5 ms·

You know how sometimes online stores won't tell you the price of something until you add it to your cart? Hacker News feels kind of like that now. Like price, c

by dcurtis 17y ago

You know how sometimes online stores won't tell you the price of something until you add it to your cart? Hacker News feels kind of like that now. Like price, comment score is the best indicator of context, class, and quality. I feel kind of lost.

masklinn 17y ago
> Like price, comment score is the best indicator of context, class, and quality. It can be when the site is new and only an overall smart population lives on it, but yc is (I guess) growing, and as it grows the quality of the voting (and therefore the score) decreases: insightful comments running against the general opinion get mercilessly downvoted, useless comments matching the general opinion rise.
lamby 17y ago
Surely the content is the best indicator of context, class, and quality? If you feel lost, perhaps you were relying too much on others to judge an opinion for yourself?
- Herring 17y ago
  That's the entire premise behind this site: popular items become more visible. There just isn't enough time to go through all the content; it's much easier to learn the site's bias & compensate.
  - unalone 17y ago
    There just isn't enough time to go through all the content; it's much easier to learn the site's bias & compensate. That's one man's opinion. I read all the comments on every thread here, and find that not all the high-quality comments rise to the top. It's hit-and-miss. In a way that invalidates the theory of upvote-judging, no? It's a shitty system that forces you to adapt to biases. Right now PG's experimenting with removing a bias and improving the system. You're arguing that it would be better if he left the system flawed.
    - scott_s 17y ago
      Most people here don't want to or have the time to read all comments on all threads and would appreciate help in finding "good" things. It's true that PG is experimenting with the system, but it's a value judgment to say the old way is more flawed than the new way. In other words, your last two sentences beg the question.
- mechanical_fish 17y ago
  Apropos of nothing, let me not one side effect of this recent change to HN: I'm really having a much harder time resisting the urge to downvote ideas just because they're really bad. Instead, let me just say that this common notion -- that because good content is the ultimate signal of quality, we should read all the content before making a choice -- is like saying that, because the way your spouse gets along with children is vitally important to your future happiness, you should try having a child with all the eligible spouses you can find before you choose one.
- halo 17y ago
  Sure, content is the best indicator of context, class, and quality... given you have unlimited time to read all the content. Since most people don't have infinite reading time, people use a heuristic to work out what's worth reading and what isn't, and upmods are a reasonable, if fallable, heuristic to use. I've just come back from an 8 hour shift at a warehouse, and I'm not going to bother reading all the comments - it's simply not going to happen. Sorry if that offends people, but I'm tired. I'm going to miss out on the the good comments because I don't have time to read all the comments. Secondly, upmods smooth out discussion by preventing redundant comments and people repeating the same point ad nauseum. While this might be perceived as "groupthink", being able to separate a fringe viewpoint (even if they're not necessary wrong) from a popular view is an extremely useful heuristic, because the prevailing opinion is often (but not always) more likely to be a reasonable and reliable answer. I have a feeling that most people actually practice these heuristics in real life too. Given finite reading time and the contents of all books in history, most people read books that others people have recommended or are popular.
pascal_cuoq 17y ago
"Best indicator" are not the words I would have used. Like other (all that I know of, in fact) voting systems on popular social sites, Hacker News' is biased in favor of comments that repeat the established, arrive early, and are written by popular authors. All criteria which are subtly different from quality of contents. My first comment was http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=739112 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=739112 Being my first intervention on HN, I thought I would be able to post anonymously so I included my name at the bottom of the post. The first reply (which, I admit is polite, well written and from a relatively famous person in this community, although not completely on-topic with respect to the article originally linked) got upvoted above ten. My comment, which revealed a lesser-know but true fact strongly related to the original article, with reference to an experiment that you can reproduce at home, was upvoted twice or something like that.
- zck 17y ago
  Yes; if anything, hiding the username might be just as useful.
  - Perceval 17y ago
    I'm a big fan of forced anonymity in online forums. I wrote a very long article about it (which was previously covered on HN) here: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2009/3/12/33338/3000 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2009/3/12/33338/3000
unalone 17y ago
Like price, comment score is the best indicator of context, class, and quality. Fuck that. Are you saying that you're too lazy to read what people are saying and form your own opinions? That groupthink is just going to naturally turn out better than forcing every member to think about what they're reading? For the longest time, HN has become more and more "accessible", at the cost of a lot of intellectual discussion. I've seen a lot of conversations where one side of the argument is downvoted to hell and it makes the other side look "correct". I just saw a thread two days ago where somebody in the debate responded to a guy who was at -4 by saying "Look at your comment score, looks like I'm right." That's shit. That's utter shit and it hurts Hacker News. I'm fine with spending more time reading a thread if it means I'm legitimately thinking about what people are saying. This is a terrific improvement to the system, and it feels a hell of a lot less claustrophobic than it did when every single thing people said was being judged as if it were an objective statement capable of being "good" and "bad." Hopefully this also stops people from downvoting statements based on disagreement. Feels less vindictive when you can't see what your vote's done.
- NathanKP 17y ago
  somebody in the debate responded to a guy who was at -4 by saying "Look at your comment score, looks like I'm right." That's shit. That's assuming that the majority is right. If somebody gets voted down there is a pretty good chance that they were wrong, or even if they were right, they said in the wrong tone/manner.
  - unalone 17y ago
    "Pretty good chance." But here's the thing. What if they're not wrong? What if a bunch of people read the comment, didn't quite understand it, and then downvoted it because it already had downvotes? I know I act like that a lot while reading. I also see a curious downvoting pattern on those frequent incidents when somebody mass downvotes all my comments for some reason or other. I'll assume for argument that on average I make useful, relevant comments. When new comments that I make get downvoted, there's about a 50-50 chance that the next person to come along also downvotes the comment, even when it's a good one. They see the other person's downvote and it reenforces in their mind that there was a good reason the comment was being downvoted. The ones that get a reverse upvote, however, then soar upwards. I had made one comment a few days ago that go downvoted such, then for a while hovered between -1 and -2, with very little differentiation. Then it hit 1 again, and within a few hours had hit up to something like 16. That's a pattern that I see a lot. People are less willing to upvote a comment that's grey than they are to upvote something solidly in the black. That's a flaw.
nir 17y ago
>Like price, comment score is the best indicator of context, class, and quality. You mean in the same way a book's price is an indicator of its quality? ;) The nice thing about comments is that they are short and quick to read. Unlike books or films there's no need for reviewers or critics to help you find the better ones. Just read and decide for yourself.

