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Silliness. A community far too self-aware. By the way, suppressing these metrics is pointless. We are intelligent people who notice the difference between two

Silliness. A community far too self-aware. By the way, suppressing these metrics is pointless. We are intelligent people who notice the difference between two comments with very similar upvotes and one that far outpaces the other and find these proportions to be of interest. The new portrayal of comment rankings keeps interesting information from users and will end up stunting the community's progress. If you're just trying to ward off users, maybe remove the nav and make the site even slower. There are far more interesting ways to differentiate. I'd like to see this site be as light and fast as possible (would appeal to our hacker ethic) and allow users to customize the hell out of it given knowledge of Arc or similar (good chance to promote your language as well).

ujjwalg 17y ago
hopefully, it wont last too long. The experiment with orange dot will fail and we will have comment score back.
- dc2k08 17y ago
  I hope it lasts long enough to gather some stats on voting; whether or not more or less votes are cast with the new system, how spread out they are etc. I liked the idea of masking votes when it was initially suggested too. Bravo to pg for trying it out.
NathanKP 17y ago
make the site even slower Yes, concerning the site speed I definitely upvote the idea of making the server faster. Maybe they really removed the comment scores to save bandwidth. ;)
- rendezvouscp 17y ago
  I’m pretty sure there are a few font elements that could’ve been removed first. ;)
  - NathanKP 17y ago
    Yeah, removing the stylesheet would have also been good. ;)
- j_baker 17y ago
  I honestly haven't ever had a problem with the speed of HN.
  - NathanKP 17y ago
    It's not terrible slow, but I've noticed that recently, within the past two weeks, it has started hanging periodically, even on a T1 connection.
krav 17y ago
Agreed. The numbering, for me, is a good sign of which comments to keep an eye on while scanning the page, rather than get lost in text.
- chrischen 17y ago
  Don't higher rated comments get pushed to the top? And of course these dots will help you locate higher rated comments that get pushed to the bottom (perhaps because they replied to a low rated comment).
- pg 17y ago
  Doesn't the orange dot work for that?
  - m_eiman 17y ago
    If it's a post with a lot of discussion, it'd help with one or two more levels of "good post" indicators. Maybe making the default text color slightly more grayish and the "a bit better than orange dot" have #000 text, and for the exceptionally upvoted posts also make the "pg 26 minutes ago | link | parent | flag" header bold.
  - dionidium 17y ago
    Well, no. With the numbers I can get a sense of how quickly a comment is being upvoted by looking at the time it was posted. I can also compare a comment's total points to the those of surrounding comments for an indication of its relative worth. These things aren't perfect measures, but I find them useful.
    - TeHCrAzY 17y ago
      I think you are using the numbers to judge the comment, instead of finding an interesting comment, and forming your own opinion.
      - gizmo 17y ago
        It's just a filter. By reading only high scoring comments you will get a combination of insightful posts and annoying witticisms. Only rarely do you get a false positive: a post that with a high score that is inane or simply wrong. By reading every post you'll certainly find the "diamond in the rough", posts that don't get the recognition they deserve. But you'll also have to trudge through loads of posts of little merit. Given that there is an infinite amount of information on the internet, those 2 minutes can probably be better spent on wikipedia or reading the top post in a different HN thread. Additionally: HN isn't just about opinion, it is also for a large part about fact. And insightful facts almost always rise to the top. On the bottom of threads you often find things that are wrong or subtly wrong. Judging by the numbers may very well be the most efficient and reliable way to get to insightful content.
tigerthink 17y ago
It's true that comment-score information is interesting, but is it interesting for the right reasons? People are hardwired to have a morbid interest in the thinking of the tribe. Even if hackers consciously try to avoid paying undue attention to the opinions of the tribe, the subconscious instinct is still there.
- apotheon 17y ago
  I think that the dangers of majority-conformist thinking and other groupthink behaviors are very real and should be discouraged. I don't think hiding comment scores will have that effect, though it might make it more difficult to recognize when it happens. The one thing in this experiment that might (I intuit) help discourage groupthink related behaviors is hiding one's own score from oneself, because people will then be less emboldened when they're being idiots just for expressing popular opinions. Unfortunately, this will also (I intuit) discourage people when they're being smart from as readily taking another look at whether what they've said is idiotic when others recognize the idiocy. This strikes me as something of a parallel to when people sometimes claim that programming languages should be made "safer" at the expense of power provided for the programmer, and does not seem like a good direction to take the site.
  - tigerthink 17y ago
    >I don't think hiding comment scores will have that effect, though it might make it more difficult to recognize when it happens. Comment scores make group beliefs far more obvious. Common knowledge of group beliefs is a necessary condition for groupthink. >The one thing in this experiment that might (I intuit) help discourage groupthink related behaviors is hiding one's own score from oneself, because people will then be less emboldened when they're being idiots just for expressing popular opinions. The thing we need to be afraid of is public praise or shame for writing a well-received or poorly-received comment. >Unfortunately, this will also (I intuit) discourage people when they're being smart from as readily taking another look at whether what they've said is idiotic when others recognize the idiocy. I disagree. When people are called out publicly for unpopular beliefs, they tend to commit to them even stronger. Consider the following two stories. In Story A, Joe is downmodded on a comment with no replies and his low score is public knowledge. Joe becomes unhappy and stubborn. In Story B, Joe is downmodded on a comment with no replies and his low score is private knowledge. Joe wonders what might have caused so many to individually downmod his comment. He replies to his comment and says "Just curious, I noticed that a lot of people seem to be downmodding my comment. Is there some sort of flaw in my argument that I'm not seeing?"

ujjwalg 17y ago

hopefully, it wont last too long. The experiment with orange dot will fail and we will have comment score back.

dc2k08 17y ago
I hope it lasts long enough to gather some stats on voting; whether or not more or less votes are cast with the new system, how spread out they are etc. I liked the idea of masking votes when it was initially suggested too. Bravo to pg for trying it out.

