Looking up multiple solutions may take more time, but that leads to learning and growth, which I think should be the point of any community.