by dcurtis 17y ago

masklinn 17y ago

> Like price, comment score is the best indicator of context, class, and quality. It can be when the site is new and only an overall smart population lives on it, but yc is (I guess) growing, and as it grows the quality of the voting (and therefore the score) decreases: insightful comments running against the general opinion get mercilessly downvoted, useless comments matching the general opinion rise.

lamby 17y ago

Surely the content is the best indicator of context, class, and quality? If you feel lost, perhaps you were relying too much on others to judge an opinion for yourself?

Herring 17y ago
That's the entire premise behind this site: popular items become more visible. There just isn't enough time to go through all the content; it's much easier to learn the site's bias & compensate.
- unalone 17y ago
  There just isn't enough time to go through all the content; it's much easier to learn the site's bias & compensate. That's one man's opinion. I read all the comments on every thread here, and find that not all the high-quality comments rise to the top. It's hit-and-miss. In a way that invalidates the theory of upvote-judging, no? It's a shitty system that forces you to adapt to biases. Right now PG's experimenting with removing a bias and improving the system. You're arguing that it would be better if he left the system flawed.
  - scott_s 17y ago
    Most people here don't want to or have the time to read all comments on all threads and would appreciate help in finding "good" things. It's true that PG is experimenting with the system, but it's a value judgment to say the old way is more flawed than the new way. In other words, your last two sentences beg the question.
mechanical_fish 17y ago
Apropos of nothing, let me not one side effect of this recent change to HN: I'm really having a much harder time resisting the urge to downvote ideas just because they're really bad. Instead, let me just say that this common notion -- that because good content is the ultimate signal of quality, we should read all the content before making a choice -- is like saying that, because the way your spouse gets along with children is vitally important to your future happiness, you should try having a child with all the eligible spouses you can find before you choose one.
halo 17y ago
Sure, content is the best indicator of context, class, and quality... given you have unlimited time to read all the content. Since most people don't have infinite reading time, people use a heuristic to work out what's worth reading and what isn't, and upmods are a reasonable, if fallable, heuristic to use. I've just come back from an 8 hour shift at a warehouse, and I'm not going to bother reading all the comments - it's simply not going to happen. Sorry if that offends people, but I'm tired. I'm going to miss out on the the good comments because I don't have time to read all the comments. Secondly, upmods smooth out discussion by preventing redundant comments and people repeating the same point ad nauseum. While this might be perceived as "groupthink", being able to separate a fringe viewpoint (even if they're not necessary wrong) from a popular view is an extremely useful heuristic, because the prevailing opinion is often (but not always) more likely to be a reasonable and reliable answer. I have a feeling that most people actually practice these heuristics in real life too. Given finite reading time and the contents of all books in history, most people read books that others people have recommended or are popular.