NathanKP 17y ago

make the site even slower Yes, concerning the site speed I definitely upvote the idea of making the server faster. Maybe they really removed the comment scores to save bandwidth. ;)

rendezvouscp 17y ago
I’m pretty sure there are a few font elements that could’ve been removed first. ;)
- NathanKP 17y ago
  Yeah, removing the stylesheet would have also been good. ;)
j_baker 17y ago
I honestly haven't ever had a problem with the speed of HN.
- NathanKP 17y ago
  It's not terrible slow, but I've noticed that recently, within the past two weeks, it has started hanging periodically, even on a T1 connection.

krav 17y ago

Agreed. The numbering, for me, is a good sign of which comments to keep an eye on while scanning the page, rather than get lost in text.

chrischen 17y ago
Don't higher rated comments get pushed to the top? And of course these dots will help you locate higher rated comments that get pushed to the bottom (perhaps because they replied to a low rated comment).
pg 17y ago
Doesn't the orange dot work for that?
- m_eiman 17y ago
  If it's a post with a lot of discussion, it'd help with one or two more levels of "good post" indicators. Maybe making the default text color slightly more grayish and the "a bit better than orange dot" have #000 text, and for the exceptionally upvoted posts also make the "pg 26 minutes ago | link | parent | flag" header bold.
- dionidium 17y ago
  Well, no. With the numbers I can get a sense of how quickly a comment is being upvoted by looking at the time it was posted. I can also compare a comment's total points to the those of surrounding comments for an indication of its relative worth. These things aren't perfect measures, but I find them useful.
  - TeHCrAzY 17y ago
    I think you are using the numbers to judge the comment, instead of finding an interesting comment, and forming your own opinion.
    - gizmo 17y ago
      It's just a filter. By reading only high scoring comments you will get a combination of insightful posts and annoying witticisms. Only rarely do you get a false positive: a post that with a high score that is inane or simply wrong. By reading every post you'll certainly find the "diamond in the rough", posts that don't get the recognition they deserve. But you'll also have to trudge through loads of posts of little merit. Given that there is an infinite amount of information on the internet, those 2 minutes can probably be better spent on wikipedia or reading the top post in a different HN thread. Additionally: HN isn't just about opinion, it is also for a large part about fact. And insightful facts almost always rise to the top. On the bottom of threads you often find things that are wrong or subtly wrong. Judging by the numbers may very well be the most efficient and reliable way to get to insightful content.

tigerthink 17y ago

It's true that comment-score information is interesting, but is it interesting for the right reasons? People are hardwired to have a morbid interest in the thinking of the tribe. Even if hackers consciously try to avoid paying undue attention to the opinions of the tribe, the subconscious instinct is still there.

apotheon 17y ago
I think that the dangers of majority-conformist thinking and other groupthink behaviors are very real and should be discouraged. I don't think hiding comment scores will have that effect, though it might make it more difficult to recognize when it happens. The one thing in this experiment that might (I intuit) help discourage groupthink related behaviors is hiding one's own score from oneself, because people will then be less emboldened when they're being idiots just for expressing popular opinions. Unfortunately, this will also (I intuit) discourage people when they're being smart from as readily taking another look at whether what they've said is idiotic when others recognize the idiocy. This strikes me as something of a parallel to when people sometimes claim that programming languages should be made "safer" at the expense of power provided for the programmer, and does not seem like a good direction to take the site.
- tigerthink 17y ago
  >I don't think hiding comment scores will have that effect, though it might make it more difficult to recognize when it happens. Comment scores make group beliefs far more obvious. Common knowledge of group beliefs is a necessary condition for groupthink. >The one thing in this experiment that might (I intuit) help discourage groupthink related behaviors is hiding one's own score from oneself, because people will then be less emboldened when they're being idiots just for expressing popular opinions. The thing we need to be afraid of is public praise or shame for writing a well-received or poorly-received comment. >Unfortunately, this will also (I intuit) discourage people when they're being smart from as readily taking another look at whether what they've said is idiotic when others recognize the idiocy. I disagree. When people are called out publicly for unpopular beliefs, they tend to commit to them even stronger. Consider the following two stories. In Story A, Joe is downmodded on a comment with no replies and his low score is public knowledge. Joe becomes unhappy and stubborn. In Story B, Joe is downmodded on a comment with no replies and his low score is private knowledge. Joe wonders what might have caused so many to individually downmod his comment. He replies to his comment and says "Just curious, I noticed that a lot of people seem to be downmodding my comment. Is there some sort of flaw in my argument that I'm not seeing?"