pascal_cuoq 17y ago

"Best indicator" are not the words I would have used. Like other (all that I know of, in fact) voting systems on popular social sites, Hacker News' is biased in favor of comments that repeat the established, arrive early, and are written by popular authors. All criteria which are subtly different from quality of contents. My first comment was http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=739112 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=739112 Being my first intervention on HN, I thought I would be able to post anonymously so I included my name at the bottom of the post. The first reply (which, I admit is polite, well written and from a relatively famous person in this community, although not completely on-topic with respect to the article originally linked) got upvoted above ten. My comment, which revealed a lesser-know but true fact strongly related to the original article, with reference to an experiment that you can reproduce at home, was upvoted twice or something like that.

zck 17y ago
Yes; if anything, hiding the username might be just as useful.
- Perceval 17y ago
  I'm a big fan of forced anonymity in online forums. I wrote a very long article about it (which was previously covered on HN) here: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2009/3/12/33338/3000 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2009/3/12/33338/3000

unalone 17y ago

Like price, comment score is the best indicator of context, class, and quality. Fuck that. Are you saying that you're too lazy to read what people are saying and form your own opinions? That groupthink is just going to naturally turn out better than forcing every member to think about what they're reading? For the longest time, HN has become more and more "accessible", at the cost of a lot of intellectual discussion. I've seen a lot of conversations where one side of the argument is downvoted to hell and it makes the other side look "correct". I just saw a thread two days ago where somebody in the debate responded to a guy who was at -4 by saying "Look at your comment score, looks like I'm right." That's shit. That's utter shit and it hurts Hacker News. I'm fine with spending more time reading a thread if it means I'm legitimately thinking about what people are saying. This is a terrific improvement to the system, and it feels a hell of a lot less claustrophobic than it did when every single thing people said was being judged as if it were an objective statement capable of being "good" and "bad." Hopefully this also stops people from downvoting statements based on disagreement. Feels less vindictive when you can't see what your vote's done.

NathanKP 17y ago
somebody in the debate responded to a guy who was at -4 by saying "Look at your comment score, looks like I'm right." That's shit. That's assuming that the majority is right. If somebody gets voted down there is a pretty good chance that they were wrong, or even if they were right, they said in the wrong tone/manner.
- unalone 17y ago
  "Pretty good chance." But here's the thing. What if they're not wrong? What if a bunch of people read the comment, didn't quite understand it, and then downvoted it because it already had downvotes? I know I act like that a lot while reading. I also see a curious downvoting pattern on those frequent incidents when somebody mass downvotes all my comments for some reason or other. I'll assume for argument that on average I make useful, relevant comments. When new comments that I make get downvoted, there's about a 50-50 chance that the next person to come along also downvotes the comment, even when it's a good one. They see the other person's downvote and it reenforces in their mind that there was a good reason the comment was being downvoted. The ones that get a reverse upvote, however, then soar upwards. I had made one comment a few days ago that go downvoted such, then for a while hovered between -1 and -2, with very little differentiation. Then it hit 1 again, and within a few hours had hit up to something like 16. That's a pattern that I see a lot. People are less willing to upvote a comment that's grey than they are to upvote something solidly in the black. That's a flaw.

nir 17y ago

>Like price, comment score is the best indicator of context, class, and quality. You mean in the same way a book's price is an indicator of its quality? ;) The nice thing about comments is that they are short and quick to read. Unlike books or films there's no need for reviewers or critics to help you find the better ones. Just read and decide for yourself.